Masking

Masking is a way to block off portions of your pictures so that they are not affected by VizPaint2D operations.

In the areas where the mask exists, the picture is protected. In the areas where there is no mask, you can paint as usual. Since masks are anti-aliased, the edges of a mask are "soft."

You can control a mask's opacity so that the masked area is only partially protected.

With VizPaint2D, you can:

• Use the paint tools to paint a mask over the parts of a picture you want to protect.
• Generate a mask from a picture's alpha channel, chrominance values, or luminance values. You can either use all or part of the picture to create the mask.
• Invert a mask, switching the protected and unprotected portions. When you invert a mask, the opposite area of the picture is protected.
• Read and write mask files (extension .msk) and position masks over pictures.

You access masking with the paint mode tool. For information about the paint mode tool, see "Choosing paint and display modes" on page 386. To find out about generating masks from a picture, inverting masks, or reading and writing mask files, see "Undoing a step" on page 411.