My masking is locked in CS3 ?

gus

Guys ive been masking like crazy these last few days since ive just learnt how to do it.

So on the mac i save one photo under exposed & one over exposed...do a layer mask or what ever you call it & everything has been fine.

For no apparent reason other than me doing something im not aware of...my first photo i open (background) that i get ready is now always locked. I know i can unlock it with a double click but its annoying me. It was not like this before. What am i doing here to cause this ?

Llywellyn

Gus, I know this may sound like a silly question, but what are you saving the layered file as?

I usually only see the locked background (as the only layer) in my saved JPGs. The TIFF and PSD formats I use for my layer futzing, though I sometimes forget to change the name when I save a JPG version. I then double-click on the JPG instead of the TIFF for editing, and I am momentarily baffled by the lack of layers until I realize my error.

But this just could be me. I'm not the brightest spark.

gus

oh no..go right ahead & explain the obvious, its cool cause it may well not be obvious to me. Im a thick as pig shit with photoshop. They are jpegs but i seem to getting by ok now. I 'may' have been trying to open the wrong one first (if there is a wrong first one)

Im putting the under exposed one over the over exposed one & then painting the dark layer away to get my blue skys that were blown out to white.

Its hard to explain but anyway i will keep going & make sure exactly how its happening.

Tks

Llywellyn

Glad it's working for you now. I'd be curious to know if you pinpoint the cause should it happen later on.

And I'm still processing some sunset shots where I'm pulling the same trick. I'm a big fan of combining exposures in PS.