Created
July 30, 2003 © Copyright Moon's Designs
Property of Moon's Designs
This is my creation, any similarity
to other tutorials on the Internet is unintentional.
Please do not copy or place this tutorial or any
graphics to any other place without written permission
directly from me. Thank you.
This tutorial is written
in and for PSP8 and assumes you have a working knowledge
of PSP.
YOU
WILL NEED:
JASC's PSP8 (30
day free trial) - You can get it HERE
This is the beginning of a series
of tutorials on Masks in PSP8. Masks are very powerful
and a lot of fun, however there are a number of
people who aren't sure what to do with a mask or
how it works. I want to thank Ila for suggesting
that I write this tutorial. As I started working
on it, it didn't take long for me to realize that
it will be more than just one tutorial.
Screenshots
are resized and compressed for faster loading.
What is a mask? A mask is a grey
scale image that is used to cover part of another
layer, either completely or with varying degrees
of opacity. A mask consists of white, black, and
various shades of grey areas. Where the mask is
black, it will completely cover the layer and where
it is white, it will leave the layer uncovered.
If you have a grey value between the white and black,
the mask will produce a semi-visible effect. You
can create a new mask layer that you can paint on,
which hides or shows underlying layers. You can
create a mask layer from an image, a selection or
the luminance of an image. JASC also provides you
with an enormous amount of pre-made masks that you
can easily use, or you can make your own mask.
As you can see, there is a LOT
to cover regarding masks. In this first lesson,
we will go over the menu's and layer palettes regarding
Masks.
PSP8 introduces Mask Layers,
which is a major change to the traditional layer
masks that was used in previous versions of PSP.
Having Mask Layers, the user is able to select,
edit and manipulate the masks as separate entities
from their image data. This provides a more flexible
handling and a more intuitive use of masks.
In PSP8 we no longer have a Masks
Menu, as it has now been integrated with the Layers
Menu.
To create a new mask layer, go
to Layers/New Mask layer.
You will find that the options
are the same as PSP7. You can create as show all,
hide all or from image.
When you create a new mask layer,
PSP8 automatically creates a Layer Group of the
Mask and the current image layer.
If a Mask Layer is applied to
a layer already within an existing Layer Group,
a nested Layer Group will be created.
You can create a mask from disk
or from an Alpha Channel, as well as saving a mask
to disk or alpha channel. Layers/Load Save Mask.
You can also access this from
the Layer Palette. The first arrow is for creating
a Show All Mask. The second arrow is loading from
Disk and the third arrow is loading from Alpha channel.
These work exactly the same way
as PSP7 and we will be going into this in great
detail in future tutorials.
If you have a number of layers
in a group and would like to apply the mask to the
entire image, you will need to manually move the
mask layer out of the group. You can do this by
either dragging the layer out of the group on to
your main layer, or chose Layers/Arrange/Move Out
Of Group.
You can also remove a group layer
without removing its component layers by going to
Layers/Ungroup Layers.
Deleting Masks ~~ Because masks
are now created directly as a layer, you can simple
go to Layers/Delete to delete a mask layer. When
you do this it will ask if you want the mask to
be merged to the layer below. You can also go to
Layers/Merge/Merge Down. However, you should rarely
need to merge your masks anymore. Save your image
in .pspimage format. This makes it so much nicer
and easier if you should decide that you want to
go back into the image later on and make any adjustments.
You can view an overlay of the
selected mask on an image by toggling the Mask Overlay
Toggle button on the right side of your Layers Palette.
When you click on the overlay
you will get a ruby lith around your mask that you
can edit.
To change the color and opacity
of the overlay, double click on the Mask Layer on
the Layers palette, or right click and choose properties.
You will have a general and an overlay tab. To change
the color of your overlay click on the overlay tab
and choose your color. You can also change the opacity
of your color on this tab.
Clicking on the general tab will
allow you to change the opacity of your layer, rename
your layer, or change the link set.
You can also edit a mask layer,
just as you can edit any other layer. Simply select
the mask layer you would like to work on to make
it active. Choose your desired tool, such as the
erase tool or any paint tool. Keep in mind that
your tools will be limited to grey scale colors,
with the black creating a fully opaque mask and
white creating a fully transparent mask.
Using the top graphic for this
tutorial, I created this mask using one of their
masks on disk on the background layer. I activated
the overlay, below are some examples using the eraser
tool, paint tool (set at the bead paintbrush) and
the warp brush.
This is the original with the mask on the
background layer
Using the eraser tool I can erase part of
my mask if I choose
Using the paint tool, I painted with white
and black around areas
Here is where I used the warp brush tool
on other areas.
This gives you an idea as to
where to find everything about Masks in PSP8. Let's
move on to Creating Masks using Show All, Hide All,
and From Image.
I hope this short tutorial helps
you understand the masks menu a little better.
If you have
any problems, comments or questions please do not
hesitate to E-mail
me.
To
PSP7 Tutorials Index
To
PSP8 Tutorials Index
Tutorial
written and created by Patti Wavinak for Moon's
Designs. These Tutorials are copyrighted by law.
You may LINK to them only. You may not remove any
of the graphics, zip files or html within these
pages to reproduce these Tutorials, without the
expressed permission of Moon's Designs. These pages
may not be removed from this website and sent via
e-mail, nor saved, stored or archived in files in
YahooGroups or other mailing list sites, nor may
they be translated and placed on another site.
Creations made from these tutorials are your creations.
Moon's Designs holds the copyright to all selections,
original tubes and original images that I have created
and provided for use within my tutorials. Page backgrounds
and images are created exclusively for this website
and may not be downloaded or used without written
permission.
If you would like to use any of my tutorials for
group lessons please contact
me.
Established
April, 2001
© Copyright 2001-2003 Moon's Designs "All
rights reserved"
No portion of this site may be duplicated or distributed
