Add interest to presentations by changing the shape of your designs using a mask layer. Instead of standard rectangular colourways, you can display garment shapes, custom edges, die cut designs or any other motifs.
If you have partial images saved as .ava4 files, these already contain alpha masks and can be dragged directly from the Finder onto your Layout Window, making the creation of advanced layouts speedy and fun.
A key advantage of this feature is the ability to display colourways on top of each other, as if they are overlapping.
Masks can be tonal or solid using 1 bit or 8 bit layers. Solid 1bit masks are ideal cut outs for special shaped images, such as die cut wallpaper borders. Tonal 8 bit masks, such as textures or vignettes, can be used to create transparent feathered effects which can add softness to the presentation.
With a tonal mask, wherever solid colour is used, the design is displayed at full strength.
As the tones on the mask get lighter, the design softens and gets lighter. Try playing around with a tonal mask to see what effects you can create.
Creating a custom shaped colourway
- Open a document to be put in to repeat and drag a crop box over a single repeat of the design. Try to be as accurate as possible.
- Either draw the mask that you wish to use (such as a garment shape) on the new layer, or copy and paste a shape from another file to the mask layer.
Note: The mask information should fill the whole area which needs to be seen in the Layout Page. It cannot just be an outline of the shape needed, otherwise only an outline of the design will be displayed on the Layout page. Also, make sure your mask area is smaller than one repeat of the design, otherwise it will flood the colourway and will not be displayed properly.
- In the Layers Palette, double click on the text next to the new layer. Name the new layer ‘QC Mask’. The name must be entered exactly like this, with the Q, C and M in upper case and the rest in lower case.
- Open the Layout Window and add a new colourway to the page.
- Make the QC Mask layer invisible and all design layers visible. A cut out effect is created around the mask, so that the design is only displayed where there is information painted on the mask layer.
- To add more colourways with the same mask effect, go to Colourway Menu > Duplicate. To make the most of the mask effect, remove the palette and colourway number from your colourways and set the colourway frames to 0.
Tip: Additional details, such as garment stitching, pleats or buttons and so on, can be added over the masked area by adding another layer and drawing the details on it. The same idea can be used to add shading or depth to the masked shape by adding a tonal layer which contains appropriate tonal details on top of the design.
All kinds of effects can be created using the QC Mask layer and additional layers on top. Edge effects such as frayed or pinked edges or soft feathered edges can all be achieved with the right type of mask. We also recommend using experimenting with the different tracking options on the freehand filled tool for adding interesting edges to the mask.