From the course: Photoshop 2022 Essential Training

Layer mask essentials - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop 2022 Essential Training

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Layer mask essentials

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- [Instructor] Layer masks are a key feature of Photoshop that allow us to non-destructively hide and show selective portions of our image. We can see that in this document, we have six different layers. We have a layer that has some birds, the Chicago skyline, some clouds, an iceberg, some smoke, and a porthole. Now, the first thing that I want to do is I want to mask the iceberg so that it's only visible within the porthole. So I'll hide or toggle the visibility of that layer for a moment and then I'll select my elliptical marquee tool. Now I think it's going to be easier to drag out this marquee if we show our rulers. So I'll use the keyboard shortcut command R on Mac, control R on Windows, or you can use the view menu and then show rulers. I'm going to drag my first guide out of the ruler to match up with the edge of the porthole here. And then from the left side, I'll drag out a second guide. Again, just aligning it with the silver frame of that porthole. That's going to enable me to start dragging my elliptical marquee from the crosshairs here, so that when I drag into the image area, it's going to create a selection that is as circular as the porthole. All right, I'll go ahead and release the cursor. We have our selection, but I don't need to mask the porthole. I need to mask the iceberg layer. So I'll target it in the layers panel as well as make it visible. Then from the layer menu, I'll choose layer mask and we have a number of different options. I can reveal all or hide all, reveal or hide the selection or create a mask from transparency. Well, since we went to the effort of creating the selection, I'll go ahead and choose to reveal the selection. Now we can just see the iceberg within that porthole. In order to soften the edge non-destructively, I'm going to select the mask. And we can see here on the layers panel, that where the mask is white, I can see the information in the layer and where the mask is black, it's going to hide the information. If I want to see just the mask, I can hold down the option key on the Mac or the alt key on Windows and click. And this is the edge that I want to soften. By using the feather slider in the properties panel, I can move that to the right and we can start seeing the softening of the edge, but let's see what it's actually doing to the image. I'll click on the eye icon to toggle the visibility. And that's a little bit too soft. So I'm going to reduce the amount of the feather, maybe down somewhere around five or maybe six pixels. If I wanted to reposition the iceberg or the mask, if I have the move tool selected and I click and drag around, by default, they're going to move together. I'll use command Z in order to undo that. And instead, I'm going to click on the link icon that links together the mask and the photograph. By unlinking this, if the mask is selected, I can now move the mask separately from the image. Again, I'll undo that, click on the image, we can see that I can also move the image within the mask. All right, I'm going to select the mask and I'm going to use my move tool and just move it down maybe one or two pixels, I'm just nudging it down so it's a little bit more centered in that porthole. Then I'll click to re-link the layer and the mask. All right. I'd also like to add this cloud layer within the porthole, but I don't need to create a mask for the cloud. Instead I can create what's called a clipping group. So with the clouds targeted, I'll choose the layer menu and then create clipping mask. When I create the clipping mask, Photoshop will only display the contents of the clouds layer, where there are contents in the layer below it. I know that it's a clipping mask because I can see the downward pointing triangle here and the name of a layer at the base of the clipping mask is underlined. If I use the move tool, I can reposition the clouds and you can see that I don't have to worry about the mask because the clouds are only going to appear where there's content or the iceberg layer below. Now I do want to mask the bottom of the clouds because I don't want this sharp line. So I'll return to the layer menu. I'll choose layer mask. And this time I'll select reveal all. This is going to add a blank white mask. I can switch to the brush tool by tapping the B key and then I'll make sure that it's reset to its defaults by right clicking or control clicking on Mac and choosing to reset the tool. I'll use the right bracket key to get a very large brush. And you'll notice that the mask is white. Wherever the mask is white, we can see the clouds. So I need to exchange my foreground and background color. So I'll tap the X key so that now I'm painting with black and with a large brush, I can paint across the bottom area of the clouds in order to hide that harsh line. Excellent. Let's also hide our guides right now. I'll use the view menu and then under show, I'll disable the guides. Now I want to add the Chicago scene. So I'll target that layer in the layers panel and click the eye to toggle it's visibility. Now to quickly select this, I can use the select menu and then choose subject. It does a good job selecting the skyline. So this time, instead of using the layer menu to add our layer mask, I'm going to use the layers panel. Photoshop is smart enough to create a mask based on a selection when I click on this icon and while it's done a good job, it needs a little bit of touch up. So I'll use the left bracket to decrease the size of my brush. And I'm going to paint along the left-hand side here to just fade out that building. I'll also paint along the bottom to soften that edge. And along the right-hand side. Then I'll switch to the move tool by tapping the V key. And I'll reposition this over on the right hand side. Now, in order to make it blend a little bit better, I'll switch back to the brush tool by tapping the B key and I'll get a little bit larger of a brush, but I'm going to decrease the opacity. I'll tap the three key, that'll give me 30% opacity, and then I'll continue to paint to just kind of fade the bottom area of this layer or of the Chicago skyline. And I can also just paint a little bit more in those buildings up there. Now, if I wanted to fade back the entire layer, I could go over to my layers panel and actually decrease the opacity of the layer here. Because it seems a little bit bright to me, I can also use blend modes in order to blend the skyline with the background. So from the layers panel, I'll choose the multiply blend mode. Now to add the birds, we'll make them visible and target them in the layers panel. This time I'll switch to the object selection tool. And by default, it's set to the rectangle mode so I can click and drag over the birds and have it automatically select it. Then from the bottom of the layers panel, I'll click to add a layer mask. And again, I'll change the blend mode to multiply. I'll decrease the opacity by tapping the V key, which will select the move tool and then tapping the four key, which gives me 40%. I'll go ahead and reposition them in the image area as well. Now I also want to add some smoke around the porthole, but when I toggle the visibility of the smoke layer, it looks like it's actually being masked, but it's not. It's just being hidden by the layers above it. We can see that the entire layer is actually there. It's just that because of the stacking order, these other layers appear on top of it. So in order to add a mask that's all black to hide the contents of the entire layer, I can either choose the layer menu and then layer mask, and then hide all. Or I can hold down the option key on the Mac, alt key on Windows and click on the mask icon. Now the mask is all black, so we can no longer see the smoke. I'll tap the B key to select my paintbrush. And I'm going to change the opacity to 50% by tapping the five key. I'll get a little bit larger of a brush and maybe zoom out once using command minus, that just makes it a little bit easier to see the area here and paint, but I can't paint with black. I need to paint with white. So I'll tap the X key. Now that I have white as my foreground color, I can just paint around the edges here and the more I paint, the more we will reveal those clouds. Now, one last thing that I want to do is I think that the iceberg layer is just a little bit too opaque. I want to see through to some of the texture on the porthole. In fact, if you ever want to toggle the visibility of all of the other layers, you can hold down the option key and then click on the eye icon. So here's the porthole, I want to bring back some of this texture. I'll option click on the eye icon again, then go to the iceberg layer and I'll decrease the opacity so that I can see some of that porthole from below. I think that one of the most difficult things when you're learning layer masks in Photoshop is just remembering to target the mask when you want to work on the mask and target the layer when you want to work on the layer. But if you remember that where the mask is white, you're going to be able to see the information on the layer and wherever the mask is black, it's going to hide the information, then you'll have no trouble at all masking in Photoshop.

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