The Masks | Photoshop | Virtual Tuning Tutorials
Layer Masks and Quick Mask mode can be the most useful thing in
Photoshop. I believe too many don’t know how to use them, or see them as being more advanced than they actually are.
They give you a lot of room for error when masking. Layer Masks are my best friends. Especially because I use a
Wacom tablet and get a little twitchy after my 3 cups of coffee in the morning.
I’ll start off with Quick Mask mode. It’s a little more basic and a
little easier to use. To get to Quick Mask mode, press [Q]. Did you
press it? Did you see what happened? It’s pretty subtle what happens
after you press Q. In your Tool
palette, you see your colors go to the default (Black/White) and the little icon below the colors switches. You’ll also see in the
title bar of your image it says “Quick Mask.” Good indication that you’re in Quick Mask mode.
So now we are in Quick Mask mode. The first thing you might want to do is select the Brush
Tool
(B) and choose a brush size appropriate for the job. Press (D) to set
your colors to default, black in foreground, white in background. Now
start painting. As you paint your image, you see it turns out red. The
red area indicates the areas that WON’T be selected.
After painting the area around your object, you can press (Q) again
to get out of Quick Mask mode. You are now left in normal mode with the
selection dancing ants. And then you can treat it as any other selected
objext.
Layer Masks
Layer Masks work under the same general idea. They just work in more
of a “real-time” sort of way. We’ll start out by combining two images
together. I dragged one image onto another, which created its own Layer.
Go to the Layers Palette and click on the “Add Layer Mask” buttom at
the bottom of the palette. You now have a
Layer Mask on Layer 1. You can see the thumbnail to the right of the
image thumbnail.
The Layer Mask works like this: any area that is white, you can see;
any area that is black, you can’t see. The benefit to this is that you
can have softer
edges
and ‘grey’ areas. So the first I’m going to do is create my own monster
scene. This is actually just two images I happened to have on my
computer that could almost fit together. Make sure that you have the
Layer Mask selected, not just the layer. You can see this by the black
box around the Layer Mask thumbnail. Also, your colors will be the
default black/white.
I selected the Brush tool and the appropriate sized brush. I will now
start paint the areas I DON’T want to see black. You can see the
corresponding Layer Mask with the visible effects.
You can vary brush sizes, and even the color to get a more accurate
masking effect. I chose a pretty bad example image, but you get the
idea. And that’s all that counts, right?
Maybe in the future I’ll go into more detailed uses. Just remember
the basic concept though, black you can’t see, white you can. Greys are
in the middle.
source www.photoshoplab.com
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