losing transparency when merging channels

[andrewb37221947]

Hello,
Is there a way to keep the transparent background when merging channels?
Thanks!

Andrew

[Ronald Keller]

Not sure I understand the question. What channels are you merging (color channels? alpha channels?) and what is the relationship to a transparent background?

[andrewb37221947]

Working in colour channels. Creating different motives working in colour channels with a transparent background which I copy paste into another photoshop document where i work on the layout of the motifs in layers.
When I merge the colour channels the background becomes white.
This creates extra work. When I paste the motifs in the new document where i work on the layout with the different motives I need to remove the white background. I do this using the magic tool, which leaves a slim white boarder of the background, and when doing Select-> Modify ->Expand, and then delete to remove the white boarder, it leaves a very jagged edge and I need to manually edit the edges of the motif.

[Ronald Keller]

Sorry Andrew but I still don't understand. What do you mean by merging the colour channels. As far as I know one cannot merge colour channels.

There is a better way to remove white of your background but only if there is no white in parts of your motives because this technique removes all white of your layer.Is there white in your motives?

[andrewb37221947]

Sorry, I probably used the wrong term, its Spot Channels and "merge spot channels". Does this make it clear?

[Ronald Keller]

As far as I know you cannot merge spot channels without flattening the layers...

[andrewb37221947]

Thanks for getting back to me Ronald.
Still, the layers have transparent background, and when you merge layers with transparent background it remains transparent. Hence, why does it not stay transparent when I merge the spot channels and the layers with transparent background get flatten?

[Ronald Keller]

I don't know why it is but I found thid article:

Duplicate, split, and merge channels in Photoshop