{"id":42352,"date":"2026-08-10T05:52:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T09:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=42352"},"modified":"2026-08-09T21:56:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T01:56:16","slug":"tip-jar-32-layer-masks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2026\/08\/tip-jar-32-layer-masks\/","title":{"rendered":"Tip Jar 32: Layer masks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Been meaning to get to this one for a while, just never set aside the time to do it. Finally started this past week with a few days to spare, which was good, because I ended up having to re-record it after finding the screen capture software wasn&#8217;t capturing, like, the <em>screen<\/em>, instead cropping off the sides a little. So let&#8217;s take a look at using layer masks, because they&#8217;re brilliant, and this is something that you would have a hard time accomplishing in an old style, wet darkroom with an enlarger &#8211; definitely one of the benefits of digital.<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding:64.29% 0 0 0;position:relative;\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/1216869059?badge=0&amp;autopause=0&amp;player_id=0&amp;app_id=58479\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\" title=\"Using Layer Masks\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><script src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/api\/player.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>By the way, not throwing any shade at Adam Zubek-Nizol&#8217;s image used therein, because it&#8217;s excellent, and I&#8217;m in no way implying that it needs improvement. Instead, it was an image showing the traits you might want to reduce for a commissioned portrait &#8211; I have a couple of examples of my own, back from the wedding stringer days, but not the subjects&#8217; permission to use them and I respect privacy herein, thus the royalty-free image.<\/p>\n<p>You can also see that the deep black of the shadows from the wrinkles and creases actually rendered the skin tones a little more grey when the Gaussian Blur filter was applied, which should then have been color-corrected or the deep black de-selected before the Blur was applied &#8211; again, this was a quick-and-dirty demo, but editing for serious results should take such extra efforts into consideration.<\/p>\n<p>Still fighting the background noise issue, even though the effect is notably trivial &#8211; <em>I<\/em> can hear it, so I want it gone. This comes from Walkabout Studios being too close to the AC units, and the ridiculous heat causing them to kick on even if I try to time recording between such. It&#8217;s getting to be an elaborate set of audio edits to try and remove these, and I did them in the wrong order, and wasn&#8217;t going to record everything a <em>third<\/em> time. Had I waited until the minimal cooling that nightfall brings to stretch out the periods between AC cycles, I would instead be dealing with <a href=\"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2025\/08\/it-hasnt-rained-for-days\/\" target=\"_blank\">frog noises<\/a>. Some better windows are on the list of things to tackle for Deep 13 here &#8211; not because of recording, but because they really do need to be replaced &#8211; and we&#8217;ll see how much they may correct the issues.<\/p>\n<p>As I said, play around with the technique, because it&#8217;s remarkably useful &#8211; I was shown this decades ago and have made good use of it ever since.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/00pagebreak-small.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"157\" height=\"25\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-9411\" \/><\/p>\n<p>You may also find these posts on digital editing useful<strong>:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2026\/02\/tip-jar-8-curves-part-1\/\" target=\"_blank\">Tip Jar 8: Curves, part 1<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2026\/03\/tip-jar-9-curves-part-2\/\" target=\"_blank\">Tip Jar 9: Curves, part 2<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2026\/03\/tip-jar-12-greyscale\/\" target=\"_blank\">Tip Jar 12: Greyscale<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2026\/06\/tip-jar-24-dodging-and-burning\/\" target=\"_blank\">Tip Jar 24: Dodging and burning<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2026\/06\/tip-jar-25-using-the-clone-or-rubber-stamp-tool\/\" target=\"_blank\">Tip Jar 25: Using the Clone or Rubber Stamp tool<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2026\/06\/tip-jar-26-perspective-tool\/\" target=\"_blank\">Tip Jar 26: Perspective tool<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Been meaning to get to this one for a while, just never set aside the time to do it. Finally started this past week with a few days to spare, which was good, because I ended up having to re-record it after finding the screen capture software wasn&#8217;t capturing, like, the screen, instead cropping off [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11,3809],"tags":[8849,3714,762,8852,3566,5455,1129,8851,8850],"class_list":["post-42352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photo","category-reference","category-video","tag-adam-zubek-nizol","tag-composite-images","tag-digital-photo-editing","tag-gaussian-blur","tag-gimp","tag-layer-masks","tag-shadows","tag-smoothing","tag-transparency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42352"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42356,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42352\/revisions\/42356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}