Masks are one of the features in Adobe Photoshop that I can't live without
they let you reveal or conceal different parts of a layer to create
everything from a basic shape to some amazing special effects. The one thing
you have to remember with the layer mask is "black conceals and white reveals." But before I
can explain this to you, I'll show you a quick demo. Let's say for instance this part of
the image I want to actually create a circle. There's not really a good way to
do this, the crop tool would actually crop the entire canvas or document. So what I
want to do is grab the elliptical marquee tool and draw out a selection on the
image. When I get it the way I want it I need to make sure I'm on the image layer
and then click the layer mask icon at the bottom of the Layers panel.
That's gonna create a circle image but it didn't actually get rid of any of those
pixels they're just hiding. If we look at the picture of the layer mask or the
icon for the layer mask to the right of the image we can see that concept of black
conceals, white reveals. Anywhere you see black on the layer mask it's hiding those
pixels. So all out here those pixels are hidden. Anywhere you see white they are
revealed
they're not gone, they're not erased, they're not deleted, they're not altered in anyway,
they're still there they're just being hidden or shown based on what
color you see on the layer mask. If I hit option or alt and click on the layer
mask this gives you a bigger demo on the canvas. So when we look at this again the
black areas are showing where the pixels are concealed, and the white area is showing
where the pixels are revealed. So if I hit option or alt and click on the layer
mask again this is gonna give me a chance to see the actual preview. So let's
see how this can work with some special effects, I can grab the hue and
saturation layer and bring the saturation all the way down to turn my
image into a black and white or grayscale version of the image. Every time
you add an adjustment layer it already creates a layer mask for you because it
assumes you want to choose which parts of your image you want that adjustment
to happen to. What I want to do now is I want to actually make it so that
the mask that she's wearing is in color but the rest of her is all in black and
white
this is called a color splash effect. Now one thing to note even though we don't
need it for this particular adjustment layer is it's always gonna start out
white, if for some reason you want it to start out black and you want to paint
white on it to reveal certain parts of the image with that adjustment
layer, what you can do is click on the layer mask and do Cmd or Ctrl + I and it's
gonna it. It's gonna flip it from whatever color it is to it's opposite so
we actually do want it to stay white for right now because the majority of this
image is black and white so we want to reveal that black and white adjustment
layer...or I'm sorry the hue and saturation adjustment layer. So what we need to do
now is grab our paintbrush because we want to paint in black because black is going to
conceal this grayscale hue and saturation; it's going to conceal it from
wherever we painted. So I'm gonna start painting and I probably need a bit
bigger brush and notice that it's bringing back all that color. I'm not
necessarily painting that color, I'm actually painting black where I want
it to hide that color or I want it to hide the black and white so to speak. So
I can go all the way through this and I'm not going to do a great job on this
just because we don't have a lot of time in this tutorial video. But as I paint
through here if I make a mistake as you can see I'm doing, if I come down here let say and
do this, all I need to do is now go back and paint white where I want to reveal the
black and white. So I can flip using the X key or this little flip button over
here and wherever I paint white it's gonna bring back that hue saturation
adjustment. So I can go ahead and paint that in, and get rid of some of this area, and fix these
areas up and you're obviously gonna want to take some time and do really well on this.
So it prints and looks really good. But once you've got it where you need it if I do
again Opt or Alt on the layer mask, and click on the layer mask black is
concealing that black and white
hue and adjustment layer or hue and saturation adjustment, sorry I keep messing
that up. And anywhere you see white is where you can see that desaturated part
of the image. The other cool thing about this is now if I put a couple of hue and
saturation adjustment layers on top of this or any kind of adjustment layer I
can go ahead and do special effects like maybe I want to change the color of her
mask. So I can kind of change it to maybe a blue mask and because I have the hue
and saturation layer below it and it already has a mask on it where I've done
some alterations, it's only showing the new hue and saturation on the actual
mask on the picture. So just be aware when you're working with masks if you
right click on a mask you can disable that layer mask and see what it would
look like without it, so notice without it's gonna show that desaturated picture.
If I right click I can enable it; I can also delete a layer mask and I can also
hold Alt or Opt and drag that layer mask on to a new one whether it's
already been painted or not, and it'll say, "Do you want to replace the layer
mask?" Hit yes, and then notice if I do that, it basically erased her mask, and
obviously I painted that really really horribly but it's basically concealing
that part of the image, so if I come here again and do Cmd or Ctrl + I now
it's gonna flip it and anywhere we see white we see her mask and anywhere we
see black it's concealing all the other pixels.
So those are the basics of working with layer masks, play around with them and
see what you can do but truly it's one of the coolest things in Photoshop and
once you get the hang of it you're going to use it all the time.