Can't reselect after doing layer via copy/layer via cut with an active selection

[grunge616]

Hey, basically, if I use ctrl/command + j or ctrl/command + shift + j to make a copy of the current layer, or even try to Cut + Paste in Place with an active selection, the selection seems to vanish into thin air after the new layer with the selected content is created, and the option to reselect the selection is greyed out. Any way or workaround to change/avoid/fix this behavior or is it intended? what can i do if i need to do something with that same exact selection?

[Stephen Marsh]

@grunge616 

CMD/CTRL click on the new layer thumbnail in the layer panel to load the transparency channel as a selection (or select > Load Selection... ) which can also be put into an action or script for running from a keyboard shortcut.

[grunge616]

I know about this but wanted to know if, for example, it was a specific free form/marquee selection and there were transparent pixels in the original layer, you wanted to retain it? because with this method thats a whole brand new selection, that only gets clipped/selects the non-transparent pixels in the layer.  another commenter below you mentioned something quicker than saving and then loading the selection, which im guessing is the fastest way of achieving what i want in this case?

Also, Stephen, I got some general questions regarding the topic of selections in that case. I've been testing some stuff but still not able to understand how some of the mechanics work.

Let's say you wanna change the lines of this mildly annoyed cat from black to red. this cat was drawn with black using a brush with varying flow, so it may also contain some greys. note that for all cases, its the exact same shade of red.

case a.

opacity is locked in the layer/a clipping mask is used, and then filled with red. both of these yield such a result:

case b.

the non-transparent contents/pixels of the original layer are selected via ctrl/command + click on the layer thumbnail, then the selection is filled with red via Edit > Fill... with foreground color, normal blending mode and 100% opacity. Even with the Preserve Transparency checkbox checked (which seems to display a slightly less bold and lighter version of the same thing), the results are vastly different:

According to my own logic, it should theorically be the same result, no? because when you lock the opacity of a layer you only affect the non-transparent pixels, and when you select the pixels/transparency of that same layer, whatever you do in that selection should only affect the non-transparent pixels, being effectively the same thing as locking the opacity... except it's apparently not. Another example is when you select the pixels of a layer via ctrl + click on layer thumbnail + invert the selection or Select > Load Selection... > [layer] transparency with the Invert option checked, and then try to move the selection with a Marquee/Lasso Tool selected + Ctrl and drag or Ctrl + T/Edit > Free Transform. Or when you try to Del/Edit > Clear with those pixels selected, a weird, ghost-like, semi-transparent thingy is left behind. This is unreliable because what if you need to select everything on the layer except the non-transparent pixels? Clearly something else is getting partially selected:

Or what about when you Select > All vs Ctrl + Click on layer thumbnail to select pixels/Select > Load Selection... > [Layer] transparency and then Ctrl + J to make a new layer via copy or Ctrl + C and then Ctrl + V to paste the selection to a new layer? It should theorically be the same result since both of these are supposedly selecting all of the pixels in the layer, and yet, they differ:

Okay so, last one. when you make a precise selection with the lasso tool, and then transform the pixels or move them around with the move tool, the selection gets immediately clipped to whatever pixels there are in the layer if it contains transparency. Whoever thought this was desirable behavior? It gets distracting and annoying pretty quickly, nevermind if you need to transform your selection in multiple layers simultaneously by selecting them in the layers panel, which you can't because the whole layer gets transformed, effectively ignoring your selection. In this case you need to dreadfully do the inconvenient workaround which consists of Saving the selection, transforming the first layer, then Loading the selection and selecting the second or whatever number of succesive layers, after which you must Ctrl + Shift + T/Edit > Transform > Again,  in order to have the same transformation be applied to the other desired layers. Maybe you need to transform a selection on a layer above another one to be smaller, and you still need to retain your selection, but you can't because, again, photoshop automatically decides for you that after applying the transformation, your selection should be merely clipped to the non-transparent pixels in the layer, in which case you would still need to save and then load the selection if you need that exact same selection to do something else. I was wondering if there was a way to "disable" this behavior, making photoshop not clip the selection to those pixels. 

like other apps such as Clip Studio Paint.

https://i.imgur.com/bexZKSK.mp4

[Trevor.Dennis]

You can mess about saving alpha channels, but I find the quickest and most convenient method is to simply create a new layer and fill the selection with black.  You can park this layer at the bottom of the stack (Shift Ctrl [ — If you want it completely out of the way, click on the background layer's thumbnail to make it an ordinary layer.  Shift Ctrl [ will then move it below what was the background layer).   You can Ctrl click that layer's thumbnail any time to reselect it.