Mask Tutorial Page 1

Welcome to my rendition of a Mask tutorial. Let me start by saying that I may do things differently than many PSP users. Well the end results are the same, so hopefully you can adapt your procedure to my way of teaching.

      Masks, in short, are stencils. Remember back in school, for some like me, that IS a stretch,haha, we would use stencils and make letters? Well a mask is that. Now there are a couple of rules about Masks. They must always be black and white. Any greyscale image can become a mask. Black, in a Mask, will be transparent when applied to layers, and white will become the color of the uppermost layer,any greys....well...have fun!!! (get some neat shadow effects).

     Lets start by making a simple Mask. Open a new file, say 100x100, the Mask will adjust to your image size. The new file should be white and set at 16.7million colors.

     Set your foreground color in your color box to black. Click on the the Shapes tool in the Tool Palette . Set it at Filled, Ellipse, and Antialias check marked. Now go to your white image and place your cursor on the 50,,50 mark. (For this I use my rulers, but if you look at the bottom left of your PSP screen while moving your cursor on an image, you will see the numbers changing, you want them to read 50,50 the exact center of a 100x100 image. Click and drag from the center outward to draw an ellipse.

Now a note about PSP Masks, the sharper the edges, the more defined shadows you can get with special effects. I will post some examples later in this tutorial for you to see the difference, and also how you can enhance your mask with your other little plugin toys!

Thats it...you've made your 1st mask! Now on with the show, lets get down to making some pretty pictures using masks!