Faking A Photoshop Layer Mask In Photoshop Elements 5

S
Posted By
steve
Jan 5, 2011
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3644
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I have PSE5.

I have tried many many many times to follow these instructions. http://www.photoshopessentials.com/basics/elements/fake-laye r-mask/page-2.php

There are many many tutorials on the net to do this trick, which is basically creating a layer between the two pictures and then using black and white to mask off or on the image. I have tried several, many times.

I even downloaded a tool to help to do this. But it just doesnt work for me.
In fact I recall doing this a long time ago (and haveing similar frustrations as I recal)
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/pselements/qt/layermasktool -old.htm

The thing is, that many tutorials asume that you have the layer mask tool, and so It would make it easier to duplicate this process if it can be done. Everywhere I read it can be but for the life of me I cant get it to work.

Has anyone else had the same frustration and can give me what Im missing in how to do this.

thanks.

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S
steve
Jan 9, 2011
So for others who may have the same problem….

I have two computers with PSE5 installed on (work and home)

I was having the same (as described above) problem on both computers. However on one computer I kept playing and playing with it and finally it started working as advertised.

I went back to my other computer and it stubbornly kept not working. I playing and played in the same way that I did on the computer that it started working in. But to avail.

I had read some things on resetting preferences and decided to do that. First I reset all the tools to the defaults, which didn’t work. Then I deleted the Photoshop elements 5.0 prefs file and then the color settings file.

(see here http://graphicssoft.about.com/cs/photoshop/ht/trashprefs.htm)

This seems to have done the trick.

What I think (ignorantly perhaps) is that something basically screws these files. Playing in some cases may reset the settings as it did in my first computer, but when i could not duplicate what ever reset the file deleting these settings basically resets everything right.

For the novices like me who may fear that deleting these files may cause some problems it didn’t appear to. Just delete them and them and restart Photoshop elements 5. (other versions may change how you reset prefs.) Of course if you simply delete the file and you want to go back you can always delete the newly created files and restore the old ones.

These files by the way are stored in the

C:\Documents and Settings\(your user name)\Application Data\Adobe \Photoshop Elements\5.0\Editor

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