Merging channels inside a mask

In this exercise, we're going to combine our 1st and 2nd pass along with the 3rd…pass and we're going to do so inside the confines of a gradient mask.…I've saved my progress as Third-pass mask.psd.…It's found inside the 04_tough folder.…And currently we're looking at the combined 1st and 2nd masks.…Compare those to the 3rd mask and notice that things brighten up in this…region right there.…We get some better detail essentially going around this product treated hair, so…in other words we have a few hairs are glommed together.…

From about this point on the hairs are just too thick inside of the 3rd pass…where they look much more natural inside of the combined 1st and 2nd pass.…What we want to do is we want to gradually dissipate the merging of these…two channels over the course of this area, which means that we want to create a gradient.…To do so, go ahead and drop down to the little page icon at the bottom of…the Channels panel, Alt+click or Option+click on it in order to bring up the…New Channel dialog box.…