Making a layer darker with masking

[macnavi]

I wanted to make one item darker, but not transparent. Dim the colours, like a house in the dark. I did this by masking a black square with the house in a folder, so the house becomes a black item and on top of that, outside that folder, the same house with 75% transparency. Can it not be done with masking only two layers and not the last, third layer?

[slowtiger]

You don't need to duplicate the house.

- group or bone layer (hide all)
- - vector layer with black shape (mask this layer) - set to 25% and "multiply"
- - house layer (add to mask)

The shape doesn't need to be black, for a night scene you may try a dark blue, and different percentages.

The house layer can be a group as well, with the house parts inside. It also works with PNG images with transparency.

[macnavi]

Thanks, that helped a lot and thanks for the tip! I shall post the result later, it turned out pretty good.