Photoshop layer masking help?

[ollypenrice]

Embarrassing but I'm stuck. I used to use Ps 7 for layer masking and it worked fine. But that laptop is now dead and with it Ps7 so I'm trying to use CS3 and it doesn't work the same way. I can't make head nor tail of it. i used to cut and paste my short exposure onto my long and then copy the short exposure to a layer mask, blur it and then play with the curve of the mask while looking at the combined image in a separate woindow.

How do you do it in CS3?

All indicators will be greatfully received!

Olly

[George]

You might find something in the primers section or these links might be useful.

http://www.russellbrown.com/tips_tech.html

Waid Observatory - Index of Articles

Astrophotography

Tutorials to help with your Astroimaging

[roundycat]

I'm having trouble understanding the problem Olly, I believe I do it the same way in CS2 and 4.

Dennis

[SteveL]

Ah, I think I see what you want to do... this might help:

http://www.rdrop.com/~half/Creations/Art/Photoshop/Tip1.html

[MikeD]

Or this .

The only step I can't seem to do in CS3 is step 7 (view> new view)

but you can see the changes to the image anyway.

Hope that helps

Mike.

[mattlane]

on your layers pallete, you should see channels. once you've added a mask you should see the mask layer in there, select it (and after copying) paste your content in here. however it should, as far as i know, only accept black and white.

if i get the drift of what you're wanting to do.

a layer mask is essentially masking (hiding) whatever is coloured black on the mask, anything that is not black will be semi transparent right the way down with white being completely transparent.

also a quick tip for those using photoshop, when you mess with levels, curves well anything you would normally do to a flat image, you can always use adjustment layers (i think this is cs versions of pshop and up) where it adds a layer above all others and then that has effect visually on the layers beneath, but without destroying the actual layer content, so you can undo, or adjust slightly on the fly if you have more than one adjustment layer, you can always create more layers as you need to, group to folders and maintain all your original unadulterated data but still end up with the look you want. Adjustment layers are your friend.

[roundycat]

In CS you want Window - Arrange - New Window.

You can paste a colour image as a layer mask, it gets turned into mono when pasted.

Dennis

[Aza]

I would also suggest going here:

IP4AP - Online Visual Learning - THANK YOU!

These tutorials are not free, however they are worth the money!

I feel my processing stepped up a level or two after going through these