If you can relate the word masking with the mask, it may make some sense. Why do we use a mask, to cover the face, right? So why would we use masking on a layer, to cover or uncover the content of any layer.
With a mask you can control the transparency of a layer. But that is what opacity and fill is for, right? Yes, opacity and fill do control the transparency, but it works for whole layer. What if you would like to have only the right part to be transparent and the left part to be completely visible?
Masking works in two ways. First, you simply add a mask on any layer by clicking the third option on the bottom of layer palette. The other way is by using adjustment layers, which always comes with a mask. This image shows a layer with no mask applied. I have highlighted the third option on the layer palette.
Well, if the term "mask" is what's confusing you and who could blame you , replace the word "mask" in your mind with "transparency", because that's exactly what a layer mask does. It allows you to control a layer's level of transparency. That's it, that's all. There's nothing more to them than that. Now, you may be thinking, "But I can already control the transparency level with the Opacity option, can't I?
The Opacity option in the top right corner of the Layers palette also allows you to control a layer's transparency. But here's the difference. The Opacity option changes the transparency level for the entire layer at once.
That may be fine for some situations, but what if you want only part of a layer to be transparent? What if you want the left side of the layer to be completely transparent, the right side to be completely visible, with a gradual transition between the two through the middle of the layer?
That's actually a very common thing to do with a layer in Photoshop, allowing you to fade from one image to another. But you can't do that with the Opacity option since as I said, it's limited to controlling the transparency of the entire layer at once. What you would need is some way to control the transparency of different areas of the layer separately.
What you would need is a layer mask. Shortcodes, Actions and Filters Plugin: Error in shortcode [ ads-basics-middle-2 ]. Let's look at an example. Here I have a couple of wedding photos that I think would work well blended together. Here's the first one:.
In order to blend them together, whether I'll be using a layer mask or not, I need to have both photos inside the same Photoshop document, so with each photo open in its own separate document window, I'm simply going to press V on my keyboard to select my Move Tool and then click inside one of the documents and drag that photo into the document containing the other photo:.
Now both photos are in the same Photoshop document, and if we look in the Layers palette, we can see that each one is on its own separate layer, with the photo of the couple facing towards the camera on top and the photo of the couple walking away from us into the woods below it:. So far, so good. Now, how am I going to blend these two photos together? Well, let's see what happens if I simply try lowering the opacity of the top layer.
After lowering the opacity of the top layer which again contains the image of the couple facing towards the camera on the right , the image on the bottom layer of the couple walking in the woods is now showing through the image above it. Let's try something else.
Shortcodes, Actions and Filters Plugin: Error in shortcode [ ads-basics-middle-float ]. So far in our quest to blend our two photos together, we've tried lowering the opacity of the top layer with disappointing results, since all that basically did was fade the entire image. What I really want is for the couple in both images to remain fully visible, with the blending of the two images happening in the area between the bride walking away from us on the left and her looking towards us on the right.
I know, why don't I just use Photoshop's Eraser Tool! That's what I'll do. I'll use the Eraser Tool with nice, soft edges to erase the part of the image on the right that I don't need. Yep, this should work. I'll press E on my keyboard to quickly select the Eraser Tool.
As I said, I want soft edges for my Eraser, so I'm going to hold down my Shift key and press the left bracket key a few times, which softens the edges. I can also increase or decrease the size of the Eraser as needed using the left bracket key on its own to make the Eraser smaller and the right bracket key to make it larger the same keyboard shortcut works with any of Photoshop's brush tools.
And now that I have my Eraser at the right size and with soft edges, I'll go ahead and erase away parts of the left side of the top image so that it blends in with the image below it:. Things definitely look much better now than they did when we tried lowering the opacity of the top layer. The couple is still visible in both images with a nice transition area in the middle, which is what I wanted.
The Eraser Tool worked great! Who needs layer masks! I'm happy with this, I think my client is going to be happy with this as well, so I'll email a copy of the image off to my client, save my Photoshop document, close out of it, shut down my computer and go enjoy the rest of my day while I wait for the client to call me and tell me how awesome I am. A couple of hours later, the phone rings and it's my client.
They like the image overall, but they think I've removed too much of the bride's veil from the photo on the right and they'd like me to bring some of it back into the image, at which point they'll be happy to pay me for my work. I head back to my computer, open my Photoshop document back up, and all I need to do now is bring back some of the bride's veil on the right by Simple answer?
I can't. Not without doing the whole thing over again, anyway, which would be my only option in this case. There's nothing else I can do here because I've erased that part of the image and when you erase something in Photoshop, it's gone for good. If I look in the top layer's preview thumbnail in the Layers palette, I can see that I have in fact erased that part of the image:.
And if I click on the eyeball icon to the left of the bottom layer to temporarily turn it off, leaving only the top layer visible in my document, it's very easy to see that the section I erased from the left of the top image is now completely gone:. The checkerboard pattern in the image above is how Photoshop represents transparency in an image, as in there's nothing there anymore.
As in I've messed up and now I have to do the work all over again from the beginning. Stupid Eraser Tool. So now what? I've tried lowering the opacity of the top layer and that didn't really work. I've tried erasing parts of the top image away with the Eraser Tool and while that did work, I ended up permanently deleting that part of the image and now if I need to bring some of it back, I can't.
I guess all I can really do then is set the number of undo's in Photoshop's Preferences to and never close out of my Photoshop documents until after the client has paid me. What about these layer masks I keep hearing so much about? Would they work out any better?
Let's find out! As we already know, white means visible so this layer is completely visible. What would happen if we painted over areas of the image with our Paint Brush and had the foreground selected as black?
As in the example below. Fast masking in Photoshop: 5 pro tips. Thank you for reading this article, be sure to sign up for our newsletter for more tutorials and great offers. Thanks Jimmy. Just starting to work with masks and Photoshop. It never hurts to see it explained another way to help in understanding masks. Another thank you Jimmy — what a brilliant teacher you are!
You make the use of masks so clear I can now understand what I am doing rather than just doing things by rote. Again Thanks Jimmy, your tutorial always helpful. Excellent tutorial about Photoshop Masking.
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