Layer mask?

[Sbrem]

OK, I have this file, and on the left side of a person's face is this shape full of "art". I want to remove the white so it could be on a transparent background for separation purposes. I though I could make a copy, convert it to a grayscale (by either converting to grayscale then back to RGB, or using the Black & White adjustments) and invert that to use a layer mask. My skills aren't what they could be regarding layer masks, so I could use a little help, please.

Steve

[Dottonedan]

For these types of issues, I do flatten a copy of that onto a white background (so that it is pasted in the exact same location) and then paste into a channel.  As you know, A Yellow/orange in greyscale is not going to give you a black point. So I adjust the levels and curves (only up to the point where my darkest grey is now solid black....to get the darker part of that art to be my solid yellow. As it fades out, will be the lighter halftone grey.


There is some (shades of red) in there creating orange fleck, and that would be treated like separations. Pull the red of it out, and while selected, color that in RGB once you take that yellow (channel sep) back in the rib layers and fill that with your new transparent fade. Then fill the red fleck selection with red over in the RGB on top of your yellow to get the fleck of orange.

[Sbrem]

Thanks Dan, I appreciate it. Now, I had already made a selection of the area, copied it into a new document, used the Black & White adjustment to get the darkest gray to black, then, inverted it. Creating a Layer mask with this should mean the Black should "hide" the white, while the White lets the color image show through. If I take this back to my working file, and try to paste it into a layer mask, it doesn't do what I think it's supposed to do. To test my theory, I deleted my image and simply filled the layer mask with solid black, and of course, it hid the entire image. I hope this is clear. So, what am I doing wrong with my pasted in image?

Steve

OK, I got a chance to find the answer, which is that I was doing it wrong. I was trying to paste the image into the layer mask in the Layers pallet, when I should have been pasting it into the layer mask in the Channels pallet, much better now. Thank you youtube for that video.