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Second Layer Mask
What is the deal with the second layer mask in photoshop. When I make one layer mask, then click on the layer maks button again, it makes a second one. I haven’t had any luck with using it, when I select it explicitly, I’m just painting on the original image. However it seems to act as layer mask in every other way, I can disable it and it gives the same layer mask context menu after right click. Does anyone know what this all about? I looked in help file with no avail, It would be nice to apply double layer maks w/o having to nest the layer.
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1 Reply
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The second mask is actually a clipping mask – you use the pen tool to clip the layer, instead of paint tools to mask it.
You can apply two masks to a layer by first putting a mask on the layer itself, then putting the layer into a set and adding a mask to the set. Actually, now that you can nest layer sets (CS2), you could do that all day long.
One caveat – the layer mask and the layer set mask interact differently with layer styles like bevels and drop shadows (play around with it to see what I mean – difficult to describe), so this option might not suit your needs in all cases.
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