Page 473 - ProShow Producer 9 Final Manual

472 16. Masks & Adjustment Layers

When you look at your slide in the preview window, you’ll notice that it
appears just as we wanted.

The slide frame is black with a white circle
showing up in the middle, masked out just
as we had in mind.

Why does this work the way it does?

That comes down to the type of mask used and how masking controls what
you can see. There are a few things to note here.

When you converted Layer 1 into a mask,
did you see how it attached itself to Layer 2,
which was then indented? That’s
fundamentally how a mask works. It
becomes associated with other layers and
then determines what can be seen within
that layer.

A Transparency mask determines what you can see based on the size,
shape and position of the layer. Since we changed our mask layer into a
circle, it only allowed us to see the white color within the borders of that
circle. Because of that, every other part of the white layer is hidden – it is
outside the edges of the mask.

Now that you have seen masking in action, it’s time to learn what each mask
type does and where you would use one or the other.