On 2/23/2012 6:10 AM, SwissPace wrote:
> I must apologise, it was not viveza 2 I meant but rather silver efex pro
> 2, my most used plugin. I will let you know if my mother likes it, but
> it may be a while before she gets it.
>
> I will however try and find some study time to get to grips with masks
> and layers, probably not too difficult once I find time to concentrate.
Chuck's instructions should be useful, but I suggest finding a visual tutorial.
It's an eye-hand thing that's really
pretty easy, but hard to explain in words without visuals.
Part of the trouble for some people may be that it's not directly comparable to
any physical process with film or
darkroom. So many digital processes are intuitively understandable from work
with film.
Imagine photographing a Greek vase on a windowsill close to the camera, with
the Acropolis in the background. Take the
two LF transparencies, one focused at infinity, one on the close vase.
Lay the one on top of the other on a light table. Now imagine you have a Magic
Marker, not just a brand name, but real
magic. When you cover any part of the top film with black from the marker, it
becomes transparent, so that only the one
below is seen. When you use the white magic eraser on the back, the top layer
becomes visible, without the bottom one
showing.
If you use the marker lightly, like gray, you see part of each layer of film
merged together. Using your magic marker,
you can get the sharp vase and sharp Acropolis together in one image, using
soft or hard edges to the marker painting to
smoothly merge them. The technique is very powerful, because it can be used to
control how any changes to an image
affect different areas of it.
Another common way to create a mask is to use any or several of the many ways
to select different areas of an image on a
copy of a layer. Click on the mask icon and you have a ready made mask layer.
This is in many cases both quicker and
more precise than painting. Whatever you do or have done now only shows on the
selected parts.
The Masked Moose
--
What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
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