From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

Creating, saving, and masking images to shapes - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

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Creating, saving, and masking images to shapes

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- [Instructor] Now let's find out how to combine multiple shapes into a single layer, save a shape as a custom shape, and clip a photograph to multiple custom shapes, so that the photo is only seen within the shape. I'm going to simplify this document by deleting all but one of the groups that contain shapes by dragging them down to the trash icon. Then I'm going to delete shape 4, 3, 1. That's the flower shape. I'll just tap the delete key with that layer targeted. Alright, let's talk about combining layers into a single shape. I'm going to add a stroke to both the ellipse and the polygon tool. I'll click on stroke and add this orange yellow stroke to them. I want to make sure that we can see that, so let's increase the size to 10 and then we can zoom in. That might not be big enough there, so let's go ahead and make that 20. I'm going to hide the rectangle for now, and then I'll select the ellipse and use the move tool and reposition it over to the right. Now, if I want to combine shapes together, they need to be on a single layer. So I'll select the ellipse and the polygon and I'll choose layer and then merge shapes. But notice that before I merge them, the stroke is around each one of the shapes. But after merging, Photoshop is treating the two shapes on the same layer as if they're flattened, and it applies just the single stroke around both overlapping shapes. Now they're not flattened, so I can reposition these, but I can't do it with the move tool because they're both on the same layer. So if I use the move tool, both shapes will move. So instead we need to switch to either the path selection or the direct selection tool. Choosing the path selection tool will enable me to select a single path and then reposition that path. If I select the direct selection tool, now I can click on a single anchor point to select that anchor point. I know it's selected because it's filled with blue, whereas the others are hollow, and now I could make a change to that, although that will convert it into a regular path. So for now, I'll choose no. You may have also noticed that when I merged the path, the attributes from the topmost layer were given to all of the shapes. Alright, let's remove the stroke for now and let's fill this with a color. If I want to combine these shapes, I'll switch to the path selection tool and I have the ellipse shape selected. Using the path alignment options, either on the options bar or in the properties panel, I'm going to choose to subtract the front shape. So now when I reposition this circle or ellipse, it's going to be subtracted from the shape that's below it. If I want to intersect the shapes, I can use the third icon or we can exclude the front shape from the back. Now if you're seeing something different on your screen, it's probably because of the order in which you drew the shapes. If you ever need to change the shape stacking order, you can select the shape and then choose from the different options and the options bar, and this can change the way that paths interact with one another. You can also set the Pathfinder options to combine paths as you draw them instead of creating separate layers and then merging them. I just think it's easier to work with separate layers when we're learning the fundamentals of the shape layers. Alright, I'm going to set the path alignment option back to subtract front shape, and then move the circle to the center of the polygon. If I ever wanted to separate multiple shapes that were on a single layer to their own layer, I could select them and then choose layer new and then shape layer via copy or via cut. Alright, I'll make the rectangle layer visible and target it and select the ellipse layer as well, and then use the layer menu in order to merge these shapes. Now with the path selection tool selected, we can see that I can go in and I can reposition each one of these paths individually. So even though the shapes are on the same layer, there's still individual paths. However, I can merge the shape components to create a new path. So I'm going to click and drag over all of these shapes and then use the alignment options in order to make sure that they're all center aligned. Then I'll use the Pathfinder command to merge the shape components. This is going to turn all of those shapes that were live into a single shape. I can still go in and select a component or go in with the direct selection tool and make changes. But Photoshop is going to consider this a single shape now. In order to save a custom shape, we can choose edit and then define custom shape. I'll just call this JK, and when I save it, it'll now appear in my shapes panel. I'll drag it out of the Flowers group and just put it here at the top. Now I can remove group two by throwing it in the trash. Now I'll tap the U key, just so that we can see what the current fill and stroke is going to be, and then I'm going to drag my custom shape into the image area and we can see that it takes on those attributes. Let's go ahead and scale this up and then click done. Now to make a duplicate, I can hold down the Option key on Mac or the Alt key on Windows and then drag over to the right, and it's going to make a duplicate layer. Then I can select both of these layers, hold down option on Mac or Alt on Windows and drag down to create that duplicate. Now, if I wanted to clip a photograph to the shapes, I can put all of the shapes into a single group. I'll select them all and then drag it down to the group icon. Then I'll use the disclosure triangle to reveal the photo layer, toggle on the visibility, target it, and move it above the group. Now, if you see a cyan line around the entire group and you drop it, it will drop it into the group. So you just want to make sure that you go a little bit higher till you only see the single solid cyan line. That will put the photo above the group, and then we can hold down the Option key on Mac or the Alt key on Windows and click between the photo and group two in order to create a clipping mask so that the photo is only revealed where there's contents in the group. I like my pattern except for I want to flip these two, so I'm going to select the direct selection tool. Then I'll select the shape layer, hold down the Option key and click in order to select the entire path, use command T on Mac or control T on Windows for free Transform and flip this and choose Done. This will modify this shape layer, which was all one path into a regular path, but that's all right. Then I'll select the other layer, Option click, use Command T or Ctrl T in order to free transform and flip this one as well. Excellent. At this point, if I wanted to tidy up my Layers panel, I could select all four of these layers and then use the Layers menu to merge those shapes or use Command E on Mac, Control E on Windows. At this point, I'll choose File and then Save As, and I'll save this as Pattern Design 03.

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