I'm trying to follow a Photoshop tutorial in ComputerArts magazine, translating it as best I can into Photopaint, which usually works reasonably well. The tutorial requires pasting copies of files into Channels. I have avoided Channels all this time because I don't understand them, and now I'm really confused. There is no way to paste an image into a channel (that I can find) and I don't understand how to use a channel without first creating a mask..... can anyone tell me how to use channels in Photopaint the same as in Photoshop??

Perhaps you should look at the Split Channels To and the Combine Channels commands under the Image Menu. Split Channels allows you to break an image into its constituent components and edit, copy, copy replace etc.  Combine channels allows you to recombine these files and choose which CPT files created or modified are put back into which channel of a reconstituted image.

If you want to copy the channel to the object palette as a new object.

Photoshop is much easier for this sort of thing, but it should all be possible in PP.

Sark

The only way to move information freely from one regular color space channel to another is Image/Calculations. Channel Mixer too, but it is limited. Object Layer Merge Mode also let to accomplish some movements.