Adobe® Photoshop® CC® Bootcamp

Lesson 117 of 118

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

Adobe® Photoshop® CC® is a valuable tool for photographers, but it can also be intimidating. In this all-inclusive 20 lesson course, you’ll go from opening the program for the first time to creating images that really stand out. Join Blake Rudis, Photoshop® expert and founder of f64 Academy, as he shows you how to maximize your use of Photoshop®. Topics covered will include:

Week 1
• Class Introduction & Bridge, Adobe Camera Raw, Setup Interface, Cropping and Layers
Week 2
• Layer Tools, Masks, Selections, Clean-Up Tools and Shapes & Text
Week 3
• Smart Objects , Transforming, Actions, Filters and Editing Video
Week 4
• Custom Creative Effects, Natural Retouching, Portrait Workflow, Landscape Workflow, and Composite Workflow

Don’t let the many aspects of Photoshop® prevent you from maximizing your use of this amazing app. Blake will help you develop the confidence to use your imagination and create the images that you will be proud to share with your clients.

Software Used: Adobe® Photoshop® CC® 2018

Lessons

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Reviews

a Creativelive Student

Amazing course, but don't be fooled into thinking this is a beginner's course for photographers. The problem isn't Blake's explanations; they're top. The problem is the vast scope of this course and the order in which the topics are presented. Take layers for example. When I was first learning Photoshop (back when we learned from books), I found I learned little or nothing from, for example, books that covered layers before they covered how to improve/process photographs. These books taught me how to organize, move, and link layers before they showed me what a layer was actually for. Those books tended to teach me everything there is to know about layers (types of layers, how to organize them, how to move them, how to move them two at a time, how to move them two at a time even if there are other layers between the two you're interested in, useful troubleshooting tips, etc. ) all before I even know (from a photographer's point of view) what it is the things actually do. The examples of organizing, linking, and moving mean everything for graphic designers from Day One, but for photographers not so much. Blake does the same thing as those books. Topics he covers extremely early demand a lot of theoretical imagination for a photographer who doesn't already know quite a bit about what he is talking about. Learning about abstract things first and concrete things later only makes PS that much harder to understand. If you AREN'T a beginner, however, this course is amazing. I thought it would be like an Army Bootcamp, taking you from zero and building you into a fit, competent Photoshop grunt. Now I think it's more like Army Bootcamp for high school varsity jocks. It isn't going to take you from the beginning, but the amount you'll get out of it is nonetheless more than your brain can imagine. I've been using PS for years to improve my photographs, and even to create the odd artistic composite or two. The amount I've learned in the first week is amazing, and every day I learn something -- more like many things -- which I immediately implement to improve my productivity and/or widen the horizons of what I can achieve. If you ARE a photographer who's a Photoshop beginner, I'd take very seriously the advice Blake gives in the introduction: Watch one lesson, and practice the skills and principles you learn in that one lesson for two weeks. THEN watch the next lesson. You can't do that of course without buying the course, so it's up to you to decide whether you'd like to learn Photoshop and master Photoshop all from the same course. Learning it first and mastering it later will cost more money, but I think you'll understand everything better and have a much more enjoyable ride in the process. As for me? I'm going to have to find the money to buy this course. There is simply way too much content in each lesson for me to try to take on all at once, but on the other hand I don't want to miss anything at all that he has to share.

Esther Gambrell

WOW!!! I've been purchasing CL classes for several years now and have watched HOURS of "How-To Photoshop" classes, but this is the first one I've actually purchased because of the AWESOME BONUS content!!! SERIOUSLY??!!?!? A PLUG-IN??? But not only that, Blake is SO easy to understand, and he breaks down concepts in different ways to connect with different people's learning styles. I REALLY appreciated this approach because I am a LEFT-BRAINED creative that has an engineering background, so I really connected to what Blake was saying. THANK YOU FOR THAT! There are TONS of Photoshop courses out there, but I found this one to be the most helpful in they way Blake teaches concepts so that you know WHY you're doing what your doing. I feel like he taught me how to fish with Photoshop to feed me for a lifetime instead of just giving me a fish to feed me for one day. This is the BEST overall PS course out there!!! Thank you!!!!

Sonya Messier

I'm been using Bridge, Adobe Raw and Photoshop for 12 years. I thought I knew those programs until I started to follow Blake and do this Photoshop CC Bootcamp. This course is AMAZING. I love the way Blake teach, brakes down concepts and tools... excellent teaching qualities! I'm half way in this course and I change all my workflow already. Much better results and better use of what Adobe offer me. This course is an investment! When I will be done, I will listen it again. Great job and congratulations on your success Blake!

1,500+ classes ranging from fundamentals to advanced techniques.

Adobe® Photoshop® CC® Bootcamp

Bonus: The Mask (Extras)

Class Description

Lessons

a Creativelive Student

Esther Gambrell

Sonya Messier