Took me 4 hours to fix a layer mask I should have done in 10 minutes

I was working on a piece for a client in Dallas last night and spent almost the whole evening trying to blend two backgrounds. Turns out I had a stray pixel on the mask that was messing up the whole thing. I must have redrawn that mask three times before I noticed it. Four hours wasted because I didn't zoom in enough. Has anyone else had a tiny mistake eat up a whole night like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

terry_mitchell19d ago

omg yes i feel your pain hard. was it like a single white pixel on the edge where you cut something out? cuz those are the absolute worst, they just hide in the noise of the layer until you're ready to scream. i had a similar thing with a gradient that had one tiny hard edge from a brush stroke i forgot to feather, took me like 3 hours to trace it back to a 2 pixel mistake. did you end up finding the exact pixel that caused all the trouble or did you just nuke the whole mask and start fresh?

lucas15918d ago

@terry_mitchell I ended up nuking the mask and starting fresh. Too many hours wasted zooming in on every edge. Did you ever try that trick where you duplicate the mask layer and set it to difference mode? Heard it helps spot those rogue pixels but haven't tested it myself.