Soft Edge and Liquid Shapes

[Hoptoad]

I often use Liquid Shapes/Clip to add shadows to a bottom shape. The shadows are no stroke, Soft Edge on the fill. It's quick and simple.

Unfortunately, the blurred edge of the shadow actually extends outside the border of the bottom shape. Most of the time it's not noticeable, but occasionally it looks bad and I have to use a Mask instead.

When using Liquid Shapes/Clips, is there a method for keeping the soft edge fill of an upper shape from bleeding-out from the boundary of a bottom shape?

Thanks.

[Greenlaw]

Not with Liquid Shapes. As far as I know, Moho's Liquid Shapes uses the existing curves to generate new shapes, on the fly. Blurred Edge, is a post process render effect, and this doesn't change a curve's physical path used by Liquid Shapes.

Regular Masking is the way to go. Masking doesn't look for curve edges for masks, it uses the layer's transparency or alpha for edges, regardless of how the image is created (vector, image, or post-processed.)

[Greenlaw]

Hmm, I thought about this, and what I wrote isn't quite correct because Liquid Shapes does account for bitmap brushes applied to the path.

I think Brushes are a specific exception though, and Liquid Shapes doesn't consider effects applied to the shapes.

[Hoptoad]

Thanks. This was the first Liquid Shapes limitation that I'd encountered, so I wanted to be sure that masking was the way to go in this situation.

[Greenlaw]

I think Brushes are a specific exception though, and Liquid Shapes doesn't consider effects applied to the shapes.

This makes me wonder if a soft edge brush is applied, would Liquid Shapes then recognize a soft edge? This might be a way to fake a blurry edge with Liquid Shapes.

I haven't tried it, but if you get to it before I do, let me know how it works. It's probably not the same as the effect you're going for, but I'm curious if this works.

[Hoptoad]

This makes me wonder if a soft edge brush is applied, would Liquid Shapes then recognize a soft edge? This might be a way to fake a blurry edge with Liquid Shapes.

I haven't tried it, but if you get to it before I do, let me know how it works. It's probably not the same as the effect you're going for, but I'm curious if this works.

I've never used a soft edge brush.

Could you explain?

Under "Brush Settings," I don't see a "Soft Edge" specification. Is it simply one of those airbrush-looking brushes?

I use soft edge on shapes a lot, so if there's another way to create a soft edge, I'd like to try it.

[Greenlaw]

I was actually thinking of making my own. I haven't checked, but I'm not sure there's an existing one that would do what I'm describing. If one exists, it probably looks like the typical 'soft brush' you see in most paint programs.

When creating a brush, Moho uses the luminance value for transparency. Alpha (in a PNG) also works for transparency, but I'm not sure it makes a difference in quality. A few months ago, I compared luminance vs. alpha in a brush, and, at the time, I thought alpha looked better, but later, I felt I misread the results. I'll have to test this again when I have time.

[Hoptoad]

Ah, thanks for explaining. I figured that must be what you were talking about, but wasn't positive.