Warp wrote:

>   You wouldn't believe the sheer amount of layers a graphics professional
> uses when creating images. We are talking about hundreds.
>   Every single minuscule thing is usually put into its own layers.

Wow. Just... wow.

And to think I still work on bitmaps using only 1 layer... (But then, if 
you take a photograph of something, it's all one layer, and there's not 
too much you can do about that.)

>   If I'm not completely mistaken, you can group several layers in Photoshop
> into one entity which then works as if it was a single layer. This way
> you can eg. move a part of the image, which in itself is composed of many
> layers, as if it was just one layer.

I can easily see that if *I* ever attempted to do something like this, 
I'd end up putting two things into the same layer and then being 
completely stumped later on because those things need to be in seperate 
layers.

>   A layer mask is basically an alpha channel for a layer. That is,
> besides having a full rgba color layer, the layer can have an additional,
> separate alpha channel (called layer mask) which is applied to the layer
> as well.
>   This is handy when you want to show/hide parts of a layer, without
> actually modifying the contents of that layer. And the other way around
> is useful too: You can edit the contents of the layer without modifying
> the layer mask, which means that your edits will never "bleed" outside
> boundaries.
> 
>   The layer mask is not a bitmask, but a full alpha mask. This means
> that parts of the layer can partially visible, not just on/off.

Right. So... there's a channel that controls how opaque a layer is, and 
another channel that controls how much you can draw on it?

>> Well, sure - but how does he make the shadow edges soft? That must 
>> involve some pretty special shading technology. Most software I've seen 
>> will do simple linear colour gradients, but not complex shadow outlines 
>> like that.
> 
>   Varying degrees of alpha transparency. I don't see any difficulty in that.

Oh - you mean make a layer that's just flat dark-green, and then paint 
onto the alpha channel to blend it into the light-green parts? Ingenious...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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