"you know, tesign... you keep telling me to use the image hose on an empty layer, and i keep telling you i cant. i sense a little communication gap here, so... let's talk about something else :)" Duh? I thought I only mentioned it once and just an example (on a different post) to illustrate. I did not reply to your last post on this subject with regards to your Painter 5. What are you talking about?....please enlighten. Bill