They must have added that since I used it. I have to wonder what it can do that the cloning tool in Photoshop can't though. I use it a LOT and you can get an awful lot of different effects and such by varying the opacity, brushes, image sources, aligned/non-aligned, etc. What does the cloning tool in Photopaint do that is different/better? Gromit

A little more explanation: I was compositing scanned aerial photographs and enhancing them. No one here had ever done that. To be able to composite the photos, I had to make the colors match, and the easiest way to do that was to dodge and burn on the RGB color separations individually. Photopaint wouldn't let me do that, Photoshop did it in a walk. I also needed precise geometric control at the pixel level, and Photoshop was a clear winner in that area. There wasn't any art to that, strictly technical imaging. Gromit

Well, in my case Corel Photopaint is the reason I use Adobe Photoshop. When it came down to serious photo enhancement for presentation work back about four years ago, Photopaint just wouldn't cut it. I bit the bullet and jumped on the Photoshop learning curve and never looked back Just my opinion, of course. Gromit Dhahran, Saudi Arabia

Photoshop rocks! Gromit Dhahran, Saudi Arabia

Select the layer you want to make transparent in the layers palette. Click in the upper right-hand corner of the palette where it says "Opacity" and a slider will appear. Drag the slider to make the layer more or less opaque as desired. Use layer masks with a gradient fill applied to create effects where an image fades into another one. Gromit Dhahran, Saudi Arabia

Yeah, it's like that all over the middle east, as far as I know. I've spend a total of eleven years in the middle east, but the only two countries I've lived and worked in here are Saudi Arabia and Iran. It is an Islamic thing. Friday is "holy day", when they have some longer prayers at midday or thereabouts. Thursday is the traditional "souk" day, when the Bedouins would bring in stuff to market. So our weekend is Thursday and Friday, and we have TAIW - Thank Allah it's Wednesday - instead of TGIF. It would definitely not be the same in Israel, since Saturday is their sabath, don't know how they handle that. One interesting thing is that despite the arrangement of the work week, Sunday is still "yawm al-ahad", or first day, and all the rest of the days of the week, with the exception of Friday ("jomah"), are numbered. Saturday is "yawm as-sabt", or seventh day. The only piece of artwork I've ever made any money off of was a Photoshop creation of a Saudi woman with her abayah blowing straight back on a city street - I posted that over on the Poser Forum Online a while back. Very photorealistic and framed and hanging in a lot of homes over here. Gromit Dhahran, Saudi Arabia

Sorry, I'm not used to the abreviations, I guess PSP = Paint Shop Pro and PS = Photoshop? I should have known from the picture above but it didn't register. Saturdays here in Saudi Arabia are the first day of the work week, so they're like Mondays in the real world! Gromit Dhahran, Saudi Arabia

It sounds to me from your question that you're trying to create a new mask in Photoshop and save it in a TIFF file. You can do that easily. Assuming that you have, as an example, a Photoshop file you've created with a background layer and a single layer above that called Layer 1, Ctrl-click on the Layer 1 image thumbnail in the Layers display. This will select all of the non-transparent pixels on Layer 1. Click Selection, Save Selection, and give the selection a name, then click OK. You now have an alpha channel containing a mask for all of Layer 1. If you had more layers, you could repeat this procedure to save a mask for each one. Now, you can save a TIFF file with the alpha channels either by flattening the image and saving it as a TIFF or by clicking File, Save a Copy, and selecting TIFF. If you save a copy, you have the option to save any alpha channels or not. Gromit

I've had that problem with getting a little of the background along with the picture quite a few times. It's called "matting" in Photoshop. You can get rid of it by contracting the selection, but this might also chop off miniscule pieces of the actual image. Photoshop has a tool for getting rid of black or white matting. Go to Layer, Matting, and click on Remove Black Matte or Remove White Matte as applicable. If the matting is neither black nor white, you can use Layer, Matting, Defringe and select the number of pixels you want to remove all the way around. Gromit

You're welcome! I had never tried creating anything quite like that, so I learned something new in Photoshop and also added the first useful page to my website, which I'm learning how to create as I go.:) Gromit Dhahran, Saudi Arabia

OK, I added a page on creating collages, another one of the things I do some of in Photoshop. It's at this URL: http://www.crfranklin.com/collages.htm If you take a look at it, let me know what you think. I can't put some of the images I want to on that page right now because my Jaz drive is kaput and I can't get to them. Maybe later! Gromit

Cindy, You're welcome! I just recently started setting up a website, so far it's more like chaos. I'm an American living in Saudi Arabia, and we haven't had internet access long enough to really get into building our own websites. Also many sites and entire domains are blocked here. That rainbow tutorial is the only one I've got on my website, just did it a couple of days ago. I'm thinking of putting together step-by-step tutorials for some of the Photoshop and other graphics stuff I've learned to do, things that really work for me and would help others. That might also be a way to get these guys out of my house over here, just tell them to look on my site. Most of the stuff I do has to do with photo restoration and enhancement, but I do some creative things to from time to time. I'm not a pro, but I enjoy it. As I create some more tutorials, I'll post here to let anyone who's interested know. Gromit Dhahran, Saudi Arabia

Are you talking about piecing together parts of two different textures and making the two match? I haven't dealt with precisely that problem, but I have done something similar when compositing photos that should match in color, scale, etc. What I do is make sure the edge of the image I'm matching to the main image overlaps substantially. Then I go into each of the color channels, usually red, green, and blue, and do whatever dodging and burning is necessary to make a smooth match on that channel. When the channels all match, the composite colors will match. Finally, I create a layer mask on the image I'm matching and use an airbrush tool at low opacity, about 5 to 10%, to feather the edge of the image so the transition from one image to the other is indistinguishable. I learned to do this because I needed to digitally composite aerial photographs. It works, I've done a lot of it.