04 Opacity and Feather
There are two further antennae. The one on the right (circled here) controls both the layer opacity (you drag the antenna in and out to change its length) and its ‘feather’, or the distance over which the effect is blended in.
I want the layer opacity (the effect I’ve applied) to be at 100%, and a feather value of 35% looks about right for blending it with the masked area in the centre.
05 Mask opacity
The left antenna controls the mask opacity. This isn’t the same as the layer opacity. The mask opacity controls how much the masked area is protected, and if I reduce the opacity to around 70%, it lets a little of the texture effect come through even in the centre of the picture.
06 The finished picture
This doesn’t work too badly. It probably needs some kind of painterly effect to make it look less like a photograph, but it has turned quite an ordinary picture into something a lot more interesting – and that’s partly because of the way the Masking Bug has blended the effect in over the sky and the base of the picture. If it had been left as an all-over texture effect, the result would have been much less effective.
See also
More Perfect Effects tutorials