Lessons

Lesson Info

Layer Masks

first things first, we're gonna talk about some of these key concepts, and I should also mention, by the way, because a lot of people, whenever they turn into a photo shop class, they're like, Is this beginner or any intermediate? Advanced is this very technical is a very artistic and the answer is yes to all of the above or they previously stated, because for someone who's brand new, this key concept part will give you some background information to make sure you know these kind of key concepts. If you're a lot more of an experienced users, some of this will be your view, and you might see some ways to use them in different ways. And then once we get into the actual techniques that use these key concepts, then it's more just putting things into play and seeing how they work. I'm using the very latest version of photo shop C C 2014. There's only one aspect that I may touch on on here, that is, you need to have this version of Photoshopped almost everything else. You could have just abo...

ut any version. So if it's C, C or C S six or even going back earlier. Nap. The majority of these would work, so I try not to rely on the latest technology. Say you have to have this for this to work there. Maybe, like I said, a couple of rare examples. Generally speaking, it's whatever version of Photoshopped. I tend to use bridge as my way of finding my images on Lee because light room is a very effective tool, certainly. But for my case, where I'm jumping around images all over the place, it just is easier for me to gather them in tow, separate little folders and organize them. But certainly if you are a light from user, everything we're going to talk about could start from light room and then you bring it into photo shop. So they getting it into Photoshopped part really isn't the important part. It's what we're doing with it. Okay, so the first thing I wanna spend a minute or two talking about is is or are layer masks? One of things we were talking about before the class started was there's always multiple ways to do things in photo shop. Now, if you've seen me teach before on creativelive, you know that I'm evangelist of working non destructively. I'm a big believer in doing things in ways that gives you lots of freedom. If you haven't seen me before, then you'll find out very quickly. That's always my approach. So if there's a way that I can do something is going to give me the opportunity to changed my mind. Try different things. Experiment not end up painted into a corner. I always say that I never want to feel in photo shop like I get to point ago. Darn it, I'm kind of stuck now because the way that I went down a path meant I made a decision minutes ago that now is haunting me because I can't change it. I don't have to go back, and I don't want to lose 10 or 15 minutes worth of work. I just want to keep working. So Layer Mass is probably one of the first prime examples of that. So let's do this. I'm just going to do a quick little combination. Just gonna drag her on here, okay? Back. Let's do this. We're gonna add a bit more canvas size. I'm just going to the canvas size command, actually, know what? I'll just use a shortcut. This is a one of those little things in photo shop. It's kind of fun if you don't know about it when you need to extend, I want more canvas on the side. I could go to the canvas size command and then do math and say, I need three more inches of that means. Or if you take the crop tool, most people think of the crop tool is the tool that takes away information. But if I just drag on one side of it and hit enter, it extends the campus that much. So I don't need a specific measurement. I just want that much than I. It's very easy for me to do that. Okay, now. And this is so far has that to do with a layer mask and just getting ready for that aspect. I want to have this same shaded background behind her. They want gonna put in a second, so I'm just going to duplicate this onto a separate layer and then use this command called content aware scale that allows me to keep the same kind of tonality and not lose anything. Do not see any specific kind of seem. So that was just sort of a necessary step for this part. Okay, so let's talk about how the alternative not using a layer mask, some people would say, Well, in a case like that, why not use an eraser or make a selection to hit, delete or use the magic eraser? All of those things removed pixels in a very permanent way. So just as an example, I'm gonna do a very quick one first and just say I'm gonna just take my lasso tool. I want to be a little better than I was trying to make kind of, ah, vague selection. And this is for anyone who is out there taking notes don't like this part down because there's like the way not to do it. But I want the basis of comparison to show you why a layer mask is always a better decision to make. If a this point, I now take that selection, I've made it. I'm gonna add some feather to it. And feathering is a dangerous command because when you go in here, really, it's just on empty dialogue boxes says put in some number and the question is, what number do you put in? And no one really knows. Even people who say they do. They don't really, because it's all just a guess. So I'm gonna guess 60 pixels and that's going to soften the edge of my selection. And right now I have her selected. So I would need to go to the select menu, choose the inverse selection, and now I can press delete one more thing. Hold on one second. Forget about this. We'll just we'll talk about this later on so we don't have to do it right now. Okay, so at first glance, you look and say that looks pretty good. You know, she's nicely blended in. The problem is, when I hit the delete key or used the eraser, I have now removed pixels. So if I'm showing this to her and she says, Oh, I love it, but because people always do that, can you? The one that I'm standing, Can you see the show the full body? So if I use free transform and try and scale down, I've got a bit of a problem because it's not working very well. It's there's parts of it just don't look good and the feathering is gone and I have pretty much start over again. OK, so that's never going to be a good thing if I'm stuck with that kind of situation because I don't want tohave toe start all over again. So instead, if I look at it the other way, let's will have to step backwards a little bit to get back toe this point where I still have the full thing. So the difference is now, I add ah layer mask. Now when you're using a layer mask, it's gonna add to your layer is going to allow you to hide and show the pixels have delete them completely, and there's a couple of different ways of doing it. That one way would simply be, too. Go in and say, I'm just gonna add that layer mask I've got black is my foreground color, 100% opacity and wherever I paint with black, I'm hiding the contents of that layer and just for the purpose of demonstration, let's say that I did decide at first that I only wanted this much of her. Now if I done that again using the eraser or the delete key, I would have been stuck. But the difference is here. If I now hit free, transform and scale her down, the difference is the layer mask is still live. So I can say, Well, that looks weird because now there's a gap in her. It doesn't look quite right. So I need to paint on the layer mask with black on the areas that I want to get rid of like this. But in the middle, where I messed up completely, all I need to do is say that needs to be painted with white. So when I paint here with white, I'm showing her again. So the difference is anything that does a race or delete means you're removing pixels and they're gone. And unless you undo it right away, if you do another 25 minutes worth of work, then the challenge becomes. If you look at it later on, say, I wish I had made that bigger or smaller or different, you're probably going to run into a roadblock of having to go backwards. One thing that a lot of people talk about in a photo shop. When I'm discussing how do you do things in the early days of Photoshopped, there was still there, but I don't really use it very much him or history panel, where it keeps a track of everything you've done. And some people like, Well, I can always go back in history, toe Undo something while the problem is, history is extremely linear. So if you go and you do five steps if you want to change your mind back up here a to you can't just remove to you have to undo all those other steps. Was the layer mask. I could have done all this work and do 10 more steps and then go. You know what? I don't think I like that mask after all and either remove it or edit further or change it or hide it and do all these kind of things. So working with a layer mask to me is we number one on the hit list of things people need to learn how to do because any time I see people who decides gonna grab the eraser and I just shudder involuntarily a little bit and kind of because, you know, at that moment in time it might make perfect sense to erase it. But then what happens on our from now two weeks from now? Six months from now, when you open that file and go, where's the rest of that layer? Oh, right, I erased it. Darn it all is probably what you would say at that time or somewhere to that effect, because now you're kind of in that painted into a corner thing. And I never want to have anyone have that feeling of Gosh, darn it. I can't do what I want to do. This is all about creativity and art and fine art and experimenting, and that's only possible if you set yourself up to do that. Okay, so when we have a layer mask, there's a couple of things that are important to know about. I'm a big fan of keyboard shortcuts because I'm basically lazy. So if I don't have to go and click something with my mouse, I'd rather not. So over time I've started to memorize a little handful of keyboard shortcuts. I happen to use a lot, but for the average person, if you're one of those people that don't tend to use keyboard shortcuts, There's a little collection of keyboard shortcuts with layer masking that are extremely useful to know. The 1st 1 is if you want to see with and without the layer mask. So in other words, you have a layer mask on, and you want to remind yourself what is the rest of that layer? In case I want to change my mind, Hold down the shift key and click on the layer mask. It temporarily hides it. You see the big Red X through It means that layer mask is hidden. This is a toggle switch, meaning it will stay this way until you change it back again. So if I close and save the file right now this way, the next time I open it, the layers panel would look just like this and I would have the ability to go. All right. There is a layer mask there so I can turn it back on again. Sometimes we want to view the layer mask is when you're just doing that painting of black or white. You want to really see, Did I get kind of the detail that I want to view the layer mask you hold down option or Ault and click once on the layer mask thumbnail. And then that actually lets you view where that what the layer mass looks like and that will become extremely important for a lot of the techniques will be using where we want to paced something onto the layer. Master, use it as a design element. We can only do that if we're viewing the layer mask. Okay, The other one that I use all the time is when I'm painting on the layer mask, I often switch between paint with black to hide and paint with white to show. So instead of doing that any other way, that involves effort. Earlier I went and I clicked over here to do it because I want to see where it was. But when I'm really working, I just press the letter X cooler. X swaps them back and forth. So that way you can focus your attention on what you're doing, which is I'm painting on the mask and I'm not worrying about with color m I. I just know at a quick glance, Aiken, look over there but keep painting and just keep pressing X to swap the colors back and forth. Now, when we start incorporating layer mask in some of our projects, then I'll talk about a couple other little extra shortcuts that you might use along the way. Um, at this point, since I talked a little bit about those extra keys and Photoshopped, let me just reiterate the fact that I really believe that learning keyboard shortcuts, which are useful for you, is important because the bigger your monitor, the more time you're spending going. Click on this tool, Come back here ago over. Click on That, too, will come back here unless you're wearing a Fitbit and you're getting extra exercise in there somehow. Should I say that on the air Fitbit. A trademark of, uh, you know what? That's wasting our time so free, even because people I teach people like I can never remember. Keyboard shortcuts always forget them. So here's where you start the tools. If you came over any other shortcut, just remember that tools have shortcut letters and it just a single letter. So it's not. You have to worry about commander control or optional is just the letter, that's it. And most of them are very logical, like be for brush, see for crop Tiefer type M for marquee. So fairly quickly you start realizing if I'm working over here and I've got the brush tool, but I need the lasso tool. I'm just gonna press the letter l and keep my mouse in exactly the same position. So that's saving me a ton of time because I'm not having to leave where I am to go click on a tool just to use it for, like, a few seconds. So again, I'm not going to suggest that you need to memorize every single tool there is on all those shortcuts. But look at the ones you use on a regular basis and say to yourself, That's the 14th time that I've gone over and clicked on the brush tool. And if I can remember be for brush, just that one thing is going to save you some time. So throughout this three days you'll often see something where the letter will flash on my screen because we're showing what the keyboard shortcuts are. And that's just me, trying to save time by clicking instead of clicking on a tool using the shortcut for that tool. And if you're ever unsure of what they are. Each tool shows you beside eye for eye dropper and be for brush. You'll see that the same letter is shared by all these tools. So what happens in this case, if I've got some other tool and I pressed be, I'll get the brush tool. But if it's not the right tool that I want, this is where you do have to add a single shortcuts. Shift B will now scroll through the various tools that share that same shortcut, and however you leave it like right now it's on the mixer brush tool. So from now on, if I switch away to some other tool and come back and press be, it'll go to the mixer brush because that's the last one I used. I talked about this in almost every class. I teach what Photoshopped has extremely long memory, so we'll leave things the way you left them. So if I was to quit Photoshopped now and relaunch it two days from now, pressing B would be the mixer brush, because that's the way I last used it. So one of things we have to remember is that always happens in photo shop remembers every tool setting. So if you use the paintbrush two weeks ago had some really kind of weird combination of brush and opacity and other setting, it'll keep doing that until you tell it otherwise. Okay, so that's kind of a key factor for us in terms of doing things is shortcuts and then incorporating that in everything you're doing. Like I just showed you with the layer mask. I'm not remembering. Oh, yeah, I need to go and switch the color between foreground and background. I'm just pressed in the letter. I talked about this before, but I firmly believe that our fingers get their own little muscle memory because sometimes I'm not even consciously thinking right now. I need to press the letter X. It's just happening because as I'm working, my brain is communicating with my finger going X b m. You know, that happens over time. It's not gonna happen immediately, But the more you do it, the more you'll start. Those things will become habits. Okay, so layer mass will become one of the things that's extremely important as we're working away on different projects