Creating masks for images
Sometimes you want to bring in a photo or other image to use as background. If that’s the case, then the information in the previous chapter, Adding images , is enough. But sometimes you will want to bring in a picture of a person, an object, or a cartoon character that you want to interact with the comic content. Maybe you want to show yourself in a fantasy forest having a conversation with Fred Nerd. To accomplish this, you need to be able to create a mask for the image.
Start by dragging in a photo as described in the previous chapter. Then double click the photo in the panel, or select it and choose Edit from the toolbar, to enter the image editor.
The first thing you might want to do is get rid of the parts of the picture you are not planning to use, which can reduce you comic file size and make it easier to work on the part you do want. This can be done with the cropping tool, which is the bottom tool on the toolbar on the left edge of the window. Select the cropping tool and use it to drag a rectangle around the part of the picture you want to keep.
If the cropping rect you drag isn’t accurate enough, for example if you cut off an elbow, you can move the mouse to any edge or corner to adjust it. When the cropping rectangle is correct, click the Crop button to apply the crop.
This will throw away the rest of the image, possibly leaving what’s left filling only a very small part of the window. You can change the view scale with the Scale popup in the toolbar, or the Zoom In command in the View menu, until the cropped image comes closer to filling the editing space. (Or you can exit the editor and double-click on the image again, which will reenter the edit with the newly cropped image scaled to fit.)
Now you can use the Bezier Pen tool or the Freehand Drawing Tool, whichever you prefer, to draw a path around the edge you want to mask out. See the chapters on the Bezier Pen Tool and the Freehand Drawing Tool for more details. Either way, you may find that your first attempt is not perfect. It it’s really bad, you can select it with the selection tool or the reshaping tool, delete it, and try again. But if there are only a few problems, you can correct it with the reshaping tool. See Reshaping paths to read about how to do this.
In some situations you might have to make a mask with a hole in it. For example, if a person you are cutting out is standing with a hand on hip, there may be a part inside the arm that you should be able to see through. If that is the case, just make a second path on the inner edge. Similarly, if there is another part of the picture you want to be visible but it isn’t touching the person you have masked, just draw another path around that part. All the paths drawn in an image will act together as a compound masking path.
When you are done editing the masking path, click the Comic button at the top of the image editor to return to the main comic view. Your cropped and masked image may be too small now, but you can scale it up if you need to. The full resolution of the original photograph is still available to you.
You can also rotate and skew the masked image, if desired. Then you can use it as if it were a part, and position it as you like in the panel with comic artwork or other masked pictures.
If you want to use the same image with a different mask, or no mask, you can Option-drag it to make a duplicate, then double-click the duplicate to enter the image editor and delete, modify, or replace the mask. If you do so, the image will be shared between the two different objects, but the masks will be separate. If you crop the image again after doing this, the cropping action will apply to both copies.