Clipping Masks and Layer Masking, please

[MattRage]

Every layer in ArtRage has its own alpha channel, so anywhere on the layer that there is not paint, there's 'alpha 0', a hole. If you set canvas opacity to 0% you should see alpha checkers underneath any area with no paint.

We don't have specifically assignable alpha masks for layers due to this, it's all part of the layer itself, so in the bird example above you'd basically have to delete the paint outside the bird and the bird would effectively be alpha masked. Some of the selection tools and the Color Matte filter may help with this.

Where you're painting a grey blob and setting a blend mode to remove it in merge, just delete the paint and that should do the same job. Note that when you export a Layer (rather than the whole image) to a format such as PNG that supports transparency, the alpha mask is automatically included.

I may have misunderstood the original request but I think that should cover the kind of functionality you're after. Hope that helps!

[krueger.freddy]

That is only a little workaround. What realy would improve the software would be to have layer Groups that have a masking layer. Pleaseee your customers need you...