Clipping mask is kept in image

[habitoti]

Hi,



posted this on request of Aurelija already in the Tutorial thread on clipping, but there it got somehow stuck ... so I try again here.



I have a round button image and want to add an image to its inner part. Here are the two layers that need to be combined:





To cut out the upper layer in a circular manner so that it fits into the button, I add an ellipse shape below the upper layer and create a clipping mask on the image. This cuts the image out as desired, however for some reason the mask shape itself also stays in the image (I used a red mask to make it more explicit, but the color doesn't matter at all actually...)







I use the latest PM Pro from AppStore.



Thanks for any advice,

habitoti

[Aurelija]

Hey there! Posted a response in the tutorial thread. In short, the clipping mask is acting as expected here. Essentially, the purpose of the "Ellipse" layer is to set the boundaries for the entire clipping set. So everything that's outside the boundaries of the shape is masked correctly. The shape itself cannot be masked as it itself falls within these visible boundaries, if that makes sense.

[habitoti]

Yes, I understood PMs line of thinking here now, however I don't feel it's very intuitive. Once a shape or layer is used as a mask, it should not itself contribute "pixels" to the image. Only opacity information should be used from it. Maybe for the rare cases you would still really need the shape or layers pixel color data, it could be a switch to allow for that, but otherwise not. Or you'd just duplicate it to get the same effect then, while getting a true clipping mask effect is unnecessarily complicated now.

[Aurelija]

This isn't exclusively our way of doing things. In my testing, Clipping Masks work the same way in other graphic editing apps, too. I could be missing something, of course... I believe the main issue here is that Clipping Mask is not really the most suitable tool for this particular edit. A regular layer mask would do it. I've recorded a quick video of this workflow here.

[habitoti]

Thanks, Aurelija!