February 14th Digital Group

Meeting Notes March 2009 to 2018.
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peterjones
Posts: 11
Joined: Sun Apr 06, 2008 1:56 pm

February 14th Digital Group

Post by peterjones » Tue Feb 19, 2013 9:28 am

It was gratifying that many of you last Monday 18th February came up to me telling me that you had a go at using Layer Masks:

Most of you are using layers so I am not going to carry on extolling the use of such, bear in mind the one caveat which is that if you have many image layers your file may use a lot of your system resources whereas adjustment, blank even fill layers use few resources.

To recap using layers masks within Elements if you have selected an adjustment layer such as Levels an adjustment layer will be created by default; however all other layers such a blank or image layer will come without a layer mask; to create a layer mask ensure your layer is highlighted and click on the circle within a rectangle at the bottom of your layers palette; a white rectangle will appear adjacent to your layer thumbnail.

To utilise the layer mask in revealing the layer(s) below you can use a black paintbrush; as you may recall I used a soft brush at various opacities to gain the effect I needed; if you make an error you can paint over your mistake with a white brush; two advantages of layer masks in that they are eminently controllable editable at any time.

You can of course use the "reverse" layer mask: turn the white rectangle to black; ensuring the white rectangle is highlighted press Ctrl + I to fill it with black or just sweep a large black brush over the rectangle and then use the white brush to selectively apply the layer

Peter.

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