Lab 5 : Masking

A mask is simply to hide or reveal certain parts of a layer, for lets say we import an image on stage, so go to File -> Import -> Import to stage like the one here

You have imported an image from your image file to stage, lets say you want to reveal a small portion of this image, you want to hide most of the picture, we need to create a mask to do that in Flash CS4, the way we need to do that is by creating another layer above the picture layer, lets first lock the picture layer and rename layer1 to picture and create another layer and name it mask, Now lets draw a mask, select the mask layer and draw a circle on stage by selecting a bright green color, it doesn’t matter what color you select, so draw the circle on stage for the picture you actually want to see, the mask is going to act as a flash light so whatever it touches is what we are going to see, having drawn a circle for the picture you want to see, you will see something like this

By doing this we actually don’t see the picture what we really wanted to see, the mask is not done yet, now click on the mask layer and right click on your mouse and select mask,
As soon as you do that you can see what we wanted to see like the picture below.