Hello, I wonder if anyone can offer some advice.
I want to create the effect (in Photoshop CS4) of scraping away layers of paint to reveal those below, for example if a wall has been painted with many colours over the years. On a physical wall, such scraping would usually leave a thin "border" of each higher layer on top of those revealed below.
I know I can do this via layer masks, ensuring that the masks of lower layers lie within the boundaries of the masks of higher layers. But this obviously requires a great deal of masking and modifying of masks. What I actually want to do is to be able to use a paint (or if necessary erase) tool which will eat through to deeper layers, not just work on a single layer. However if I simply link the mask to multiple layers it will erase them all equally, whereas on a real physical wall the scraping away would be "progressive".
For example a soft scrape on a real wall would scrape down to say the 2nd layer of paint, a harder scrape to the 3rd or 4th, and a heavy scrape maybe reveal the 6th layer.
Also, a gentle scrape on a part already scraped would simply dig a little deeper.
Can anybody suggest a way of replicating such a process in photoshop? So that if I paint/erase over an image it may "eat through" the first layer. If I paint again on the same spot it may eat through to the next layer, and so on. And so that I can go all over the image, erasing bits here and there down to different "depths".
Any ideas I've had using layer masks require having to constantly select different combinations of layers/masks, and then change all those masks every single time I want to erase a different part of the "wall". A ridiculous and time-consuming approach to what seems to be quite a simple requirement.
Thanks in advance for any advice....
I want to create the effect (in Photoshop CS4) of scraping away layers of paint to reveal those below, for example if a wall has been painted with many colours over the years. On a physical wall, such scraping would usually leave a thin "border" of each higher layer on top of those revealed below.
I know I can do this via layer masks, ensuring that the masks of lower layers lie within the boundaries of the masks of higher layers. But this obviously requires a great deal of masking and modifying of masks. What I actually want to do is to be able to use a paint (or if necessary erase) tool which will eat through to deeper layers, not just work on a single layer. However if I simply link the mask to multiple layers it will erase them all equally, whereas on a real physical wall the scraping away would be "progressive".
For example a soft scrape on a real wall would scrape down to say the 2nd layer of paint, a harder scrape to the 3rd or 4th, and a heavy scrape maybe reveal the 6th layer.
Also, a gentle scrape on a part already scraped would simply dig a little deeper.
Can anybody suggest a way of replicating such a process in photoshop? So that if I paint/erase over an image it may "eat through" the first layer. If I paint again on the same spot it may eat through to the next layer, and so on. And so that I can go all over the image, erasing bits here and there down to different "depths".
Any ideas I've had using layer masks require having to constantly select different combinations of layers/masks, and then change all those masks every single time I want to erase a different part of the "wall". A ridiculous and time-consuming approach to what seems to be quite a simple requirement.
Thanks in advance for any advice....
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