Instruction Manual

Chapter 20 Shapes, masks, and paint strokes 829
Masks
Masks are a special type of shape used to create regions of transparency in layers. Although
shapes work as layers by themselves, masks must be assigned to a layer to have an eect. For
example, if you have a picture in which you want to isolate the foreground subject, you can
create a mask to cut out the background.
Masked layerMask
Original layer
You can apply Shape behaviors (and standard behaviors) to masks to create complex regions of
animated transparency that change over time. And as with any shape, you can keyframe a mask’s
control points.
Paint strokes
Like shapes, paint strokes are used to create visual elements in a composition. But whereas
traditional shapes are created one point at a time, paint strokes are drawn in a single, continuous
movement. You can create a paint stroke from scratch, by drawing in the Canvas, or you can
convert an existing shape to a paint stroke. You can use a stylus and graphics tablet to draw
paint strokes in a uid fashion. (You can also use a mouse or Multi-Touch device to draw paint
strokes.) After you create a paint stroke, you can manipulate it as a unied object, or animate its
constituent parts over time, building “drawn-on” eects.
Paint stroke with applied Sequence Paint behavior
Note: The Paint Stroke feature is a design and graphics tool, not a retouching or rotoscoping tool.
Although paint strokes share the same parameters as all other shapes, they have additional
specialized parameters that allow you to change the look of the paintbrush and to create
particle-like animation eects. Additionally, paint strokes have a special behavior called Sequence
Paint, which animates the specic stroke parameters over time, including opacity, rotation, and
scale. For more information, see Sequence Paint on page 877.
For specic information about shapes, masks, or paint strokes, choose a topic in the Help table of
contents (the sidebar to the left of this window).
Draw simple shapes
The Rectangle, Circle, and Line tools create simple shapes.
67% resize factor