Applying twice the same Effects layer

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2022-12-14 12:19:25

Hello everyone, I am new both to Pixelmator Pro and to this community. I made a search here and on youtube to check whether my question has already been made in the past, but could not find anything. May be I am not using the correct terms.

I think I understood the difference between a Color Adjustment and an Effects layers, but something ticks me off.

From what I understood, I can add two (or more) Color adjustment layers and clip their effects by using two different layer masks to selectively choose where their updates are visible. Since I am used to homogeneous adjustment layers that do to discrimate between the two type of operation, I think I miss the mental processed to fully use the Effects layers.

Indeed, I did not understand how I am supposed to introduce, for example, twice the same Effects layer. In this abstract example, the first layer would apply effect E with parameters P1 to some parts of the image selected with a layer mask. The second Effects layer, with the same effect E but with parameters P2, would be applied to different parts of the image.

The only solution I found was to "merge" the visible parts up to the first Effects layer, then apply the second Effects layer to the merged image. However, this solution is not satisfying when we need to modify the bottom layers.

How can I apply twice the same effect to the same pixel layer?
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2022-12-15 09:26:24

Just as with Color Adjustment layers, you can apply layer masks to Effect layers. This would be the primary way to have different Effect / Color Adjustment layers affect different areas of a project. For more info on working with Color Adjustment and Effect layers, check out this video tutorial.
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2022-12-15 10:56:06

Best thing I can think of is to mask and then go Select and Mask…=Apply. Call+Adjust effects and then make your next selection and again go Select and Mask…=Apply and so on and so forth. This way you´ll keep all masks+effects editable:
Image
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2022-12-16 18:11:57

Well, it makes perfect sense and, actually, it was obvious. I shouldn't have missed it. Thanks a lot!