Impression - Brushstroke masking & media textures

I love using Impressions 2 and often use the masking feature to control the brush strokes in selected areas. However, I have noticed that masking brush strokes also masks any media texture I may have used which is not the look I want. Am I missing a technique here?

Not sure what your hosting program is, but the simple explanation is you need to use layers for each effect you are creating. Create your brush strokes on a new layer, create your media texture on a new layer. Then you can do your masking and retain whichever aspects you wish from each layer.

Yes the mask’s affect the whole effect, including the textures …

As Michael said you will need to use a host such as Studio, photoFXlab or others like PS etc. if you wish to combine a texture with the effect you have created.

Thanks for your replys. I have been using Impressions as a plugin from Lightroom or PS, but recently acquired the full boat Studio package and have started working with that. I just tried a test using Impressions as a Studio plugin for a brush effect, then tried to add another Studio adjustment layer for a paper texture. I don’t get anywhere near the look I can get using paper textures in Impressions & the selection is very limited. Also, there’s no strength & size control! Is there a way to use Impressions textures in Studio? Michael, I’m having a hard time understanding how I would use layers like you suggested.
Is there is a way to reopen a file I just edited in Impressions with brush strokes and apply only a media texture? It would be a whole lot simpler!

You can use Studio to apply the Impression effect and then apply a Texture or an Image Layer to that, depending on how you want to do it. For a texture you need to import the Texture for an Image Layer you just need to open the texture separately and apply that. Lots of videos telling you how to do it accessible from the web site: http://web.topazlabs.com/ .

You can use Photoshop and apply the texture as a layer to the Impression output layer. Do a search on the internet (google) for using layers in photoshop and there is lots of stuff out there such as: