I have a 24-bit RGB (not RGBA) grayscale image representing a barcode, which I need to process as follows from the command line:
- Add alpha channel
- Convert any of the color channels to alpha (doesn't matter which, it's grayscale to begin with)
- Invert alpha channel
- Convert image to CMYK + alpha
- While preserving the alpha channel, fill entire image with a given solid color (e.g. 100%/87%/11%/1%)
- Overlay resulting image over another CMYK image, at a specific location (let's say 123 px from the top edge of the template, 321 px from the left)
You understand what I'm doing – the point is simply to overlay the barcode over a template image, except the two images are in separate color spaces, and I happen to also need the resulting barcode to have a specific color. My workflow is just a suggestion, I don't really care how I get from A to B.
Oh, and one more thing (not sure if it's relevant): it's safe to assume I have a pure white rectangle on the template where the barcode ends up. Had I been able to use a Photoshop batch command instead, I'd use this assumption to drop the entire alpha channel bungling around, and would've simply colorized the original and overlayed it with multiply on the template; not sure if this is doable in this context.