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Create a Mask with Mode Other than “Add”?
I like to take company logos and animate them, so I sometimes just have to mask out individual letters and symbols from a flattened image, or maybe it’s just easier to do it in After Effects than throw it into Photoshop or Illustrator first. I’ve been searching the internet, with no luck, trying to find out if After Effects has a setting for when you first create the mask to start in a mode other than “Add.” I want to set it to “None” from the start so I can just use the Pen tool to create many masks, one after the other, that don’t suddenly block out the rest of the image, allowing me to skip the step where I go to set the mode from “Add” to “None” in between.
I’m hoping there is some blatantly simple solution that I am overlooking, because it would just be a neat little shortcut to masking things. Thanks for any help you can give!
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5 Replies
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Might be worthy of a Feature Request
Couple of ways you do this. One, duplicate & lock a copy of your image underneath the layer you are masking. Or you can double click and open in the layer window and uncheck “render”. At the end you would then need to change all your masks modes still.
Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb. -
That’s a good idea to open it in Layer Mode. I did not think of that. However, in this particular case, I am working on an .eps file and it seemingly won’t let me open it in Layer mode.
I found it worked best to just copy the original a bunch of times and keep track of which letter/symbol I was on. It was fairly efficient, that way, because I then had my letters in multiple layers right away. However, with the new AE Mask Effects I’d like this feature to be implemented. It’d allow me to mask different parts of the layer and apply effects to them more easily.
Thanks! I’ll consider adding this to the features forum.
Katie -
Here’s a link to the bug report/features request form:
https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Here are a couple of other options:
-Apply the Channels > Shift Channels effect to the layer and set Take Alpha From to Full On. The masks will still be in Add mode but they will have no effect on the alpha of the layer.
-Apply a layer sized rectangular mask in Add mode. The fastest way to do that is to select the rectangular mask tool, select the layer and then double click the rectangular mask tool in the toolbar.
In either case you’d simply remove/disable the effect or layer sized mask when you’re done.
Darby Edelen
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I submitted it! Thank you 🙂
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