Fancy Corners with Masks

[handrawn]

in my workflow i can see a real use for opacity msks as a means of quickly repostioning/reorienting a 'visibility window' that is punching through an object; pity that to actually edit the mask shape you need to go 'inside' [like clipview] which means you lose sight of the context and so the usefulness

I never went much for the non-destructive aspect of xara and could quite happily live without it... 'ctrl+z' is usaually all I need; like egg I save out asset though in my case i export rather than pasteboard if it is specific; indeed having to make bitmap copies to fix before applying trace or effect is a nuisence to me

the one area where it is useful though is erase/shapebuild which I now see as a form of opacity masking...

[Acorn]

in my workflow i can see a real use for opacity msks as a means of quickly repostioning/reorienting a 'visibility window' that is punching through an object; pity that to actually edit the mask shape you need to go 'inside' [like clipview] which means you lose sight of the context and so the usefulness
I never went much for the non-destructive aspect of xara and could quite happily live without it... 'ctrl+z' is usaually all I need; like egg I save out asset though in my case i export rather than pasteboard if it is specific; indeed having to make bitmap copies to fix before applying trace or effect is a nuisence to me
the one area where it is useful though is erase/shapebuild which I now see as a form of opacity masking...

handrawn, have you tried to just Detach Opacity Mask, adjust and re-apply? The Mask objects are then visible and grouped but you can isolate any one with Ctrl+Select.

Acorn

[handrawn]

thanks acorn

up to a point... thing is, correct me if wrong but:

if you edit inside you only see the object[s] that has the mask[s] applied
if you open the opacity mask you only see the masking object[s]
if you detach the mask you can no longer see through the masked area

which ever way you are doing it you cannot edit the masking shape whilst being able to see what is being revealed/hidden in real time

there is a way round this by detaching the mask and temp given the mask[s] and masked objects[s] transparency, but that in itself can introduce visibility issues and become a tad unwieldly

[Acorn]

thanks acorn
up to a point... thing is, correct me if wrong but:

if you edit inside you only see the object[s] that has the mask[s] applied
if you open the opacity mask you only see the masking object[s]
if you detach the mask you can no longer see through the masked area

which ever way you are doing it you cannot edit the masking shape whilst being able to see what is being revealed/hidden in real time
there is a way round this by detaching the mask and temp given the mask[s] and masked objects[s] transparency, but that in itself can introduce visibility issues and become a tad unwieldly

handrawn, I think you have overlooked a step.

In the Page & Layer Gallery, expand the Opacity Mask.
In my example, these were named tl, tr, bl & br (in full).
You can select any of these and move it around, rotate or scale or skew - all in interactive mode.

Acorn

[handrawn]

gotcha - thanks I am grateful as ever for your expertise

going that route i can use the shape tool too which is what I would need as well