Subject: painting on layers
From: "Paul Davies" <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 95 16:06:26 EST

> >Does it allow you to work on transparent layers?
> 
> I don't know what you mean by this. You can use the alpha channel whenever
> you want for all purposes, even composing and things like "rub thru" etc.
> Is that what you mean?

In addition to allowing the user to create and save as many as 16 seperate alpha
channels per file, Photoshop 3 also allows you to paint on seperate transparent 
RGB layers. It's like painting on glass. 
Let's say you're painting a scene. You can create your background on one layer, 
your middle elements on a second layer and your foreground elements on a third 
layer. You can then arrange and re-arrange elements on a layer without effecting
the elements on the other layers.
I use it for creating texture maps for my LW models. I was working on a face and
needed to line up the features of the color map with the features of my object. 
I painted each facial feature on a seperate layer with the skin as a background 
on the bottom layer. I saved a "flattened" or composited version of the image as
an IFF and loaded it in LW to do a test render. Since all of the elements were 
on seperate layers I was able to adjust them without having to repaint regions.
That's what I mean by layers. If Photogenic does this, cool. If not I seriously 
doubt that it will be a strong contender for my affections and would advise 
people to do a bit more homework before doing product comparisons. :+)

Sorry if I strayed too far from the LW forum but I thought all of you should 
know what the buzz is about.

paul d.

Paul Davies
Artist/Animator
CapDisc  Bethesda, MD.
[email-masked]  or  uunet!capitol!davies