How Are You Supposed To Use Layer Masks In Photoshop?
How are you supposed to use Layer Masks in Photoshop?
Ok, so i've seen it everywhere that your to use a mask for certain things. I have no clue how to work with them. <]Please[> <]Help me out
Reserving this post for a mini tutorial I'mma do~
FFF... well that looks like it works.
LMFAO, the commentary is hilarious.
Watched it. Something I usually do is create the mask, take my brush tool and painting on black makes the old background transparent, and painting on white brings the background back.
Searching Google for Layer Mask tutorials must be hard. :/
The whole series is hilarious
it's well worth watching
it's well worth watching
Made the following for my girlfriend a while back. I don't personally like the use of tools since Photoshop is a bitmap-based graphics program and paths are more for vector-based graphics (if I wanted to do vector art, I'd use Illustrator/CorelDraw/InkScape). Then again, I find using the polygonal lasso tool much more precise than the path tool just because I can really get into fine detail when working with it. Then again, it's all up to preference.
Please note that some of the images (looks like most of the images) won't come up for some reason. I don't know if it's a server thing or if FFXIAH just doesn't like me, but whatev'.
Anyway, on to my tut.
-------------------------------
Ok, so like my girlfriend just got herself a copy of Photoshop CS2.
Lucky. XD
So anyway, she has commissioned me to be her tutor. ^__^
The first thing she wanted to learn was how to change the hair color of characters. From here on out, I'll be talking as if I were talking to her, so if I refer to you as "hon" or "sweetie", don't freak. First off you must realize that changing the hair color on a character isn't always the easiest thing in the world. It takes quite a bit of masking which really just boils down to being rather steady with a mouse. So here we go. Here's the image we're starting with:
Awww, cutie. CHIBI! ZOMG. Ok, yeah. I have no idea why I chose this image, but it's probably because she's uber cute. And also because she has lots of hair to work with. Please keep in mind that I prepared the images ahead of time, so I already know the complexity of this work.
Introduction to your Tools
Now, let's go over some things real quick. There are "easy" ways to do this, which will end up in a horrible mess of colors that doesn't look anywhere near what you'd want. This "easy" method involves three very painfully stupid steps that will give you more headaches than smiles:
• Using the Magic Wand selector (second icon on the right side of the toolbar), choose the hair.
• Click on Image on the top menu, then on Adjustments, then on Hue/Saturation.
• Play with the controls. Cry.
We don't want to do that, though. That's, well, that's just *** stupid. We want it looking nice. And by nice, we mean not discoloring her head and actually coloring all of her hair. So, let's start off for real. Let me just state now that we'll only be using like 5 of the 20+ tools on that toolbar:
I can already tell that this is going to be a long post.
Ok, anyway, a quick description of what we're using:
1. Polygonal Lasso - Allows you to select specific areas of an image better than the regular lasso.
2. Eraser - Erases parts of an image. Works just like the Brush tool, but backwards.
3. Default Colors - We won't need this too much, but it's a good idea to keep it at black and white like in those little boxes. The top left is what color the Brush paints in, the bottom left is what color the Eraser "paints" in.
4. Brush - Paints. Just like in Microsoft Paint, except with more bells and whistles.
5. Zoom Tool - Allows you to zoom into the picture. Easy enough. That's actually the first tool we'll use.
Go ahead and open Photoshop. Once it opens and loads and you're at the gray screen, just click on File/Open to open the image you want to mess around in. For now, we'll just use the base image that's in this tutorial. If everything goes as planned, it should be called original.jpg. Just an FYI, you can also open an image by double clicking on the gray area; this will immediately open the Open File window.
Masking and Making Selections
Once you have it open, go ahead and use the zoom tool to zoom into an area of her hair, specifically somewhere around the outline of her hair. Click on the magnifying glass icon, then "draw" a square around the area you want to zoom into. This is just like selecting multiple files in you documents folders. As you drag and select, it'll create a small square showing where it'll zoom into. Once you're zoomed in, you'll be able to see the actual pixels that make up the image itself.
Ok, so here we are all zoomed in and stuff. Now it's time to get to work. Go ahead and click on the Lasso tool. In order to select the Polygonal Lasso, click and hold on the icon, then choose the Polygonal Lasso icon.
Ok, once selected you're going to carefully trace around the girl's hair. Since it's the polygonal lasso, this will be made much easier. Just click on different points around her hair like you're playing connect-the-dots in reverse. Now, don't do all her hair, but make sure you select at least a large area. As you create the selection, you'll see an outline form around what you've already selected.
Go ahead and loop around her hair and back to the beginning. If you find that you've reached the edge of your window and you need to move around, don't despair. Just hold down the space bar and use your mouse to drag the image around; when you let go of the space bar you'll be back to masking the hair. You can do that or you can also just move your mouse out of the edge and the window will auto-scroll to accommodate you. Just be warned that using the auto-scroll feature may be more difficult since it likes to move real fast. Anyway, let's just select one of her pony-tails for now. Once you're done with the one pony-tail, you should have something that looks similar to this:
The little dots you see moving are usually referred to as "marching ants". Why they call it that? I have no idea. Now, you might be wondering why I only had you select one part of her hair and not all. The reason is simple. First off, we're doing this in parts. Doing it in parts helps you so that you will not screw up horribly and need to start all over again. When I masked around her hair, I did 5 separate selections. Secondly, I wanted to show you what "marching ants" look like. ^__^ Now, let's make your Polygonal Lasso add to a selection, because if you try masking around a different section, you'll lose the first pony-tail and that would suck. Near the top, below the menu bar, you'll see a couple of tool specific options. What we need is the one that shows the two boxes merged together. This means that any selection that is made will be added to the current selection.
I highlighted it in the image to show you which one I'm talking about. Also, when you click it, you'll notice that your cursor becomes the lasso with a little + sign next to it. Obviously, this means that it's now "adding" to the selection. Ok, now go ahead and finish her hair off. Don't be afraid to just make a few selections at a time. What I did was I did her left pony-tail, then did her head, then her right pony-tail, then finally her bangs. Just remember that if you mess up, go ahead and hit CTRL+Z to undo your last action. When you're done, you should have something like this...
You might be wondering how to zoom out. I think I should've mentioned this earlier, but I might as well mention it now. To zoom out, just click on the Zoom tool again, right-click on the image, and select Zoom Out. You might need to do it a few times to get to the zoom you want but that's ok. To do it without right-clicking, select the Zoom tool, hold down the ALT key and just click on the image a few times.
Wow, that was a lot of work. But we're almost there.
Mistakes
But. We'll go over some oopsies right now. You can skip over this part if you want or if you're confident you can now easily mask over areas with the Lasso tool. This section will illustrate how to fix any mistakes you might've made while selecting the hair. In the process, you'll get to learn a bit about how to use the Brush, Eraser, and Quickmask tools.
Everyone makes mistakes. God knows that I make loads of mistakes in Photoshop; usually I'll just blame them on my mouse. And thankfully there are a number of ways to fix them in Photoshop. I'll go over one, and in the process, you'll learn a bit about the brush tool, eraser tool, and quickmasking function. Out of the three, the quickmasking function is the most "advanced", but we'll use it for something very easy.
First off, let's look at two very common mistakes you can make while masking. I made these specific ones on purpose so that I can show you, but trust me that I made the same type of mistakes while masking the image for this tutorial (stupid mouse...).
Ok, so here we see that in one part, I selected less of the hair that I meant to, and in another section I selected outside of her hair. That just goes to show that a) my mouse sucks, and b) I failed in Kindergarten.
In order to fix this, just go ahead and put yourself into Quickmask mode. Oh wait, I didn't mention how to do that earlier, did I? Check this out. Hit Q. BOOM BABY! You're in Quickmask mode. It should be all red. Or... at least the areas that weren't masked.
Ok, now make sure that you have the default colors selected. Just click on the Default Colors box and it'll automatically set itself to Black and White. I highlighted it here for your reference.
Now, in order to fix the parts, you'll need to select either the Brush tool or the Eraser tool. To fix the part that cuts into the hair, use the Eraser (since you want to erase the red). To fix the part where it selected outside the hair, choose the Brush (since you want to paint some red). Now keep in mind that even though your Default colors are Black and White, you'll be "painting" in red. The red is just there to show you where you're at in the masking process. To change the size and "hardness" of the brush, right click on the image and you'll get the brush shape dialog box. The size controls the general diameter, while the hardness controls how soft the edge of the brush are. Since we're fixing a mask, just set Hardness to 100. We'll play with Size and Hardness in a later tutorial.
Just paint around the area like you would in say MS Paint. Just color up to the edges. Again, if you mess up, hit CTRL+Z for a quick undo. Here I show an example of fixing with both the Eraser and the Brush tool.
Ok, so once you have it fixed, just hit Q and you're out of Quickmask mode and you're ready to continue. If you didn't make any mistakes, first off, awesome, and secondly you now have a bit more knowledge about your tools.
------------------
What was not on the tutorial:
After you have created your mask, go ahead and just hit CTRL+J to create a copy of the area you have selected. Now you have a new layer based on just what you have selected and nothing more.
I hope this has been of help.
Please note that some of the images (looks like most of the images) won't come up for some reason. I don't know if it's a server thing or if FFXIAH just doesn't like me, but whatev'.
Anyway, on to my tut.
-------------------------------
Ok, so like my girlfriend just got herself a copy of Photoshop CS2.
Lucky. XD
So anyway, she has commissioned me to be her tutor. ^__^
The first thing she wanted to learn was how to change the hair color of characters. From here on out, I'll be talking as if I were talking to her, so if I refer to you as "hon" or "sweetie", don't freak. First off you must realize that changing the hair color on a character isn't always the easiest thing in the world. It takes quite a bit of masking which really just boils down to being rather steady with a mouse. So here we go. Here's the image we're starting with:
Awww, cutie. CHIBI! ZOMG. Ok, yeah. I have no idea why I chose this image, but it's probably because she's uber cute. And also because she has lots of hair to work with. Please keep in mind that I prepared the images ahead of time, so I already know the complexity of this work.
Introduction to your Tools
Now, let's go over some things real quick. There are "easy" ways to do this, which will end up in a horrible mess of colors that doesn't look anywhere near what you'd want. This "easy" method involves three very painfully stupid steps that will give you more headaches than smiles:
• Using the Magic Wand selector (second icon on the right side of the toolbar), choose the hair.
• Click on Image on the top menu, then on Adjustments, then on Hue/Saturation.
• Play with the controls. Cry.
We don't want to do that, though. That's, well, that's just *** stupid. We want it looking nice. And by nice, we mean not discoloring her head and actually coloring all of her hair. So, let's start off for real. Let me just state now that we'll only be using like 5 of the 20+ tools on that toolbar:
I can already tell that this is going to be a long post.
Ok, anyway, a quick description of what we're using:
1. Polygonal Lasso - Allows you to select specific areas of an image better than the regular lasso.
2. Eraser - Erases parts of an image. Works just like the Brush tool, but backwards.
3. Default Colors - We won't need this too much, but it's a good idea to keep it at black and white like in those little boxes. The top left is what color the Brush paints in, the bottom left is what color the Eraser "paints" in.
4. Brush - Paints. Just like in Microsoft Paint, except with more bells and whistles.
5. Zoom Tool - Allows you to zoom into the picture. Easy enough. That's actually the first tool we'll use.
Go ahead and open Photoshop. Once it opens and loads and you're at the gray screen, just click on File/Open to open the image you want to mess around in. For now, we'll just use the base image that's in this tutorial. If everything goes as planned, it should be called original.jpg. Just an FYI, you can also open an image by double clicking on the gray area; this will immediately open the Open File window.
Masking and Making Selections
Once you have it open, go ahead and use the zoom tool to zoom into an area of her hair, specifically somewhere around the outline of her hair. Click on the magnifying glass icon, then "draw" a square around the area you want to zoom into. This is just like selecting multiple files in you documents folders. As you drag and select, it'll create a small square showing where it'll zoom into. Once you're zoomed in, you'll be able to see the actual pixels that make up the image itself.
Ok, so here we are all zoomed in and stuff. Now it's time to get to work. Go ahead and click on the Lasso tool. In order to select the Polygonal Lasso, click and hold on the icon, then choose the Polygonal Lasso icon.
Ok, once selected you're going to carefully trace around the girl's hair. Since it's the polygonal lasso, this will be made much easier. Just click on different points around her hair like you're playing connect-the-dots in reverse. Now, don't do all her hair, but make sure you select at least a large area. As you create the selection, you'll see an outline form around what you've already selected.
Go ahead and loop around her hair and back to the beginning. If you find that you've reached the edge of your window and you need to move around, don't despair. Just hold down the space bar and use your mouse to drag the image around; when you let go of the space bar you'll be back to masking the hair. You can do that or you can also just move your mouse out of the edge and the window will auto-scroll to accommodate you. Just be warned that using the auto-scroll feature may be more difficult since it likes to move real fast. Anyway, let's just select one of her pony-tails for now. Once you're done with the one pony-tail, you should have something that looks similar to this:
The little dots you see moving are usually referred to as "marching ants". Why they call it that? I have no idea. Now, you might be wondering why I only had you select one part of her hair and not all. The reason is simple. First off, we're doing this in parts. Doing it in parts helps you so that you will not screw up horribly and need to start all over again. When I masked around her hair, I did 5 separate selections. Secondly, I wanted to show you what "marching ants" look like. ^__^ Now, let's make your Polygonal Lasso add to a selection, because if you try masking around a different section, you'll lose the first pony-tail and that would suck. Near the top, below the menu bar, you'll see a couple of tool specific options. What we need is the one that shows the two boxes merged together. This means that any selection that is made will be added to the current selection.
I highlighted it in the image to show you which one I'm talking about. Also, when you click it, you'll notice that your cursor becomes the lasso with a little + sign next to it. Obviously, this means that it's now "adding" to the selection. Ok, now go ahead and finish her hair off. Don't be afraid to just make a few selections at a time. What I did was I did her left pony-tail, then did her head, then her right pony-tail, then finally her bangs. Just remember that if you mess up, go ahead and hit CTRL+Z to undo your last action. When you're done, you should have something like this...
You might be wondering how to zoom out. I think I should've mentioned this earlier, but I might as well mention it now. To zoom out, just click on the Zoom tool again, right-click on the image, and select Zoom Out. You might need to do it a few times to get to the zoom you want but that's ok. To do it without right-clicking, select the Zoom tool, hold down the ALT key and just click on the image a few times.
Wow, that was a lot of work. But we're almost there.
Mistakes
But. We'll go over some oopsies right now. You can skip over this part if you want or if you're confident you can now easily mask over areas with the Lasso tool. This section will illustrate how to fix any mistakes you might've made while selecting the hair. In the process, you'll get to learn a bit about how to use the Brush, Eraser, and Quickmask tools.
Everyone makes mistakes. God knows that I make loads of mistakes in Photoshop; usually I'll just blame them on my mouse. And thankfully there are a number of ways to fix them in Photoshop. I'll go over one, and in the process, you'll learn a bit about the brush tool, eraser tool, and quickmasking function. Out of the three, the quickmasking function is the most "advanced", but we'll use it for something very easy.
First off, let's look at two very common mistakes you can make while masking. I made these specific ones on purpose so that I can show you, but trust me that I made the same type of mistakes while masking the image for this tutorial (stupid mouse...).
Ok, so here we see that in one part, I selected less of the hair that I meant to, and in another section I selected outside of her hair. That just goes to show that a) my mouse sucks, and b) I failed in Kindergarten.
In order to fix this, just go ahead and put yourself into Quickmask mode. Oh wait, I didn't mention how to do that earlier, did I? Check this out. Hit Q. BOOM BABY! You're in Quickmask mode. It should be all red. Or... at least the areas that weren't masked.
Ok, now make sure that you have the default colors selected. Just click on the Default Colors box and it'll automatically set itself to Black and White. I highlighted it here for your reference.
Now, in order to fix the parts, you'll need to select either the Brush tool or the Eraser tool. To fix the part that cuts into the hair, use the Eraser (since you want to erase the red). To fix the part where it selected outside the hair, choose the Brush (since you want to paint some red). Now keep in mind that even though your Default colors are Black and White, you'll be "painting" in red. The red is just there to show you where you're at in the masking process. To change the size and "hardness" of the brush, right click on the image and you'll get the brush shape dialog box. The size controls the general diameter, while the hardness controls how soft the edge of the brush are. Since we're fixing a mask, just set Hardness to 100. We'll play with Size and Hardness in a later tutorial.
Just paint around the area like you would in say MS Paint. Just color up to the edges. Again, if you mess up, hit CTRL+Z for a quick undo. Here I show an example of fixing with both the Eraser and the Brush tool.
Ok, so once you have it fixed, just hit Q and you're out of Quickmask mode and you're ready to continue. If you didn't make any mistakes, first off, awesome, and secondly you now have a bit more knowledge about your tools.
------------------
What was not on the tutorial:
After you have created your mask, go ahead and just hit CTRL+J to create a copy of the area you have selected. Now you have a new layer based on just what you have selected and nothing more.
I hope this has been of help.
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