visibilty masks
Adam B Colour
not read unless you enjoy falling down rabbit holes or walking through
mirrors.
Painter's visibility mask is broken.
It doesn't just have bugs, it is outright broken.
Not broken in a "doesn't work at all" way, it's broken in an "Alice in
wonderland, nothing is as it seems" kind of way.
I think the programming team got themselves into such a complicated mess
trying to out photoshop photoshop, that they ran out of time and just went
"why don't we just let users import and export files in psd format and be
done with it. At least their layer masks work".
Bottom line is, use photoshop if you need layer masking.
You see the logic is this:
Fine artists have never heard of visibility masks, it' a computer thing.
Fine artists will just paint with the paint tools. They might use the User
Mask where they would use a frisket but that's it.
If a curious artist or a newcomer to digital art checked out the Visibility
Mask they won't realise it's broken, they'll just think "by golly I don't
know what I'm doing" and they'll never touch the Visibility Mask again.
The other type of painter user is the digital compositer who normally works
with photoshop but wants to use Painter's painterly quality. If they do
check the Visibility Mask out they'll soon discover it's broken and happily
continue mask work in photoshop..
Probably Corel don't even now (giving them the benefit of the doubt) realise
the mess meta creations have made.
Being able to import/export psd format is not a generous gesture to display
their commitment to inter application compatibility between two great
programs. It's in fact a cynical abrogation of their responsibility to
either copy photoshop and be done with it or if they want to be clever and
innovative then they should damn well make it work.
However having said all this you can make the Visibility Mask sort of work,
if you realise it's broken.
You are right Hursh, when you paint on the Visibility Mask with black that
black goes to the canvas.
Select the Visibility Mask and shut the eye but leave the eye open on the
corresponding layer. Then just paint over the black with white and the black
will disappear. Oops! you've gone into your image and erased it, never mind
back to black and put it back. Anyway you just continue with this back and
forward business at a high magnification until you get it how you want it.
This is similar to removing and restoring an underlying image in photoshop
with a layer mask. Photoshop's layer mask is black where it make the image
invisible, as opposed to Painter's white.
But don't think that Painter's Visibility mask is the same as photoshop's
layer mask. If you paint with black on Photoshop's layer mask in an area
that corresponds to no pixels on its layer then all you will do is make that
area invisible, you will not see the black paint on your layer. The black
paint on the layer mask will just make the "no pixels" invisible. This
looks exactly the same as an area on the layer mask that is white which
corresponds to an area on the image layer which has no pixels. Stay with me
here Hursh we're nearly there. But the black paint on your layer mask will
sit there, patiently lurking, waiting for you to paint on this invisible "no
pixel" area, when it will triumphantly not let you see you freshly deposited
pixels and you will now have to pay for cavalier "I didn't think I was
going to paint there at the time" attitude and clean up your mask.
Painter's Visibility Mask is not a layer mask, It is a strange beast that
you shouldn't be looking at. Just like Photoshop's Visibility Mask. "But
photoshop doesn't have a visibility mask" I hear you protest. Oh yes it
does, it's just that photoshop won't let you see it or touch it. It's an
automatic mask for the applications personal use only. Just like painter's
Visibility Mask before you muck around with it.
Just like a magician who spoils another magicians trick by revealing how it
was done, so Painter will show
you Photoshop's (not to be seen by women and small children) secret
visibility layer.
Try this at home; Using Photoshop 5.5 extract command, extract a simple
image. Don't flatten the resulting file and save it in psd. Now open this
file in painter and select the layer with the extracted image, eye on. Now
select Its Visibility Mask, eye off. Now paint all over the image with
black. Voila. Not only is your background restored but you can see
photoshop's processing around the edge. But there's more; can you notice
that when you move outside the original image with the black that instead of
painting black on your image layer that it will first paint back the white
that was on the Visibility mask when you first imported the image, then it
will continue in black when it reaches the border.
Now you see the truth. Painter is giving you an automatic mask and trying to
pretend that it's a fully manual Layer mask with another name. See this is
not a bug. It's an insult. Meta creations thought they could get away with
it. Now Corel should realise they have more than a bug on there hands and
that they are going to have to go all the way in Painter7 and provide fully
manual Layers masks.
Also I might as well point out another side problem caused by all this and
that is because you have to have a layer selected in order to select a
visibility mask, which is fundamentally confusing for the program, like
where is it supposed to put your stroke if you have two layers selected?
Therefore we have this problem to contend with: Painter will let you paint
on a layer if it is selected even if the eye is shut. WHY? If you
don't realise this you can accidentally ruin a layer by selecting it by
accident and painting. Then when no strokes appear you see that you selected
the wrong layer. So you select the correct layer and continue on your way
not realising that your strokes in accident went to the invisible previously
selected layer. So you
continue passed the set levels of undo then save your file. When you
eventually look at this layer you probably won't have any idea how these
rogue marks got there. Beware! I found out the hard way.
Curiouser and Curiouser, Regards
Thelonious.
Cricket
visibility masks in Painter or layer masks in Photoshop. They seem so
prehistoric to me. When I erase, I want to erase...not paint with black or
white. <g>
BTW...you have a good name to be working in graphics <g>
Cricket
C_Tech Volunteer
"Adam B Colour" <ad...@easynet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:3a6d4fcf@cnews...
> Warning: the following post could seriously damage your grip on reality.
Do
> not read unless you enjoy falling down rabbit holes or walking through
> mirrors.
> Painter's visibility mask is broken.
> It doesn't just have bugs, it is outright broken.
> Not broken in a "doesn't work at all" way, it's broken in an "Alice in
> wonderland, nothing is as it seems" kind of way.
::snip::
Jinny Brown
Curious, why "prehistoric"?
Erasing is different from editing a mask, isn't it? In my experience,
painting out part of an image on a Layer mask is similar to selecting
and clearing/cutting... and erasing can leave something on the Layer
(it's not absolutely clear). I can't explain this better right now, as
it's been a while since I've run into the erasing thing that I'm not
describing well. Do you know what I mean, perchance?
Thanks in advance,
Jinny
______________
Douglas Frost
> Painter's visibility mask is broken.
Well, it works like it says in the manual...
> Being able to import/export psd format is not a generous gesture to display
> their commitment to inter application compatibility between two great
> programs. It's in fact a cynical abrogation of their responsibility to
> either copy photoshop and be done with it or if they want to be clever and
> innovative then they should damn well make it work.
How exactly did Corel become _responsible_ for imitating the Adobe way
of doing things? And while you compose your answer, are you aware that
Adobe sues companies that imitate it too well? (I don't recall Corel or
MetaCreations ever suing Macromedia in an attempt to keep market share.)
If Painter were 'just like Photoshop' they would have called the things
Layer Masks rather than Visibility Masks. How they work is described in
the Working with Layer Visibility Masks section the manual, and it seems
clear enough. Where on earth did you get the idea that they would
behave just like Photoshop in the first place?
The difference between these two applications is more in how the image
is edited than in the underlying information. Corel PhotoPaint has its
own methods of editing images (and their associated alpha masks) which
differ yet again than the Painter or Photoshop way. That's life.
> Therefore we have this problem to contend with: Painter will let you paint
> on a layer if it is selected even if the eye is shut. WHY? If you
> don't realise this you can accidentally ruin a layer by selecting it by
> accident and painting. Then when no strokes appear you see that you selected
> the wrong layer. So you select the correct layer and continue on your way
> not realising that your strokes in accident went to the invisible previously
> selected layer. So you
I agree, it can be annoying. But you can lock the layer when you're not
working with it. Also, turning off the Auto Select Layer feature
(visible on the Controls palette when the layer adjuster tool is
selected) can help prevent accidental layer selection when working with
that tool.
Doug Frost
Adam B Colour
manual.
Perhaps instead of reposting most of my letter you could point out exactly
where I went wrong.
You are correct when you say the manual is clear in describing how
visibility masks work. Trouble is
they don't work like it says in the manual.
Where does it say in the manual that painting in black on the Vis Mask will
result in a black mark
on the image which then needs to be cleaned up.
The only resposibility I've implied is Corel's duty to make their software
work like it is supposed to.
Thelonious.
"Douglas Frost" <dfr...@planetc.com> wrote in message
news:3A752BC8...@planetc.com...