Couple of Questions

[The Chef]

1. How do you adjust the opacity of a mask? 

2. How do you merge a selection of layers? 

[Aad Slingerland]

Considering your questions a assume you mean the application Affinity Photo. Correct me if i'm wrong.

1) What type of mask. A mask can be an independent layer itself, can be a child lo another layer and every adjustment layer has his own implicit mask.See partial screen shot below.

The white balance layer has its onw opacity seting.

The (independend ) mask layer has its own opacity setting

The child mask has its own opacity setting as well but you have to select it (of course) before adjusting it,

2) context menu of the selected layers, Merge Visible

 

 

[The Chef]

Thanks for the answer. 

1. in photoshop i select the mask and change the opacity. How do you do that in this software?

2. That merges everything. I only wanted to merge a selection of layers, not the entire layer stack. the solution i found was to put them in a group and rasterise the group. Super strange you just cant select the layers you want to merge and merge them. 

[Ron P.]

@The Chef,

1. Look at the examples provided by @Aad Slingerland. In the upper-left of the Layers Panel you should see Opacity. It's a drop-down to a slider, where you adjust the opacity of the selected Layer or Layers. Yes you select several layers and change their opacity.

2. On the Right of each layer there's check boxes. Those are for showing or hiding (visible or invisible) the layer. Uncheck those you do not want to merge, OR check those that you do want to merge. Then select from the menu Merge Visible. Only those visible layers, ones with the checked boxes will be merged.

[smadell]

More to the point:

1) To merge 2 or more layers into a single layer, (i) select the layers you want to merge in the Layers panel; and (ii) choose Merge Selected from the Layer menu. This will merge your selected layers into a single pixel layer (the original layers will no longer be there).

2) In order to change the opacity of a mask, you can select the mask in the Layers panel and use the opacity slider (although I don't think that's what you want). That will alter the opacity of the areas of the mask that show through – the "masked" areas (the ones that are Black in the mask itself) will not be changed. In order to do what I think you want, you can do one of 2 things (probably more, but I can only think of 2 right now). You can change the mask from black to a shade of grey, which will alter the degree of opacity in that portion of the mask. Or, an easier way, apply a Levels adjustment to the Mask (create a new Levels adjustment and drag it over the Mask's thumbnail in the Layers panel). Set the channel of the Levels adjustment to Alpha, and then use the Output Black and Output White sliders. [see below]