Luminous Landscape Forum

Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Digital Image Processing => Topic started by: Michael H. Cothran on June 18, 2012, 03:11:54 pm

Title: Question - Opacity slider in PS
Post by: Michael H. Cothran on June 18, 2012, 03:11:54 pm
Can someone please shed some light (pun intended) on this.
Say I have a black mask on a Layer. I paint an area on the mask with a white brush @ 50% opacity.
What I should have left in that area is black reduced by 50%, or in essence, mid gray. Correct?

Now, I make a second pass over the same area with the same brush @ 50% opacity again. Here's where my brain gets real fuddled.

Each time that I make another pass over this same area, am I reducing what's left by another 50%?
This is what I think, but am not sure.

It means that I could make an infinite amount of passes over the same area @ 50% opacity, but never arrive at a pure white in that area - always leaving half of what was there. The only way to achieve a pure white in a black mask is, at some point, to set the opacity to 100%. True?

Thanks for clearing up this non-earth-shattering-but-still-important-to-know issue.
Title: Re: Question - Opacity slider in PS
Post by: louoates on June 18, 2012, 09:03:25 pm
That is true. For me the progression was 50%, 75%, 88%, 94%, and 97%. I would have carried this exercise out further but my brain hurts.
Please tell me there was a point to this topic.
Title: Re: Question - Opacity slider in PS
Post by: Michael H. Cothran on June 18, 2012, 09:27:07 pm
My apologies for causing your brain to hurt, but thank you for the response. The "point" was that I never knew for sure. On the other hand, it could have been that two swipes @ 50% would have given a clear mask, meaning any other passes would have been futile.