Photoshop question

[Chadwick]

This one's got me stumped.
I'm making my own 'file prep' thing for seperations. Recording actions to use as a droplet.
Nothing fancy, just everything I do every damn time I start sepping something that'll wind up Sim proc.
( time saver, maybe 10-15 minutes, but it helps )

I've been doing this for a long time actually haha, just never finished it.
Mostly because of this:

I do some basic calcs for a couple colors, make a temp base, make some shirt backgrounds, yadda yadda.
During the actions I save a duplicate copy of the RGB file at the start, and eventually, in the actions,
go over to that one, turn it CMYK, save that data as spot channels,
then copy that data into the working document's pre-made ( in the actions ) spot channels.

I do this because I want to preserve the original RGB in the file, not convert it CMYK, then change it back,
as often, it will change the colors and such. Keep it simple...yeah.

Now..sometimes the imported channels will line up exact, which is what I would expect, from an exact file copy,
but sometimes it places them in with an offset...
And I'll be f*cked if I can figure out why it does it with some files and not others with the same recorded actions..(!)
It ain't a big deal to realign 4 channels if one is going to use them, but why is this happening?

So,

What the heck am I missing, and why does it not happen everytime?
The actions require a transparent background the way I've set it up..maybe that's it..I don't know.

Or, is there a flaw in the workflow?
I hope I described the situation coherently enough to follow.

Any ideas?

Thanks for any input.
Cheers.

[Command-Z]

If there's a selection active anywhere in either file when you paste or drag one channel from one file to another, the channels will not line up.

Deselect All before copying/pasting and they should line up fine.

[Chadwick]

Many thanks Z.
I bet that's it. Why it changes from file to file is still a ?, but yeah.
I'll try that..but not atm, cause I'm gettin rather pinned.
 
Cheers

[Denis Kolar]

Open 2 windows next to each other. Make the one you want to copy live.
Use black selection tool (Black arrow), click on that layer/channel and then hold the "Shift" button. That should force the copy to be placed in exact the same position as it was in the copy file.

I hope that is what you wanted to know, i could not understand the exact question at Midnight

[Chadwick]

Well..I got it working better, although I changed the method.
( I wish editing actions could be done smoother )

I decided to do the CMYK conversion in the working file after basic RGB calcs,
for simplicities sake, then convert the image back to rgb, delete the converted art,
and copy the original art back into the file from the secondary file.

Things still weren't lining up.
Then I realised something.

My action requires a transparent background image to be used, for obvious reasons.
After making a background knockout channel, I flattened the images.
No more offset during copy between files.
Seems I had run into this before but forgot about it. ( duh )

So..so far so good.
I get a temp underbase, and a temp black from grayscale,
a red, yellow, and two blues from the calcs I know,
Y, M, C, K,
and 3 shirt base colors in about 5 seconds. Whoo!
Pretty much everything a guy needs ( or might need ) to speed up the monkey work.

Nothing is adjusted, but that's the way I like it.

Only weak spot atm, is the actions save both files to the desktop,
( not sure if this will work on another computer/os properly yet )
and I wind up with an extra copy of the original file that needs to be
deleted, but I guess a backup doesn't hurt.