Lessons
Class Introduction
03:50 2Why Not Erase or Delete?
05:27 3Add a Mask
07:13 4Make a Mask From a Selection
04:18 5Select & Mask
07:33 6Automatic Masks
06:21 7The Magic of Overlay
09:39 8Mask with Paste Into
10:31Lesson Info
Make a Mask From a Selection
I realized a number of years ago that I would say, and then you seem to paint with black on your mask. But what that meant is everyone was assuming also have to grab my paintbrush and physically paint with black. And that's not exactly true because it's the active adding black paint. However you get it on, there doesn't matter so very often. Yes, it is your paintbrush. But if I have a whole great big area, I don't want to sit there and paint forever with a little paintbrush, cause that would take a long time. So the other option would be to do something like this, where you start with a tool like your lasso tool. This and again, I'm gonna do a little bit of this thing called Feather, cause I wanted to be softer, and there other ways I would generally do this much money straight. The idea Now here's what's gonna happen if I route right now, said Phil. With Black, I would have a bit of an issue because it would fill the selected area, which means she would disappear. I mean, I could do i...
t, but I'll just show you Phil Black for run color percent click. OK, so that's not upside in Adelaide, Mass first. Oops. Sorry. You know. Sorry. Do that again. That was a very good demonstration there. So do that selection Gan ahead of myself by not adding a layer mask first. Okay, so if I just did my fill now you'll see that it's done this nice job of hiding the wrong part. So when I look at my layer mask in this case, it's really the opposite of what I want. And that's okay because in photo shop is very easy to do the opposite. You just do invert, which in the short cut world is Commander Control I one of the easier shortcuts to remember. So now instead of me taking my paintbrush and go let me paint for three minutes to try and make it look good, I'm saying, make a selection, fill it and then if it's the wrong way round, as it was in this case, use invert the mask. Okay, so that's a very important point, cause I said I remember a few years ago that someone I was commenting and said so every time I'm using a layer mask and I used my pink brush and I was thinking, Well, you don't have to use the paintbrush that just one of the ways to add paint onto the mask. So if you think about that, that's really the key, and we'll look at that Maura's We go where? A lot of the time it just doesn't automatically question. I'm sorry. Somehow I missed your goal in selecting her and then inverting the selection and painting and so forth. What was your ultimate well, ultimately, I still want her to be just visible inside and the areas of the outside the photo. Because if I turned off the mask, you would see you can clearly see that box around her because the colors aren't quite the same. So it's still the same end result. I'm tryingto fit her into this picture, and it's just a different way of getting there. So instead of clicking on the Adler Mass button and painting, So here's another example, and I I have seen people do this, and I always jokingly say they must get paid by the hour because they're doing it the longest way possible. And again, this is in this scenario. It's a little look a little odd, but let's just pretend for the sake of argument that all we really want to show in this small little photo of her standing was just her face. So that means I need to mask everything else except her face. So if I added a layer mask and then went paint paint paint, I'd be painting for quite a while. So sometimes you have to think about getting to your end result in the most efficient way. So for me that would be invert the mask so she's completely hidden. Then take my paintbrush with white and just paint the area that I want. So I still got to the end result, but way faster and it's still the same. Net result is I still have ah, white and black and gray mask, but I've done it in a much simpler way, so very often that's a really important technique where you've got a fairly large photo that you want a mask, everything except one little part. It's a lot quicker to think of it the other way around to think, let me initially hide everything and then just show the part that I want
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Ratings and Reviews
artmaltman
Dave Cross is a superb teacher and this is a superb class. Very clear explanations, well organized, and the demonstrations are spot on. I thought that I already understood masking but really I had just scratched the surface of the topic. Learned a lot of useful techniques. Thanks Dave!
a Creativelive Student
Dave is an amazing instructor and even though this is for beginners he takes you to intermediate. Amazing class learned and learned. Thank you!!!
Tony Walker
Enjoyed the course. Now that I am of an age where I tend to forget more than I remember having this course will help when I want to mask something. I can always come back to a specific video for a reminder. How many folks out there follow a tutorial and think great, then a week later you go back and say how on earth did I do that. Having access to this course is great especially if you are not photoshopping everyday.