Skip to main content

Advanced Layer and Masking Techniques

Lesson 18 from: Photoshop for Photographers

Ben Willmore

Advanced Layer and Masking Techniques

Lesson 18 from: Photoshop for Photographers

Ben Willmore

buy this class

$00

$00
Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2200+ more >

Lesson Info

18. Advanced Layer and Masking Techniques

Lesson Info

Advanced Layer and Masking Techniques

Well, what I'd like to get into next is talking about adjusting color with curves and getting a little bit more into adjustment layers. So yesterday we talked a bit about adjustment layers, and we worked on one particular image an image of an old radio and an antique fan. And I have that image open now and before we get into adjusting color using curves, I just want O see what we have in this file and show you a little bit more than what you could do with adjustment layers. So let's take a look. So the way I usually work is the bottom. Most layer in my layers panel is always my original picture, and I never changed that layer. And that way, if I ever screw up anything where I decide after making a print that I made some sort of change I didn't like, I can always get rid of it because the original image is always there at the bottom, then above that, we have all of my adjustment layers, and the way the layers work is isas. If you're standing at the top of the layers panel looking down i...

n order to see this original images that that is at the bottom. You have these things, the adjustment layers that are blocking your view in each one of those adjustment layers. If all they're doing is brightening or darkening your image, it's kind of like having sunglasses between you and your image. It's darkening the image, but it's not applying to everything. The mask is saying it can apply to the whole image. It can only apply to certain areas. But whenever I do this, if I add a new adjustment, I always had the new adjustment to the top of the stack. The top of the stack is what is thought of as being applied last. If, on the other hand, I put an adjustment, a new adjustment underneath one of these, it could be somewhat unpredictable. How it acts because it's acting on Onley, what's underneath it and not what's on top, and it can make it confusing us to how things are working. But if you always make sure your top layer is active before you add a new adjustment layer, then you won't get uh, weird looking and results because it will be thought of as being applied after these. So let's take a look at a little bit more about adjustment layers. Remember, you can turn off the eyeball icon on anyone to disable it, to see what it looked like before, and so I could come down here and turn off each one of these and you see what the image looked like as it progressed. Once I get to the bottom, you see the original picture, and you can also click on an eyeball. Use. Drag up the calm if you want to turn on a bunch of them to see the difference. The keyboard shortcut that I used yesterday for quickly hiding all those extra layers in on Lee showing the original was to move my mouse onto the eyeball icon for the original image and then hold down the option key Ultima Windows and just click on it that will quickly turn off all the other eyeballs. All you're seeing is the original picture. When I option click it a second time, it will turn those layers back on, and so I can see what kind of changes made to this picture. And yesterday my screen was not adjusted and it was overly dark so it was hard for me to kind of see what I was doing. And so now when I look at the same image today, I see that this area in the upper right is darker than the area on the left. I would have gotten those to look just right now that had it known, but I didn't have a great view of my image with any one of these adjustments. If you just glance in your layers pill and you look at a mask, it's on Lee, where the mask is white, that it's allowing the adjustment to apply. So if I just glanced down these masks, I can sell what each layer is working on. This one here is working on the edge of the picture, so that's me vignette ing or darkening the edge. This one here is working on the right side of the picture, but not the fan, because I can see the shape of the fan there because only the white areas are where the adjustment applies. This once the upper right corner on so on. So if I wanted to tone down the adjustment that is adjusting, this would right here, I think is a little bit too dark. I could just glance at those thumbnails in Look for the one that has just this area and white in the in the thumb now. So if I just glance up all these, it's got to be this layer here. Most likely doesn't it look like that's the one that would isolate that area? So I make that active, and if I want a lesson, the adjustment, I have two ways I could do that. The first way is I could change the adjustment itself in a quick way. To look at the adjustment is double click on the thumbnail image or the little icon that represents curves. If you double click there, it should bring up that adjustment, and I could take the DOT that's darkening the image and just move it up. Remember, it's like a dimmer switch, so it just means that dimmers been moved down too far if it was too dark. So that's one way I could do it. The other way I could do it is if I want a lesson adjustment Without adjustment active. I could click on the word opacity at the top of my layers panel. Just click there and drag towards the left, and that will lower the opacity in less than that adjustment. And so if it's too strong, like, knew that, let's talk a little bit more about the masks. I was really sloppy when working on these masks, and we're going to see that in a few minutes. Here, let's see what we can do to a mask when you grab the paint brush tool and you're working on adjustment layer. Most of the time you want the paint that you're putting in to go into the mask. And if the last thing you had done was create that adjustment layer, the mask would automatically be active. But if the last thing you did was switched, what Layer is active like I just did, I switched. Which one of these adjustment layers is active? That might not be the case if you look here, the way you can tell what is active is by where there's kind of little brackets on the corners of things, and do you see it right here and it's not over here on the mask. That means if I grab the paint brush tool right now, my paint most likely won't go into the mask. So if you switch between the layers, be sure you click on the mask to get those little corners to appear on the mask so that it's active. And if you grab the paint brush tool, that's where your pain goes. So if you're switching between the layers, you might want to just be clicking on the masks instead of the name of the layer or over here on the other side. If you just click on the mask each time you change layers, you know it's gonna stay active in there for your paint will go where you expect it to. I can disable the mask temporarily turn it off to see what the adjustment that's in that layer would look like if it applied to the entire picture. So what I do is I go to any mask and I hold down the shift key with the shift key held down, I click within the mask thumbnail in my layers panel. So right now I'm holding shift and I'm gonna click right in that mask. And now the image change. So it looks to me like this particular adjustment is brightening the picture. And when I turned the mask off instead of only brightening the radio, it's frightening the entire picture. And so I could do that just to see if I would like to paint some more on that mask to maybe having applied to other areas. But holding down shift and clicking on a mask will disable the mask, temporarily, allowing that adjustment to affect the whole image. You'll see a big red X through it so you know it's turned off to turn it back on. You hold shift again, you click on it. So shift ISS the disable or re enable. You could also view the contents of the mask. This little thumbnail you see in your layers panel is just a small representation of your mask. The actual mask is the same. Size is your picture, and if you want to see it over here where your picture is, you can hold down the option key Ntamack, Alton Windows and you click on the mask. Now I'm looking at it, and that's a really good thing to do when you think you're done with your document. Because if I look at that mask I'm not done painting in it. I can see gaps in between my paint strokes where I can see some kind of grayish white coming through and so I can grab my paint brush right now, get a bigger enough brush and is coming here and cover up any little gaps that I can see in my paint strokes. I also notice down here, usually if I have an area like that on the edge My picture, it means I had a panel open like the actual adjustment panel where I was adjusting my curve and it was covering up that part of the picture. And so I didn't know I didn't get paint down there unless I remember trying to adjust that part of the picture. And then here I see the shape of this, And to me, it doesn't quite look like the shape of a radio. I don't remember the radio doing that in the corner. Right. So the way I got this to be visible is I held on the option key ultimate windows, and I clicked on the thumbnail for the mask. That's the same way you stop viewing it. So now I might know that that mask was extending beyond the radio down over in this area so I could paint with Black right now and possibly edit that mass a little better. But wouldn't it be nice to be able to see both the mask and the picture at the same time? Because then I could see how the mask lines up with the picture and see how accurate it waas. You can do that with any of one of these adjustment layers active on my keyboard. Right above the return of the enter key is the backslash key, not the Ford Slash that you use when you access websites and you type in the girls for the other one, the one you never hit. It's right above the returner. Enter Watch what happens when I press it now. All it did was take the mask and overlay it. On top of the picture is a red overlay, and I can paint while it's in this view, and as long as the mask has it, it's little corners highlighted. It means the mask is active so that any paint that I put on, that's where it's gonna go. It's not gonna go on the actual picture, and I could come in here, he and modify the mask to say, Hey, that should be a little closer to the radio, maybe across the top here, too. And you could always switch your foreground and background colors. If you paint with black, it'll add where the red stuff is. The red stuff indicates we're not adjusting the picture, and where the picture looks normal is where the adjustment is applying, and I can see a little red over spray onto the radio. You can see that little red over spread so I could switch my foreground and background colors to paint with white and that I could come in here and say, Get off of that area Sometimes that cheat, if I click right here and I hold the shift key and I click right here, it will draw a straight line for me between those two spots. And so if you ever have any straight lines in your picture, you can click on one edge of it, hold down, shift and then click on the other. There. I think I went just a little too far up. So choose undo shift and so shift clicking connects the dots between where you click once and where you click a second time, so it could be kind of nice. When you're done viewing the red overlay, you compress the backslash key a second time and you're back to viewing the image as you normally would. So what I would suggest you do is after you work an image like this is go to each one your masks and maybe hit that backslash key. You might have wanted to do it right after you were done painting on the mask just to confirm that you painted where you thought you did. And you can see things like right here. I can see where the mask is. Not quite. Doesn't look solid in, so I can come over here and paint with black Black adds to the red stuff and just say, OK, fill that in. I can't sell. There might have been some stuff in there, that kind of thing. Um, I can do that. I can also option clip the mask and see if there's any gaps in my paint strokes because it's very common to get him and I could go up to the next mask option. Click on it. And I don't know if I wanted that little gap there so I might turn off that mask by option, clicking on it and just watch that area where the gap was and say, Is there any reason for that? May I see it as a color overlay with backslash and say, Is there any reason for that little gap? It was seen? No, it looks like I was just sloppy. So come in here and paint with white. Get that to more accurately reflect the area that I was attempting to adjust. And I think that Gap was down here. So paint with black and see if that looks different as I paint across it. And yes, it does. Your mass don't have to look perfect because other people are not going to see them. But the masks can tell you where you should inspect your image to see if they need to be more accurate. When I'm painting, I'm frequently pressing the letter X X exchanges my foreground and background colors, so I change from paying with black, depending with white. So if I want to take away from the mask, I could do it quickly. I hit the letter X and I'm adding to it. So we have these little corners, that kind of thing. When I'm done, I hit the same key that I used to get the overlay, which is the backslash key. So I go to each one of my mask. I hit back Slash to say, How does it line up with stuff? I was real sloppy on some of these and I come in and say Alright, fine. I need to fill in some of these areas that I didn't get. Remember with masks, though you don't have to use your paintbrushes your only way of doing things. You can use things like the quick selection tool and you can come in here in selecting area. And yesterday I had some keyboard shortcuts written on the board. I don't know if you got them written down or not, but the one for filling with your foreground color was option delete. That's, Ah, old backspace and windows so I could type that and I can come in here and make selections of various things option delete to get it to fill in the mask. We could talk for weeks about making mass accurate things. It's it all depends how, UM who the client is as far as you're doing things for and how picky they are. Some people are the kind of clients I'd love to have. They're not picky, and you just be really fluid with it. I'm the pickiest client you'll ever run into. And if you look at some my other images, you'll see my mask could be crazy. Detailed. So anyway, when I'm done, I think I'm I've cleaned it up. Option. Click on it to view it to see if there's any gaps in my paint, strokes or other things I couldn't see because oftentimes there are, and I'll come in there with my brush and fix him. This could use a lot of fixing in various areas, but I'll option. Click each one of those masks to double check. There's not any big surprises in them. Makes sense overall. So what was it? Shift? Click a mask. To disable it, you get the red X ray option. Click a mask, which is all clicking and windows to view it directly, backslash with a mask to view it as a colored overlay. Now If you want to remember this over here on the board, it talks about masks and remember that the little corners mark tells you what's active. So if it's not active, click on the mask in your layers panel to make it active. Ah, you shift Click the mass to disable it. Option click to view it. Backslash for overlay. Uh, I haven't talked about this, but you can command click on a mask to load. It is a selection where the areas that are being adjusted will suddenly be selected the will of marching ants around him that indicates a selection. I mean, if you want to see on my screen real quick, I will just move my mouse on top of one of the, uh, masks. Hold down the command key, which is controlling windows and click on it. See, I got a selection click. I know no one, and I could do that to each one. That could be useful. If you want to do, let's say, a blur filter on that area. Well, you got it selected. Or if you want to make a new adjustment and have it only affect the same area as one of your others command, click on the mask. So that's what this talks about Command. Clicking on the mask loads. It is a selection. In addition to that, you could hold down the shift key, and it would add to a selection that was already on your screen. Or you could hold down the option key, which is Alton Windows to take away from a selection that's already on your screen. So if you used one of the other selection tools sometimes as useful sometimes that's great tohave. Then I made a little illustration for you. You can see my amazing drawing skills. You know why I like light painting where I use a flashlight, and I could be really basic instead of other things. This represents how layers work. It's is if you're standing at the top, that's your eyeball looking down. Yeah, and these are your layers. The bottom is the original picture, usually directly above my original picture. I have retouching that's usually the layer sitting there out of habit. I call that layer weeds be gone. I think of it is pulling the weeds in my picture. Um, on top of that, I went, What's that doing there. I'll have various adjustment layers, and it's is if your eyeballs at the top of the layers panel looking down in order to see original picture, you have to look through these things to see it in these air, like different various colored filters or sunglasses or something else, which would be adjustment layers. The mask makes it so doesn't affect everything. And so that's why we always want to put our new adjustment layers on top so that they Onley apply to what's underneath it. And it applies in a way that makes sense. If I add one down here, then it's hard to predict what you're gonna get because these air no longer going to be seen what they used to see underneath. You're gonna be changing what they're viewing. And it could be unpredictable if I put my retouching here than the adjustment layers affect the retouching as well, and everything works fine. The problem is, if I create a new layer up here on top and I put my retouching here and then later on, I make a print of my image or something, and I decide Hey, this adjustment layer right here is darkening the image too much. So I change it well. Now these retouching bits will no longer match what's underneath because what's underneath has been brightened because you change something that was underneath. If, on the other hand, rear retouching is directly above the original image, it's the layer immediately above it. You can change these adjustment layers as much as you want. The only affect what's underneath it, and they'll affect that retouching and the original picture. So it looks fine. It's if you put your retouching on top that now any change you make toe what's underneath will make it so that retouching long longer matches what's underneath. If the brightness of what's underneath changes, then the retouching won't fit in with that. So I put my retouching directly above the original image. We'll talk about that when we get into retouching. Yeah, this really silly dragon move it. Does it readjust? If you drag the layer up or down in the layers panel, it will recalculate. It'll say. OK, what am I now looking at underneath? What does that look like? Little reapply. And so if you change the stacking order with layers and their adjustment layers that you're changing, they can look different. I mean, if you want to see an example, I'll just do this, See if it helps it all. I'm going to apply an adjustment layer that takes all the color out of the image black and white. Okay, I won't even move the sliders. Then I'm going to apply another adjustment layer that is called photo filter photo filter access. If you put a colored filter in front of your lens so it's gonna add color. Let's make it so. It's a little different than the original. All I did was click on the square to get that color picker. Okay, so it converted to black and white, and then it did a photo filter, which added color. Now, if I change the stacking order of these layers, well, if the black and white layer goes on top, it's gonna be thought of applied last, So we can't have this color still in it then. So if I drag this to the top, the black and white is done after it added the the photo filter, the blue in effect. And so the results looked effort right? And then, if I drag you know some of these others around, it's gonna look different. So I always put new adjustments on top. So they're thought of being applied after the other stuff, and I try not to change the stacking order of those layers unless ever really good reason for it. Sometimes they'll be a really good reason. Or sometimes it won't matter, because a particular adjustment is Onley affecting this tiny area over here. In the other, adjustment layers are not, and therefore it's not gonna matter if you move it. But as a general statement, I put new adjustments on the top of my layers stack and I try not to change the order of them. And if I put retouching in my image, I will try put the retouching directly above the background layer. In that way, all these adjustment layers are applied to that retouching, and I can always add to or take away from the retouching. And it works fine. If I put it up on top, I end up with some issues which try to show you once we get into retouching. Is that red overlay? Always read like I was happy. I was thinking about your clown picture where there was a lot of red. It would be a little. It's just the default. If I I don't usually have to change its, it'll take me a moment to remember where the heck it is. I thought maybe if I double clicked on it, it would bring up the options for it. I double clicked on. I see the options, but I'm not seeing the setting for color folks online. We're asking that question. There is a setting for what color the mask is. Here's a choice called mask options. It might be in there. Yes, it is. So what I did is I double click on the mask, which brought up this, which are the settings for that mask. And this is new to photo shop CS six. This was laid out differently, and CS five. So it'll be a little different when you double click on a mask and CS five. It might just pop up a window that lets you change the color. I know in a previous version, at least a few versions ago, it did so anyway, I double click that causes this to come up. Then I went to the side menu of this and shows masked options in this came up. This tells you what color is gonna use and how much you can see through it. And I'm guessing with older versions, especially two versions old. Just double clicking on the mask would have brought up that, uh, all right, any other quick questions about what we've done before I get into curves? Yes, there are questions. Question from Seascape. When defining a masks, should it be slightly inside the object to avoid halos? What is the best way to not have hills in the image is picking properly? Uh, well, picking the softness of your brush such that it matches the object your painting around. If the object your painting around has an absolutely Chris badge on it, you want a brush with darner and absolutely crisp edge. If the object your painting on is out of focus, then it needs a soft edge and you need a soft edged brush. On this image. I permit primarily used to soft edged brush, which is not necessarily the best. The problem is, as you get the harder edged brushes, it becomes more critical to be precise, softer edged brushes. You can be generic somewhat s o. I use soft edge brushes on this one just so that I could keep things simple when I was describing things and you'll see on some of my other images that I opened that My mask. They're very precise. Oftentimes they were made with selections that I filled instead of pain. Okay, well, phone that from Nico. Ha. Uh, how can I just modify the cutouts of multiple masks that have the same cutouts at the same time? You can't adjust more than one mascot a time, but once you're done adjusting one painting on it or whatever you can command, click on the thumbnail for it, and that's how it loads it into a selection. Then click on another mask and use that selection when you're painting toe limit where your paint shows up or used that selection and filled with black or filled with white, and then you can get some of the same shapes. Um, that kind of stuff you can if you want to see something kind of special. Here's something you can do that might do some of what they're looking for. Let's say that I want to limit more than one adjustment to, let's say, the radio. What I could do is I can go to the bottom of my layers panel and click on the folder icon that will create what's known as a new group. Then I can take one or more of these adjustment layers and dragged them onto that newly created group. When I do that, they're gonna become indented to show that they're part of the folder there. Inside, if I close a little a little triangle next to the folder, you'd see them go away and you can expand them. So what I did there is. I had a folder clicked by the folder icon. I dragged some of the adjustment layers on top of the newly created folder in Now, at the bottom of My Layers panel, there's an icon that is a circle inside of a rectangle right here that would add a mask to the folder. And then if I paint on that mask, what it would do is limit all of the adjustment layers that are inside there. For some of you that will be like your brain will melt. Seeing that you're like what the hook. But for others of you that have done this for a while and you're like, Oh, yeah, I'm used to mask you'll be like, Oh, cool, I can do that, you know, so depends on what? Use your level you're at right now. If your brain just want look, did he dio? Then ignore it and come back and watch this later on after you used to using the more. But if you've used them for a while, it could be really helpful to put some of them in a group and then mass the group. If I'm asked this group so that I painted on the fan, let's say then none of the adjustment layers within that folder could affect the fan, that kind of thing. So I don't know if that would help him or not, but it's an idea. Great. You want to take one more quick question? No. Sure, this is from slinger photog. Do use the pen tool anymore for making selections, and are there any advantages? I do use the pen tool end. The pen tool is very useful for selecting man made objects that have straight lines and smooth curves. Cars, dressers, that kind of stuff. But the pen tool is not a casual tool, meaning that you commit yourself to the pen tool to learn it. Or it's one of those tools that you're kind of like. Some people are really good at the pencil, but I suck at it, and that's how most people are with the pencil there. Either use it every day and you're really darn good at it or you use it every once in a while and you really terrible at it. And there's little in between. I find they made some changes in photo shop CS six that I really dislike with the pen tool, and I find that I use it a little bit less and see a six because they took out some. They tried to make it simpler by taking out some of its power. Um, and so I use it a little less, But you have pencils great for man made objects, straight lines, smooth curves. Be very nice thing to learn

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Bens Actions.zip
Ben Willmore creativeLIVE Class Files Day 1.zip
Ben Willmore creativeLIVE Class Files Day 2.zip

Ratings and Reviews

Jim Pater
 

I taught Photoshop (version 5) to graphic design students at the college level. I had great fun teaching. This is the perfect course to show others how they might go about teaching a Photoshop course. Congratulations Ben, on your excellent teaching style and methods. I thought I already knew quite a bit about Photoshop but this course made me aware that there's always more that you can learn.

Student Work

RELATED ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES