Right now I'm going to share a tip with you that's going to help you get
much, much smoother masking inside of Photoshop.
Hey, Cafe crew. Colin Smith from Photoshop Cafe. Let's get started. And by the way, if you
haven't yet subscribed, do me a favor. Hit that subscribe button. Become part of the Cafe crew.
Alright, so I'm going to show you something about masking that few people
realize. So we're just gonna use this picture of a woman and a cat on top. So this is
not so much about the artwork is this is just understanding the technique I want to show you.
So the first thing we want to do is create a hidden mask or an inverted mask. So hold down
the alt or the option key and then go in the layers panel and click on create mask.
What that does is it creates a black mask which hides the contents of the layer.
Now to bring back the contents of the layer, we're going to paint
white in here. So let me just hit the D key to reset the foreground background colors.
Let's grab a brush and we're going to start to paint. Now. Some people use
flow. Some people use opacity. Check out my tutorial that talks about the difference.
I'm going to drop the flow down to 10% and we're gonna start to paint in a little bit here. See,
so what happens when you want to paint in a specific value,
like maybe you want to do 20% here. This is the mistake that most people do. Most people
drop the opacity down to 20% and that is wrong. And I'm going to show you exactly why.
Let's create a new layer and I'm just going to fill this with black. And then we're going to
create an inverted mask. Okay, so this is just basically we're going to paint on the black on
the side so you can clearly see what's going on. So let's turn the flow and opacity up. By the way,
opacity is basically how transparent it is in the flow is how fast you get there.
How a layer mask works is simple. When you paint with white, it reveals the
contents of that particular layer. If you paint with black, it hides the contents
of that particular layer. Check out my other tutorial on masking basics. Let's continue.
What most people would do is if they wanted to paint 20%
in, they're gonna drop this opacity down to 20% and this is wrong. And I'll show you why. Okay,
so we're going to paint with white. And as I paint with white here, we're gonna start to paint 20%.
Now, it doesn't matter if you're using a mouse or a graphics tablet.
I'm using a graphics tablet right now. But here's the thing. Yes, it's adding 20%. But if I lift
and then I paint again, it adds another 20%. If I lift, and again, it adds another 20%, another 20.
And then at this point to try and get everything smooth and even, is very, very
difficult. So opacity is not the way to do that. I'm going to turn the opacity all the way up.
Rather than using Opacity, go under the color picker. This is how it normally looks.
But choose this item here (B). This is going to give us brightness. Now choose 20.
So rather than choosing an opacity, we're choosing a shade of Gray with 20%
white. Click ok, now watch what happens if I go up to the other side here and I start to paint
and I lift it and I paint on top of it.
Look at this. I'm getting exactly 20%. Even if I go all over the place here,
it brings us back to 20. But this does even more because when we use Opacity or flow,
what it's going to do is it's just essentially going to keep stacking more and more paint.
Because we working digitally. If we're on our mask.
Remember this was supposed to be 20. Now if I paint, this would just take it straight back
to 20. So if it's a lighter, it will darken it. If it's darker, it will lighten it and look how
smooth and perfect we can get that. Now if we combine this with flow
and let's take that flow down to a very low amount like I'm gonna do shift.
And then I'm just going to type in 0 5 really fast with the shift key. That's gonna give
me 5%. Now what this is gonna do? I'll just paint over our A model here with a 20%. What
it's going to do is it's still going to get to that 20%, but it's going to get there a little
bit slower so we can start to blend and fade it that it's never gonna go beyond that 20%.
So this enables us to blend these edges and get them beautiful and smooth and precise. Alright,
so how would this apply on the image? Simple. Let's choose the mask. And if I wanted to create
for in this area, I can just go in here and just paint and I'm going to get this beautiful smooth
transition is exactly the amount of transparency we want.
I don't think it's enough. So let's tap on there (Color Picker). And what if we change it to 40%?
Just type in 40 paint on those edges. And now look at this.
We're going to get 40% of that fur. And in fact,
let's just turn the flow all the way up. So it just gets it instantly so you can see
what I'm doing and see what we're doing now is we're getting 40% of that.
Look at that. Just a little bit of texture there. Let's do the same top of the cheeks.
So why don't you try this method for yourself next time you're trying to create a little bit
of transparency in your mask and you'll find that this technique will get you much smoother,
more even masks. So I'm curious. Guys, did you know this already? Was this something new?
Let me know in the comments underneath.
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And until next time I'll see you at the cafe.