How to remove the alpha channel in a Photoshop document?

I have a semi-transparent monochrome image in a Photoshop document, that I would like to become fully opaque:

The opacity is already set to 100% in Blending Options, it's just that this image has an alpha channel that I would like to remove.

How can I do that?

Answer

It sounds like your issue is that the icon and opacity are baked into the alpha channel. This means you can't easily separate the two by duplicating the layer many times.

There's an easy solution though.

1. Command-click the layer thumbnail to make a selection based on the alpha (Photoshop may complain about not selecting pixels over 50%... ignore it).



2. Select → Save Selection, then press return (this will save the selection as a new channel.


3. Select → Deselect.


4. Open the Channels panel and select the one you just created.


5. Press Command-L to open the Levels window.


6. Click Auto.

That's probably as close as you're going to get to retrieve the icon. From here, you can:

1. Command-click the channel thumbnail to make a selection.


2. Open the Layers panel and crate a new bitmap layer.



3. Fill it with colour.