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Blend modes – Apple Motion 2 User Manual

Page 244

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Chapter 3

Basic Compositing

To change an object’s opacity, do one of the following:

m

Adjust the Opacity slider or value slider in the Properties tab.

m

Adjust the Opacity slider in the Dashboard.

Blend Modes

While the Opacity parameter simply defines a uniform level of transparency for an
object, the blend modes allow you many more creative options to control how the
overlapping images interact, based on the colors in each object. By default, each
object’s blend mode is set to Normal, so that changes to an object’s opacity uniformly
affect every part of the image equally.

Blend modes can create transparency in an object regardless of the setting of its
opacity parameter. This is because the pixels of an image with a selected blend mode
are combined with the pixels of any objects lying immediately below it in the Canvas.
For example, if you overlapped two objects, then turned the blend mode of the top
one to Screen, the darker areas of the screened image become transparent, while the
lighter areas remain more solid, resulting in the following image:

Important:

The transparency created by the Subtract through Exclusion blend modes

only affects how an object combines with overlapping objects underneath. These
blend modes do nothing to affect an object’s alpha channel. For information about
blend modes that do affect an object’s alpha channel, see “

Blend Modes That

Manipulate Alpha Channels

” on page 266.

01112.book Page 244 Sunday, March 13, 2005 10:36 PM