Hi.
Welcome back to the photoshoptrainingchannel.com.
I'm Jesus Ramirez.
In this video I'm going to show you an advanced yet easy way to mask clouds, fire, and other
semi-transparent objects in Photoshop.
Before we get started, I would like to ask you to help out PTC by simply clicking on
the Like button if you see a technique that you enjoy and that will help you in your creative
projects.
Okay?
Let's get started.
This is the document that we're going to work with and it contains three layers.
We have the background layer, a jet layer, and a cloud layer.
Before we get started, I'm going to show you what you normally would do in case you had
an isolated object.
If I wanted to place this cloud here on this image, I would simply change the Blending Mode.
I want to keep the cloud and I want to remove everything that's in the background.
The cloud is white, the background is black, so I can use the screen Blending Mode which
removes the black and keeps the white, and we have our cloud.
So, that's very simple.
But, with a more difficult image like this background, how do we make it seem as if the
jet is going through the clouds?
Now, I'm not going to worry about the scale of the jet.
I know that in real life the jet will be much, much smaller than that, but for this tutorial
it sort of helps if we have a big jet.
So, if you wanted to make it seem as if the jet was pushing through those clouds, how
will we do that?
We can, of course, do several masking techniques but in this tutorial we're going to focus
on using the Blend If option.
If you're not familiar with Blend If, I have a tutorial that covers everything about it.
I'll place a link right below in the description if you want to find out more on how to use it.
But, just to give you a quick explanation on how it works, I'm going to double click
on the side of the layer to bring up the Layer Style window.
From here, under Blend If, you have these sliders that you can use to hide or reveal
pixels based on the Luminosity.
If I create a black and white Adjustment layer, you will see that the image has luminance values.
There's highlights, midtones, and shadows, and we can use those values to either show
or hide pixels.
If I bring up the Blend If slider once again, you can see that I have the white point slider
under the This Layer, meaning the layer that is currently selected.
And I can click-and-drag to the left, and notice how those pixels start becoming transparent,
all the bright pixels in the image.
Leaving only the dark ones.
I can also click-and-drag this slider to the right.
You will notice how the dark pixels start disappearing leaving only the bright ones.
So this is a technique that we're going to use in this tutorial.
So, with the background selected I'm going to press Ctrl J on Windows, that's Command
J on the Mac, to duplicate the layer.
And I'm going to drag that above the jet layer, and I'm also going to enable the jet layer.
So you can see, there's the jet.
What I'm going to do now is simply double click to the side of the layer and bring up
the Blend If options and I'll do the same thing.
I'll hide everything in this layer, not the underlying layers, nothing below it, just
the layer that we have currently selected, and click-and-drag on the black point slider
and move it to the right to hide the pixels.
You're going to notice the jet come through and to have smoother transitions and make
it seem more like clouds.
I'm going to hold Alt, Option on the Mac, and click and spread those apart to create
a smoother transition between the visible and invisible pixels.
Then I'll press OK, I can click-and-drag on the jet, and now the jet looks like it's behind
the clouds of the image.
If I disable the background layer you will see that this layer only contains the clouds
and when you bring the background back, it all looks seamless.
So that is the theory behind this technique.
In the next example, I'm going to take it to the next level and show you how you can
use Groups in Layer Mask to make this technique even more useful.
In this image we have two layers.
We have this background image and this foreground element, and what we want to do is make it
seem as if the samurai is standing on this fire.
And we're going to use the same technique.
I'm going to click on the background layer and press Ctrl J, Command J on the Mac, to duplicate.
I'll drag the layer to the top and I'll double click to the side of the layer to bring up
the Layer Style window.
And under Blend If, I'm going to hide everything that is dark and keep the bright pixels.
So I'm going to keep the flames right about here.
I'm going to hold Alt on Windows, Option on the Mac, to split that point in half and create
a smooth transition in between the visible and invisible pixels.
Then I'm going to press OK, and that looks pretty good but you'll notice that there is
one problem.
There's some bright areas that are appearing in front of the samurai's face and obviously
that doesn't look very good.
So, how do we fix that problem?
Really easy.
All we need to do is hold Alt on Windows, Option on the Mac, and click on the Layer
Mask icon to create a black layer mask which hides everything in the layer.
Now, with the Brush tool selected, we can paint with white to reveal the pixels on this layer.
So, I'm going to hold Alt, Option on the Mac, right click-and-drag to the right to make
my brush larger and drag up and down to change the hardness.
So I want a fairly soft brush, right around here, and then I can start painting in the flames.
So now I can selectively paint where the flames are going to affect the samurai.
See that?
See how cool that looks?
If you're liking this technique, don't forget to click on that Like button and let me know
in the comments if you enjoyed it.
But, anyway, this looks much better and we no longer see the white pixels on his face
or any other part of his body.
I can even take this one extra step further.
I can hide his right foot behind the flames.
If I hold Shift and click in the background I select both layers, then I can press Ctrl
G, Command G on the Mac, put those into a Group, I can call the group Samurai, and I'll
click on the Layer Mask icon to add a layer mask.
The layer mask is completely white which means that it reveals the entire contents of the
group, but if I change my foreground color to black and I paint, I hide pixels, so I
can hide this foot so that this foot is completely consumed by the flame.
And you see in these two layer masks, allow me to create a much more realistic effect.
Now, we can take this even a step further by using a really cool Blending Mode technique.
This is a Blending Mode technique that I showed several years ago and I'm not sure if I was
the first person on YouTube to share it, but I have definitely seen a lot of people showing it now.
So, I'll show it again.
And, that is this technique here.
I'm going to create a layer and I'm going to press Ctrl Alt G to clip it to the layer below.
That means that anything that we place on this layer will only affect the layer below.
Then I'm going to select a bright yellow color like this one, and you know what, maybe I'll
make it even brighter.
Like that bright.
Then with the Brush tool I'm going to make the brush smaller and make it softer, and
I'll paint right here in these areas where the fire is hitting his body, like so.
Then I can double click to the side of the layer and change the Blending Mode to Color
Dodge and if I click on the Transparency Shapes checkbox, notice how the blend changes.
See that?
See how it looks hotter?
It looks more like fire now, so this is the technique that I was talking about that I
showed maybe about two or three years ago, and I've been seeing it a lot lately.
So, here it is again.
But, anyway.
With this Blending Mode you can also change the opacity, but don't use the Opacity.
Use the Fill Opacity which will give you a different result.
See that?
See how it seems like it's not as hot anymore, and the more you drag to the right the hotter it gets?
Look at the difference with the regular Opacity.
Not the same.
So there's eight Blending Modes in Photoshop that give you different results when you change
Opacity or Fill.
If you want to see my tutorial that explains all the Blending Modes.
I'll place a link right below in the description, and that video will teach you everything you
want to know about Blending Modes.
I highly recommend it, so check it out.
But, anyway, you can just use the Fill Opacity to just reduce the intensity of the brightness
of the heat on his pants and that looks much, much more realistic.
I'll press OK and I'll add one last piece to this composite so that it looks more realistic
and we'll use the technique that we learned on a recent tutorial.
I'll select my Smoke brush, I'm just going to use the same color as the smoke that you
see here, so if you hold Alt, Option on the Mac, you get the Eyedropper tool and you can
just click to select whatever color that you like.
So I selected the same color of the smoke.
I can just simply start painting smoke.
So I'll just make my brush larger and I can get mo- more smoke in here, and if you want
to know how to create this brush, of course I have a tutorial right below in the description
where I show you how to make a Photoshop brush from any photo.
But anyway, that is the smoke and if that's too much I'll even reduce the opacity even
further just to barely get a hint of smoke.
And it sort of helps bring the entire composite together.
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Thank you so much for watching.
I will see you again in the next tutorial.