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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects Scaling A Mask

  • Scaling A Mask

    Posted by Max Jackson on July 15, 2010 at 11:01 pm

    Hi CC,

    I’ve been searching around for a basic tutorial on how to shape a mask. They all tell me to hit Shift and then drag the double arrow??

    I don’t see it. I keep dragging the layer. I go into the shape and it’s the same thing. It reflects what’s on the stage.

    I have a star mask that I need to shrink on a blue rectangle.

    Any help would be greatly appreciated.

    Max Jackson replied 15 years, 9 months ago 3 Members · 3 Replies
  • 3 Replies
  • Andy George

    July 16, 2010 at 12:18 am

    Not really sure what the double arrow is myself..but If you select the mask in your composition panel you should get a box around it in your preview. Shift+Click on any of the 4 corners to scale proportionally. Click only to scale freely.

    -Andy George
    Senior Editor
    http://www.chiselindustries.com

  • David Johnson

    July 16, 2010 at 10:59 am

    I’ve never heard of a mask’s “double arrow” either, but you can also use the mask’s “expansion” property with a negative value to scale it down, although the way Andy said is the proper way.

  • Max Jackson

    July 20, 2010 at 11:05 pm

    Hi Dave,

    Sorry to everybody for such a delayed response. I do appreciate it. Just got really busy.

    I did finally manage to realize that you have to click on the vertices to get the free transform tool to appear.

    I earlier went to Adobe before CC. Adobe’s instructions are difficult to translate half the time. I also don’t read very well. I really try, but this didn’t work for me:

    “To transform an entire mask or shape path, select it (it?) in the Timeline panel and choose Layer > Mask And Shape Path > Free Transform Points.”

    Well, I tried the menu and layer and the Free Transform Tool was shaded out.

    Some things are just easier to learn in AE by video I guess. I still can’t get the double-arrows to come up. I did once then lost it. Thank goodness somebody on Adobe TV did a demo. I’ll have to check it out.

    Thanks so much Dave and and everybody else for chiming to help me out. It is appreciated.

    Creative Cow Rocks!
    -maX

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