Technical data

68 Using Layers and Masks
q Make the foreground color in the Color tab white, and select the
Text tool. Add the text “Music By Moonlight” in Basic Sans, bold
(or Arial), size 14 points, on three lines, and drag it next to the
crescent moon using the Move tool.
q Select the Text tool again, and add the text “Independence Day” in
Handscript SF (or Times New Roman), 24 points. Drag the text to
the top of the image using the Move tool.
q You can save the image as an .SPP if you want to preserve the
layers, or choose Merge All from the Layers menu to flatten the
file and conserve some disk space.
Masks
Masking in a program like PhotoPlus is a wee bit more complicated
than applying masking tape to the screen! But fundamentally the
concept is the same: you can hide certain parts of an image—in this
case by rendering them transparent, hence invisible. To do that, you
create a mask on a standard layer.
By changing the grayscale values
on the mask (using the paint tools
and other devices), you can effect
corresponding changes in the
opacity of the underlying layer’s
pixels. For example, by “blacking out” on the mask, you render the
layer’s underlying pixels transparent, and they disappear from the
image. Because you’re working with 256 levels of gray (i.e. opacity),
tremendous variations are achievable.