For quite a long time, I couldn’t figure out what the big deal was about Photo Paint’s transparency masks…

After all, the fills and drawing tools in Photo Paint allow you to set a degree of transparency for the tool/fill itself. You can even set the transparency of pasted objects. So I thought to myself,  “Self why do I need yet another method for applying transparency?”

Then, after some experimentation, it finally hit me! A transparency mask can be used to control the degree to which any special effect modifies an image. I’ve demonstrated this in the two modified pictures of Stonehenge, below. The original image is nice, but despite the ominous looking sky, seemed somehow lacking in drama.

To enhance the drama of this image, I created a transparency mask that was a simple radial fountain fill from black to white. Then, with the transparency mask in place, I applied a very heavy blur to the image. The result is an image with no blur in the center, but gradually transitioning to the full effect at the edges. I think think this adds a lot more tension to this photo.

In the third image, I used the Paper Curl effect that everybody instantly falls in love with the first time they use it. Usually, however, the background where the image curled would be white. By having the transparency mask in place when applying the effect, I created what might be called a Cellophane Curl, instead of a Paper Curl.