Coming Soon: TK Magic Mixer plugin

~ Tony Kuyper

Photoshop’s Channel Mixer adjustment layer provides some unique capabilities. It allows blending the image’s Red, Green, and Blue channels in new ways, which is especially useful when converting color images to black and white. Unfortunately, it’s a little difficult to use. As the channels are adjusted using the Photoshop Properties panel, the brightness of the image also changes. As a result, too much is happening at once making it hard to evaluate the different channel mixtures and how they might benefit the image.

The TK Magic Mixer plugin solves this problem.

With it, the Red, Green, and Blue channels can be quickly adjusted while keeping image brightness constant. This alone makes it much easier to use and also much easier to find channel combinations that actually work.

But that’s only the beginning. The Magic Mixer goes well beyond separating channel mixing and image brightness. It also allows users to directly affect the brightness of individual colors via dedicated sliders while still providing independent Brightness and Contrast adjustments. There is even a “Randomize” button for generating new channel blends with a single click.

The Magic Mixer is a multi-functional plugin to allow Channel Mixer adjustments to become a useful and integral part of the Photoshop workflow. I’m excited about this new plugin and will have more information to share soon. Please watch your email or this blog for details.

Published by Tony Kuyper

19 thoughts on “Coming Soon: TK Magic Mixer plugin”

  2. Hi Tony, this sounds great. I do a lot of Infrared Photography and the channel mixer is used to create a false-color look. People have created channel mixer actions and presets for color swapping, via channel mixer. This might replace some of that. thanks

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    1. That sounds interesting. The plugin will allow users to create their own presets, so that might be useful in this situation. Additionally, users will be able to fine-tune their presets after loading them using the sliders. So, if you already have established uses for the Channel Mixer adjustment, this plugin might provide additional functionality.

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      2. Thanks for that link. As it now stands, Magic Mixer works using the “Monochrome” option, so this type of “swapping” probably won’t be possible. Maybe this is a path for future development. However, I think Magic Mixer might still have some useful applications after doing this swap as the color still present in the image could now be blended in new ways using the Magic Mixer.

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  3. This is brilliant! I already love the colour grading module; use it constantly. This appears to be the perfect complement. Can’t wait to try it!

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    1. Color grading and channel mixing both offer useful approaches to achieving our creative vision via different paths. Currently, the Channel Mixer might be underutilized because it’s not so easy to use. Hopefully the Magic Mixer will allow channel mixing to become more mainstreamed the workflow.

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    1. Indeed. It’s been technically difficult to use the Channel Mixer, so it’s been overlooked to some degree. Hopefully this will help it to become a more common consideration in the Photoshop workflow.

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  5. Hi Tony, I like using the colour picker in Lr’s mixer to adjust specific colours/saturation/hue & luminosity before further editing in Ps. Your new panel sounds fantastic and a definite bonus to any work flow, but will I still be able to sample from the image? Thank you…

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    1. Thanks for those thoughts, Paul. The purpose of the Magic Mixer is not to create color masks per se (those are already available in TK9), but rather to provide a way to blend the color channels, and thereby colors, in new and purposeful ways. To some degree you will be able to select complementary colors for adjustment, but you’ll generally be doing an overall global adjustment to those colors.

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  8. Can’t wait for your Magic Mixer – obviously, you’ve done it again. I am so glad to be part of your Photography family. Keep up with an excellent work Tony and the team….. 🙂

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  10. Excelente Tony, una vuelta más al tornillo (PS). Siempre facilitando el trabajo. Un saludo desde Barcelona.🤠👍

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