in this video you will learn a few ways of creating a clipping mask in Photoshop
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hi I'm Barry Callister founder and creator of photographers freedom calm
giving you the time gear and skills to be the best photographer you can be
welcome to my channel and thank you for watching one of my videos this video
assumes that you already know what a clipping mask is but just in case you
don't there's a link in the video description below to my clipping mask
Photoshop blog post that will teach you all you need to know about clipping
masks but right now let's learn how to create one okay so here we are in
Photoshop and I have this sunset image here open and I'm going to type some
text and use the clipping mask to make the image show through the text now if
you want to download and follow along with this image there's a link in the
video description where you can do that so the first thing we need to do is come
over here to our type tool select that and I'm using impact as my font but you
can use whatever you want I just wanted to use impacts because
it's a really wide font it will give a lot of area for the image to show
through so the size don't worry about the size at this moment because we're
going to click and drag to resize it anyway but make sure your text is white
so click on the color picker there and select white and click OK now you just
click anywhere in your image and we're going to type sunset make sure it's all
capitals because that's going to help our effect tick up there to say that
like that now in order to resize this we go ctrl T which is command T on a Mac
click and drag that to the center and then if you hold alt or option click
and drag from the corner we can make it really really big and this will make it
look really awesome when we apply the clipping mask so I'm going to say that's
okay there it's not in the middle but it does show it's covering up the little
bit of the Sun there so that's going to shine through the text and that'll look
really good so select yes up there we want that now in order for the image to
be clipped to the text it needs to be above the text layer you can only clip
layers above two layers below so as you can see over here this layer is
currently locked which means we can't move it
so in order to be able to move it we have to unlock it now I'm using
Photoshop version 20 point 0.5 here as you can see I'm using Photoshop CC so
this may be different for you but if you're using Photoshop CC all you have
to do is click on the little padlock and that will unlock the layer and then we
can then drag it above the text because that's where we need it now what I'm
also going to do is create a solid color layer on the bottom so that we can see
this effect better when we're finished so come down here to our adjustments
layer icon click that scroll up to solid color select that choose white and click
OK and we're going to click and drag to bring that layer all the way to the
bottom so now we have our layers in the order that we need them we need to make
sure that the layer we want to click or apply the clipping mask to is selected
so just click on that layer in the layers panel and that will make sure
that it's selected now the first method of creating a clipping mask is to
right-click on the layer in the layers panel so once you have it selected make
sure that you right-click over here to the right of the name of the layer don't
click on the thumbnail because you'll get a different menu pop-up so right
click on the layer itself there now in this menu
you're halfway down you'll see create clipping mask simply click that and wow
look at that that is a fantastic effect it's pretty damn cool then you can see
that down here next to the layer thumbnail we now have this little
downward pointing arrow which shows us that that layer is clipped to the layer
below so I'm going to ctrl Z to undo that and we'll look at another way of
creating a clipping mask now this second method is by coming up to the layer menu
up here click on the layer menu you know down here under layer mask and vector
mask you will see create clipping mask if you click that you get the same
effect I'll undo that again now the third way is by using a keyboard
shortcut so you will see in the layer menu up here next to create clipping
mask it shows us the keyboard shortcut which is off ctrl G or that is option
command G on a Mac so if we do that if we press up control G we get our
clipping mask so that's a really cool effect this is just one thing that a
clipping mask can do I will do videos on other uses for clipping masks in the
future and that is three ways that you can create a clipping mask in Photoshop
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I'm Barry Callister for photographers freedom comm get out there take some
wicked shots and I'll see you soon