Blending two overlapping circles to reveal white

[Kevin Camp]

if you use two circular masks on the same orange layer, you can set the mask property to ‘difference’ (from the mask properties, not the blending mode).

this will cut a hole where/when they overlap.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[David Mcquinn]

Kevin, I wish I could show you, but I’ll have to explain using word pictures. Background is white. One orange circle is solid, created using the Ellipse Tool. The second orange circle is more like a donut, or a thick, flat ring. I created it using the Ellipse Tool as well, but with no fill, and a stroke of 74 pixels.

The donut is static. The circle slides in and slides underneath the donut–it reminds me of the Chanel logo. The area I would like to see as a “difference” is where the ring and solid circle intersect.

I applied two circular masks onto the shape layer I call “ball,” the solid circle. Both of these masks wrapped the perimeter of the ball. When I tried applying “Difference” to each of these, there was no effect. But I think I misunderstood you.

Can you clarify?

Thanks,
Dave

[Kevin Camp]

the way i was describing, the masks would need to be on the same layer.. i’m not sure that that would work since you are using stroke for one of the masks to create a ring.

to get this to work, i think you’ll need a couple instances of each shape, parenting the like shapes together and using blending modes…

you mentioned you used stroke to create the ring, i’m not sure if you meant the stroke effect or the stroke layer style, but this probably won’t work well with the layer style stroke (this is due to the order of processes being a little goofy with layer styles). so you may need to remove the layers styles and use the stroke effect to create the ring.

anyway, select the two shapes and duplicate them, move them to group on of each together, so that in the timeline the order would be something like this:

1 ring2
2 circle2
3 ring
4 circle

use the parenting pickwhip to link one ring to the other, do the same for the circle layers. then hide the top two layers.

to create the overlap shape you should be able to place one layer over the other and set the upper layer to use the stencil alpha blending mode. this should leave just the overlapping area visible. you can add the fill effect to change the color of the lower layer to white (or you could change the solid’s color).

unhide the top two layers and set their blending modes to add, lighten, screen, overlay or something similar, and you should get an orange circle and an orange ring that overlap and produce a white are where they intersect.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[David Mcquinn]

Kevin,

Your advice worked out perfectly. And I have learned in the process. Wow. The effect will be used many times over for the launch of the upcoming theatrical series. The solid circle acts as the “O” in the word “Spotlight,” traveling across other letters to land in its place. It intersects the letter “P.” I will now stencil alpha the rest of the word. And the Chanel style graphic you helped me with will be a large background moving element.

Thank you so much!

Have a great day!

Dave