Content

Introduction to Photoshop: Tutorial 2


Masks

Theory

Masks!! What can you say, if your new to Photoshop then you more than likely won't of used masks yet, but believe me when you learn how to use them properly you will! Masks are a little funny really, many people don’t seem to use them, which isn’t an issue, most stuff you can do with a mask can be achieved in a variety of different ways (as is true with most functions of Photoshop), but the fact of the matter is, in most of these situations it’s a whole lot quicker if a mask were to of been used.

Masks are applied to a layer at a time. . .that is you can have one mask on a layer at any one time, you can however create a mask for a layer, edit it, then apply that mask to the layer (permanently applying its changes to the layer) which effectively deletes the mask allowing another to be applied in its place.

In my use of Photoshop I primarily use masks for the blending of objects on multiple layers, and this is what I will be demonstrating a little later on, however you will also see that many Adjustment layers use masks, and as such the masks can be manipulated to give varying effects, for example Hue/Saturation adjustment layers.

To apply a mask to a layer simply click the “mask” button on the Layers palette, this will add a mask to your currently selected mode in “Reveal All” mode, that is the mask is currently fully white and therefore does not block out any of your layer. Alternatively you can go to Layers – Layer Mask – Reveal All to add a clear mask, or Layers – Layer Mask – Hide All to add a full mask (that is a mask that currently blocks the entire layer).

Ok, so your probably thinking what the hell is all this reveal all, hide all palaver about . . I shall explain! Firstly the main point to realise when working on a mask is that you only ever work in grayscale. Easy enough to remember? Jolly good (all will become apparent soon). The second thing to remember is that once you have applied your mask you will now see two small thumbnails for the same layer, the left thumbnail still represents what is on the layer, the right thumbnail now represents the mask for that layer. So you need to remember that you can work on either the layer OR the Mask at one time, you do this by simply clicking on the thumbnail you wish to work on, either the layer one, or the mask one, EASY! Finally the third, and probably most crucial thing to remember is that Black Hides and White Reveals.

So to summarise;

Practice

Ok, so that may or may not be clear, so just to re-enforce this we will put it to practical use. Go ahead and open up Photoshop and create a new document 500 x 500 pixels. Now on the first layer go ahead and fill it with a nice bright colour (click the foreground colour swatch at the bottom of the tools palette and select your bright colour, then hit ALT + ENTER to fill the canvas with your foreground colour).

Now create another layer, either using the new layer button on the bottom of the layers palette, or by going to Layer – New Layer and choosing OK in the diag. boxes.

We will fill this new layer (above our nice red layer) with black, press ‘D’ on the keyboard (our shortcut to reset the colours to default, black-foreground, white-background), then again hit ALT + ENTER to fill the new layer with the foreground colour (this time black!)

So now the black layer is blocking out our nice red layer, now what if we wanted to gradually blend in from our black layer to our red layer underneath . . well I would use a mask! So what we are effectively wanting to do is to gradually fade out the black in the top layer, so we will be applying the mask to that layer.

With the black layer selected click the mask button underneath the Layers Pallete or simply go to Layers – Layer Mask – Reveal all, you should now see a new thumbnail appear on your black layer which is fully white (remember how white allows all through, so you will see no difference to your layer).

So now we must edit our mask YEY!!, so to create a nice gradual (note the cunning use of the word gradual ;) ) GRADIENT!! So we'll create a gradient on the mask going from transparent to opaque or white to black. So select your gradient tool, and set up a gradient going from black across to white (note by pressing ‘D’ before selecting the gradient tool then opening up the editor and selecting at the first most preset gradient it will already be white to black ;) )

Now to apply the gradient to the mask, first MAKE SURE YOU ARE WORKING ON THE MASK!, then make sure you are on the Linear Gradient setting (the first of the 5 gradient type options) and that Reverse isn’t checked, then whilst holding the SHIFT key (to keep the line perfectly straight) click and hold on the left side of the canvas, then while holding drag to the right hand side, then release the mouse button. With any luck the black should now blend into the red nice and smoothly (see right)! Beautifull!!

Summary

Ok so lets be honest it’s not the most exciting thing to look at!! But if you understand what is going on here then you should start to realise some of the other possibilities achievable with the mask. Basically if you look at your mask it should graduate from white to black going left to right, bear in mind that white is see through and Black basically erases that section of the layer (or makes it transparent), so in essence what we are doing is making our black layer fade out to transparent on the right edge, hence we are seeing the red from the layer underneath come through.

So imagine if our black layer was a photo of something, we could then fade that into our background by using a mask! Neat ey! Other common uses include the fading lines you see, reflections, advanced blending and you can even use them in conjunction with filters for more advanced effects.

*Extra-Credit . . . try applying a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to your project, then with the Mask selected go to Filter-Render-Clouds, Note the preview of the mask . . .its generated a random cloud appearance on the mask allowing patchy areas to show through . .simple huh ;) *

So thats the Masks section finished, hopefully now you'll have a better idea of the capabilities and workings of masks, so as with anything, experiment a bit and you'll soon be a masks legend!

Click here to proceed onto our 'mini-project' for a little demonstration of where we should be at so far.