Subtitles of the Movie

Since Photoshop is such a popular application and working with masks is such an important Photoshop skill, let me close out this section of the tutorial with a few words about importing and exporting Photoshop layer masks into and out of Fireworks CS4. With Photoshop, you can mask images using layer masks or grouped layers. Fireworks will let you successfully import images that employ layer masks without losing the ability to edit these masks. You want to keep the masks simple. I have a simple mask here. Let's go ahead and save this as a psd file. Save As, PSD right here. Let's call this Text Mask 2. Click Save, replace the existing one. Notice that I get this Photoshop Format Options Dialog. Turning off the maximized compatibility may interfere with the use of psd or psb files in other applications or with other versions of Photoshop. So I'm going to go ahead and make sure that's checked, Maximize Compatibility. Click OK. Return to Fireworks, click Open and let's open up that Photoshop file which I can do in Fireworks. This is Text Mask 2. Click Open. Here I have my Photoshop File Open Options; File Dimensions, Layer Composition, Maintain Layer Editability Over Appearance or Maintain Photoshop Layer Appearance probably is the one that I want. Click OK and there is my mask. Notice this is a bitmap mask and I can still modify this mask here in Fireworks. For example, notice there's a little handle here and I can adjust the background image there in this mask. Now as I mentioned previously, you want to keep your masking simple if you want to transfer back and forth between Photoshop and Fireworks. For example, I have here a density value and a feather value and I can adjust mask properties to get some interesting effects. I can also invert this mask to produce interesting effects. But let's go with this modified mask here and do File, Save, saving it to that psd format and not let's go back to Fireworks and let's close this version and re-open up the version I just saved in Photoshop; Text Mask 2. Click OK to accept the default. Notice that all of those changes that I made have not been transferred over, although I can still modify the mask. Now, Fireworks masks can also be exported to Photoshop. They are converted into Photoshop layer masks so the key information here is you'll want to work with Photoshop layer masks if you want the best interoperability with Fireworks. If the masked objects include text and you want to maintain text editability in Photoshop, you must select Maintain Editability Over Appearance when exporting. Also, not all of the mask features in Fireworks will be transferred over to Photoshop. Here I have a vector mask and notice that I'm adjusting this vector mask here. Let's go ahead and save this. The key to working between the applications is to save this file as a psd Photoshop file from Fireworks. So let's call this Vector Mask 2, click Save, go back to Photoshop. Let's open up this Photoshop document over here, Vector Mask 2. Notice that the mask sure enough is there. Here is the layer mask over in Photoshop but I lose some of the capabilities that I had over here in Fireworks; namely this gradient that I created. But it's still editable here in Photoshop. If I click on the vector mask thumbnail and open up my Mask Panel, notice that I can adjust the density and the feathering as I did before to get interesting effects. So I can simulate what I had over here in Fireworks but the default file is it comes over, it's not exactly the same. But you do have pretty good interoperability between the two programs, which is the key. So that will conclude this section of the tutorial on Pages, Layers and Masks. In this section you've learned how to work with pages and master pages in Fireworks, how to export pages to HTML. We've learned about working with layers and all about image masking and bitmap masks as well as vector masks, how to mask objects using reveal and hide, how to edit masks and also how to import and export Photoshop masks into and out of Fireworks.