Bonus: The Mask (Extras)

Lesson Info

Bonus: The Mask (Extras)

I talked a lot about masks but one thing that I was remiss in doing was talking about masks as their own individual object. So I'm gonna go ahead and open up this image. And let's say I want to add a vignette to this. So I'm gonna go ahead and just make a solid color fill. Fill it with black. Turn the opacity to soft light or overlay. Let's just leave it normal actually. And drop this opacity down. The mask right here, if I wanted to make a vignette, I would paint with a brush on there with black to make that hole for the vignette. A lot of times, though, if I paint right here and do this, what happens is if you look at the mask if I press ALT or Option and look at that mask, it's going over and over spraying the edges of that mask. So if I try to move that around what's gonna happen is you're gonna see a hard edge on that mask. So sometimes what you can do to alleviate that is let's just go back a little bit before we made the mask. I'm gonna make a very small brush, something like th...

is big. And make a spot like that. Now if I go back to there it's a very small vignette, right? Well there's a chain-link right here. If I click on this chain-link and unlink that mask and I click on this mask, guess what, I can resize the mask. I can press CMD- or CTRL-T on the mask and make it larger. See that. Individually modifying the mask outside of the image. Now if I press V and move that around it knows no bounds outside and I don't have the hard edge. So instead of starting with a big brush on that vignette look that we have going on there, we can start with a small brush and make it larger and we're independently modifying this mask from its layer. But just know that if they're unlinked and you start moving things around it might start doing some funny things. So make sure you link 'em back together once you unlink it and get it to where you want it to be. What happens within linked and an unlinked mask is that you can move the mask or you can move the layer individually from one another and they won't move. We saw this in the compositing tutorial when we were looking at the sky that we were puttin' in the background. We wanted to move it around. Same thing here. A mask can also be modified just like a regular layer can. If I ALT or Option and click on this mask, looking at this and how it's a very low contrast, or I guess it's maybe high contrast and very dark, very light and the gradation in between, so it's got a lot of contrast in it, if I wanted to reduce that contrast I could just click on the mask itself, go to Image, Adjustments and Curves and use a curve on the mask. Make that mask bigger or smaller. What we can also do with that mask is we can go to Filter, Blur, Gaussian Blur and I can blur it even more. You can blur a mask, you can use filters on masks 'cause masks are essentially a pixel-based object not a vector-based object so you can use certain filters on masks as well. So if I wanted to blur that even more to about here, because the brush setting that I had wasn't necessarily what I wanted, could blur it a bit little more, blur it a little bit less and have access to that mask independently outside of the layer itself. So with the mask it can be treated just like a layer and it can be moved around. And a lot of times by making a smaller brush for that vignette and then making it larger is better 'cause if we just made the brush inside that very large, we're gonna get hard edges on there and it's gonna be more difficult for us to move around that vignette. That's just one approach to that. So if I were to delete this and maybe make a layer mask, let's see, something like a midtone mask and I press ALT or Option and I look at that mask I can modify this mask further. So yeah, you have luminosity masking here but what if I want that to be a higher or lower contrast mask? Just by clicking on that mask I can go to Image, Adjustments, Levels or Curves, let's do levels on this one, and I can make that mask darker and start reducing the amount of the effect that those midtones are. Now I'm basically saying midtones are no longer this area. Midtones are not gonna contain any of that area. We're gonna spread it down to here. So now if I were to adjust that luminosity mask there's gonna be much less of an effect on those midtone areas. So yeah, I've set you up with a baseline for your luminosity mask, for your highlights, your midtones and your shadows but you can make them even more restrictive by going into the contrast of those masks either by using levels or curves.

Class Description

Lessons

1. Bootcamp Introduction
2. The Bridge Interface
3. Setting up Bridge
4. Overview of Bridge
5. Practical Application of Bridge
6. Introduction to Raw Editing
7. Setting up ACR Preferences & Interface
8. Global Tools Part 1
9. Global Tools Part 2
10. Local Tools
11. Introduction to the Photoshop Interface
12. Toolbars, Menus and Windows
13. Setup and Interface
14. Adobe Libraries
15. Saving Files
16. Introduction to Cropping
17. Cropping for Composition in ACR
18. Cropping for Composition in Photoshop
19. Cropping for the Subject in Post
20. Cropping for Print
21. Perspective Cropping in Photoshop
22. Introduction to Layers
23. Vector & Raster Layers Basics
24. Adjustment Layers in Photoshop
25. Organizing and Managing Layers
26. Introduction to Layer Tools and Blend Modes
27. Screen and Multiply and Overlay
28. Soft Light Blend Mode
29. Color and Luminosity Blend Modes
30. Color Burn and Color Dodge Blend Modes
31. Introduction to Layer Styles
32. Practical Application: Layer Tools
33. Introduction to Masks and Brushes
34. Brush Basics
35. Custom Brushes
36. Brush Mask: Vignettes
37. Brush Mask: Curves Dodge & Burn
38. Brush Mask: Hue & Saturation
39. Mask Groups
40. Clipping Masks
41. Masking in Adobe Camera Raw
42. Practical Applications: Masks
43. Introduction to Selections
44. Basic Selection Tools
45. The Pen Tool
46. Masks from Selections
47. Selecting Subjects and Masking
48. Color Range Mask
49. Luminosity Masks Basics
50. Introduction to Cleanup Tools
51. Adobe Camera Raw
52. Healing and Spot Healing Brush
53. The Clone Stamp Tool
54. The Patch Tool
55. Content Aware Move Tool
56. Content Aware Fill
57. Custom Cleanup Selections
58. Introduction to Shapes and Text
59. Text Basics
60. Shape Basics
61. Adding Text to Pictures
62. Custom Water Marks
63. Introduction to Smart Objects
64. Smart Object Basics
65. Smart Objects and Filters
66. Smart Objects and Image Transformation
67. Smart Objects and Album Layouts
68. Smart Objects and Composites
69. Introduction to Image Transforming
70. ACR and Lens Correction
71. Photoshop and Lens Correction
72. The Warp Tool
73. Perspective Transformations
74. Introduction to Actions in Photoshop
75. Introduction to the Actions Panel Interface
76. Making Your First Action
77. Modifying Actions After You Record Them
78. Adding Stops to Actions
79. Conditional Actions
80. Actions that Communicate
81. Introduction to Filters
82. ACR as a Filter
83. Helpful Artistic Filters
84. Helpful Practical Filters
85. Sharpening with Filters
86. Rendering Trees
87. The Oil Paint and Add Noise Filters
88. Introduction to Editing Video
89. Timeline for Video
90. Cropping Video
91. Adjustment Layers and Video
92. Building Lookup Tables
93. Layers, Masking Video & Working with Type
94. ACR to Edit Video
95. Animated Gifs
96. Introduction to Creative Effects
97. Black, White, and Monochrome
98. Matte and Cinematic Effects
99. Gradient Maps and Solid Color Grades
100. Gradients
101. Glow and Haze
102. Introduction to Natural Retouching
103. Brightening Teeth
104. Clean Up with the Clone Stamp Tool
105. Cleaning and Brightening Eyes
106. Advanced Clean Up Techniques
107. Introduction to Portrait Workflow & Bridge Organization
108. ACR for Portraits Pre-Edits
109. Portrait Workflow Techniques
110. Introduction to Landscape Workflow & Bridge Organization
111. Landscape Workflow Techniques
112. Introduction to Compositing & Bridge
113. Composite Workflow Techniques
114. Landscape Composite Projects
115. Bonus: Rothko and Workspace
116. Bonus: Adding Textures to Photos
117. Bonus: The Mask (Extras)
118. Bonus: The Color Range Mask in ACR