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Make all these designs using the techniques taught in "Web Page In A Day!" training CD. The first design for Road Runner Insurance is the one you'll build from start to finish. For more details go to The "Web Page In A Day!" order page.
Easy Masking
In this tutorial you will mask out a horse using a solid fill.
You will also edit the fill and use a linear gradient to achieve
a faded effect. This is basically two techniques combined into one
tutorial. You will normally choose one or the other (solid or gradient
mask). There are many ways to mask, you will be exploring only the
Pen tool technique in this tutorial. You will also learn how to
edit a gradient and a mask.
| 1 |
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Open any image you'd like to mask,
or cut a portion out of it's background. You may use this image
of a foal if you'd like. PC users right-click and choose Save
Picture As. |
| 2 |
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We are going to cut the foal out of
it's background. Select the Pen tool, in the Stroke panel change
the fill to Black and the Stroke to Pencil and 1-Pixel soft.
The reason you want black is because you are making a mask.
Anything under the black will be visible. If you used white,
anything below it would be invisible.
Note, for Fireworks MX and MX 2004 reverse the colors. Anything under white will be visible and behind black will be invisible |
| 3 |
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Click points around the horse fairly
close together as seen here. It's easier if you zoom in a bit.
How carefully you mask an image depends on it's final destination.
For demonstration purposes I'm not being extremely careful. |
| 4 |
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Using the Pen tool to mask rather
than a selection gives you a lot of control. You can choose
the Subselection tool (white arrow), click on a point and move
it. You can also hold the Alt/Option key while you drag to change
a point into a curve. |
| 5 |
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The image on the left shows the ear
which needs a curve added. The Subselect tool is pointing at
the point that will be selected. Press the Alt/Option key and
drag out as seen in the right image. Notice how the curve better
fits the ear shape. The image below shows the curve being added
and moved inward. |
| 6 |
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Once your selection is made to your
satisfaction, select the Paint Bucket Tool to fill with black.
(In the Tools panel, the Colors area, select black for the fill
color). |
| 7 |
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Take a look at the Layers panel, you'll
see the bitmap image and a path. |
| 8 |
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To mask the image, select the path
(it's probably already selected. You can tell as seen in the
image above, the dark blue indicates it is selected). Shift+select
the bitmap. You can either select the image directly or in the
Layers panel. I find it easier to select from the Layers panel.
You can see now that both the Path and Bitmap are dark blue. |
| 9 |
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Choose Modify|Mask|Group
as Mask. As you can see here the entire background has dropped
out and only the portion of the image under the black path is
visible. |
| 10 |
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Ok, this mask was a solid
black. But if you wanted an image to be partially transparent
or fade out, the fill would be a linear gradient of black,white.
You can make that change when you do the original fill or even
after the fact like we will do now. Notice the Layers panel
below. See how the image and the mask are grouped together?
Click the pen icon to edit the mask. |
| 11 |
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To change this mask to
one that fades, go to the Fill panel and choose Linear and the
Black,white preset. The gradient handles will appear. If you
don't see them, click the Pen icon to return them. Drag the
square handle to over the back of the horse and the round handle
as seen below. This will fade the legs out. For your work, move
the black portion of the gradient so that the areas you want
to be totally visibale show through and the white area to the
parts you want totally invisiable. The shades of gray are varing
degrees of transparency. |
| 12 |
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Let's see what happens
to our horse. Choose Modify|Canvas Color|Custom and choose a
colored background, I choose a green. Do you see a problem?
Even though we changed the fill to a gradient, there is still
an outline of the legs. This is because we originally make our
path using a black stroke. It's easy enough to fix. |
| 13 |
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In the Stroke panel change
the Stroke to None. As you can see in the image above there
is a bit of white showing. Using the Subselection tool I moved
a few of the points to fix it. As you can see, you can edit
the mask even after it is grouped with the image. |
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