[David Rowley]

Thanks for the help, that’s great to know.

[David Rowley]

Thanks for the response Walter, I’ve read a lot of your posts and was kind of hoping you’d respond. I’m at the early phase of learning this stuff where I know there’s something I don’t understand but don’t know the right question yet. I have an i1Display Pro coming in the mail, so I’ll definitely be using that, but how does profiling the computer monitor tie in to the issue of getting the right signal to the plasma tv? I should use the Rec 709 color space in AE’s color management, right?

[David Rowley]

Forgot to add a possible step in Illustrator that would go between 2 and 3 – and forgive me if this is very basic or obvious:

If the masks you pasted from AE were closed, first you have to open them. In Illustrator, use the scissor tool (nested with the eraser tool). Click once on a segment or point, then click on another part of the segment or another point. This will cut the single closed path into two open paths. Delete the part of the path that you don’t want.

[David Rowley]

Also, if you really want to join 2 or more masks into 1 mask (so that you can use a fill effect, for example), and if you have Illustrator installed, you can do this:

1. highlight and copy all of the masks you want to join

2. paste them in to a blank illustrator document

3. use the “direct selection” tool to select the end point of one mask, hold down shift, then select the end point of the other mask
go to Object > Path > Join (or command-J)

4. repeat step #3 as necessary until you have only 1 path

5. copy the path

6. paste the path into an After Effects layer. you may need to move the entire path around to line it back up where it belongs.

some extra tips for working with masks in AE:

double-click on a mask point to select the entire mask, so that you can move it around without moving the layer it’s applied to. you can also scale the mask by dragging its bounding box (and shift-drag to constrain proportions)

to help line up 2 masks, temporarily apply a stroke effect to both, using contrasting colors, so that you can clearly see both at the same time.