LAYER MASKING

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LAYER MASK

Layer masks more sophisticated metod of masking than clipping masks of locks because you have much more control over the transparency but they’re not necessarily always the best option.
Remember to use them in conjunction with clipping masks.


-        Create a new image and fill it with random colour.

-        Make a new layer on top and fill it with different colours.

-        Click the ‘add layer mask’ at the layers palette. Now the layer has a white box beside it and your colours have gone to freyscale.

      

-        Choose pure black as your colour and paint some stroles on the image. The black areas turn transpatrent. With vector masks, Black is transparent, White is Opaque and the grey tones inbetween are different levels of opacity. Use a low opacity brush to add some grey values to the mask.

-        Select the gradient tool (Shift+G to turn the paint bucket to gradient), select the second kind of gradient (foreground colour to transparent), set it to Linear and click and drag on the image to apply it to your vector mask.

The huge advantage that this process gives over just using the eraser is that it’s non-destructive. Your original layer is still intact.

To huge advantage that this process gives over just using the eraser is that it’s non-destructive. Your original layer is still intact.



Pressing the / key on a layer that has a vector mask reveals the mask as a colour over the original layer. By default it’s Red with 50% maximum opacity. If the image you’re working on is mostly red, you can change the colour and maximum opacity by double-clicking on the mask thumbnail.

You can edit the vector mask almost as much as a normal layer. You can apply blurs, use your own brush sets, invert it and you can transforms it.

If you want to transform a layer with a vector mask, just click on its thumbnail in the layer palette and apply the free transform (Ctrl+T)

If you want to transform the image but NOT the vector mask, click on the chain between the two thumbnails and apply the transform.



Now you can transform and move the image while the mask remains in place. If you select the mask thumbnail, you can move the mask without moving the image. Unlinking the two means you can also apply blurs to the image without blurring the mask.  

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