Creating custom mask shape

I want to create a custom mask shape different from the ones supplied in FCP2.
Ive been racking my brain on how to do this. I use CS3 Photoshop and Illustrator.
In illustrator I created the shape I want, a tight round cornered rectangle in black then sent to Photoshop. place it on a new layer (layer 2) and made the first layer transparent, but the outside of the frame is still visable when I rescale the file in FCP....what am I doing wrong?
Thanks in advance..

Hi Allister,
The mask you create in Photoshop needs to be either black and white or have an alpha channel.
When you import that into FCP you need to have
- background on track 1
- your mask on track 2
- foreground on track 3
then select your foreground and choose composite mode> travelling matte alpha if you want to key where your alpha is or travelling matte luma if your image is black and white.
If you're sizing your mask down you may need to crop your foreground so you don't get edges.
Dual 1Ghz G4 Quicksilver Mac OS X (10.4.7)

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… I am interested in creating a mask shape where I can use it to identify something on the screen inside the shape with the surrounding area darker.
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arabidopsis10 wrote:
Hi,
I google around to find a way to create a custom-shape pei chart (a tomato with 3 percentage numbers in it, say 25% 25% and 50%). But I always got stuck when trying to creat the mask, which i have no clue....
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Creating custom mask shape

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