Hi there in this video, we're going to learn what a layer mask is and how to create it. It's super simple basically it's this black and white thing that goes over top of an image and the cool thing about it? It allows you to do cool stuff like this where I can move my image within the mask, I can disable the mask. So it's really like copying and pasting but I have a few extra professional controls at my disposal. Let's learn how to do that now in Photoshop. Okay, so it's time to go back in time. A little bit. We worked on a project. Okay. It is in your exercise files under oh five selections and masking. It was way back here where we took marquee tool. One and two. Okay, so I'm gonna open up both of these and before we used our selection tool, which was really cool. Okay, We used the rectangle marquee tool and hold down shift and I got a nice big circle in the right place and then I copied and pasted. Now from now on you're never allowed to copy and paste. Okay? We have to use somethin...

g called a layer mask and they're pretty easy to implement. So any sort of selection, you can use the quick selection tool, the magic wand tool or in our case the ellipse marquee tool. Okay, Instead of heading copy down here, it's this little icon here. Okay, so click on that. Nothing really much changes kind of removes the background but look at the layer structure over here, can you see the actual image is fine. What's happening is there's a mask over the top and you can see the black parts hide the background and the white hole in the middle shows us the image through. There's a couple of perks for this. So we're going to use our move tool, click hold and drag drag, drag the center of it up to our tab. Wait, wait, wait, come down. Here we go. So why is it cool? Okay, I'm going to transform this, remember command T on a Mac or control D on a Pc. Okay. And I'm just going to scale it down to get it to where I want. So nothing much is different. Okay, from where we did it, we're just copying and pasting. What ends up happening is once you get the right shape, get into the spot, return to get rid of my transform. What's really nice about it is a couple of things you can unlinked, which they see this little chain link here. So it means the image and the mask are actually separate and you can tell that which one you're working on. You see the kind of dotted white line that appears when I click on them. So I want to work on the image. Okay, watch this. I grab my move tool, I can move this around within my mask to get it more aligned. I can work on the mask separately. Okay, so with the mask layer selected, I can move the mask around. Okay, that's not what I want to do and undo. And I'm going to link them back together by clicking that just kind of empty area where the link icon was. So it gets better. So we've done that change. And what we can do is with the mask selected. Okay, you'll notice that the properties panel adjusts and the easiest one to start with is this feather? Watch this. If I crank up the feather really high, can you see over here? It's kind of feathering the edge of my mask. Whereas before when we used the lips marquee tool, really kind of sharp edge. Whereas now I've got a little bit more play here and I'm just going to kind of I don't want it to be super feathery. Okay, but just a little bit more in tune with the rest of the image. So it's the same basic principles as we've learned. Except we click on this button here and it gives us a few extra options. Let's double back to let's look at the quick selection tool. So I'm going to grab quick select one and two did the exact same thing as we did before. Quick selection tool, grab my shoes. I'm gonna make my brush a little bigger. Okay, I'm gonna drag across the mall across the mall, drag across the mall. It's pretty good. So just a little bit of white there, there was a little bit over here too from last time. Cool. Instead of copying and pasting, all we do is click this one, same net result, but I can grab my move tool, click hold and drag them over to this tab. Okay, let them go in here and the same rules apply here. I can maybe further this a little bit cape and as we go through this particular video series where we're at layer mask, we're going to dive into some of the extra special bits where we can tidy up the edges in here using something called selective mask. So that my friends is a layer mask that is considered non destructive editing and it would be something that I considered absolutely essential for a professional person in Photoshop. It means that I can do a really quick mask for say a client just to get the, maybe it's for my creative director. I just want to say, hey, what do you think of this thing real quick? I haven't done a perfect mask, but it's just super quick one. Then you can go back into later on and you can do things like right clicking it and disabling the mask to show the background. Okay? Or you can right click it and enable it. Okay, I can also go back and refine it may be playing with feather and in the future video we'll look at select and mask. All right, so let's go now and look at some slightly more advanced layer masks

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Adobe Photoshop Beginner Fundamentals Photo Editing

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How to Create a Layer Mask in Adobe Photoshop CC

How to Create a Layer Mask in Adobe Photoshop CC

Lesson Info

34. How to Create a Layer Mask in Adobe Photoshop CC

Lessons

Class Introduction to Adobe Photoshop CC

Before you Start this Adobe Photoshop CC Tutorial

How to Use Layers in Adobe Photoshop CC

Basic Navigation & How to Combine Images in Photoshop

Layers - Quiz

How to Fix an Image Using Levels in Photoshop CC

How to Enhance Colors in Photoshop Using Vibrance

How to Change the Color of Something in Photoshop Using Hue

How to Change Just One Color in Adobe Photoshop CC

How to Make an Image Black & White in Photoshop CC

How to Add a Gradient to an Image & Text in Photoshop

Color & Adjustment Layers - Quiz

Creating a Specific Sized Document Adobe Photoshop CC

How to Draw Star Square Circle Shape in Photoshop CC

Stealing Colors & Adobe Color Themes

Shapes - Quiz

How to Create Text in Adobe Photoshop CC

How to Warp Text in Adobe Photoshop CC

How to Get Text to Follow a Line or Circle in Photoshop

Text - Quiz

How to Add a Line Around the Outside of Type in Photoshop

How to a Bevel or Emboss to Text in Photoshop CC

How to Add a Drop Shadow to Text in Photoshop CC

Presenting your Photoshop Work for your Portfolio

Project 1 - Creating your own Postcard

How to Crop an Image in Adobe Photoshop CC

How to Crop an Image for a Frame in Adobe Photoshop CC

How to Straighten the Horizon Line Using Photoshop CC

How to Copy from One Image to Another in Photoshop CC

How to Crop Images Inside of Text

How to Remove the Background in Adobe Photoshop CC

Class Project - Quick Select Tool

How to put Text Behind a Person in Adobe Photoshop CC

How to Create a Layer Mask in Adobe Photoshop CC

Class Project - Cut a Person out & put them into Another Image in Photoshop

How to Blend Fade one Image into Another in Photoshop CC

How to Weave Text in and out of a Photoshop Image

How to Select Hair in Adobe Photoshop CC

Class Project - Selecting Hair

How to Select Things with Straight Edges in Adobe Photoshop CC

How to get Text to Interact with Ink & Plants in Photoshop CC

Class Project - Text & Image Interaction

Selection & Masking - Quiz

How to Add Filters & Effects in Adobe Photoshop

How to Turn an Image into a Painting in Adobe Photoshop

Class Project – Oil Painting

How to Create the Dotted Halftone Poster Effect in Photoshop

Class exercise - Halftone

How to fake Realistic Motion Blur in Adobe Photoshop CC

The Lens Flare Right of Passage in Adobe Photoshop

Filters - Quiz

What is a Smart Object in Adobe Photoshop CC

How to Bend a Logo onto an Image Realistically in Photoshop

How to make a Sky Peeling like Fabric Revealing Background in Photoshop

Class Project - Peeling Sky

How to Shrink Body Parts in Adobe Photoshop CC Using Liquify

How to Create Dripping Paint Text Effect in Photoshop CC

Class Project - Drippy Paint Text

How to Remove People & Text from a Picture in Photoshop

Use Google Images to find your Image Before Retouching

How to Remove Red Eye from Photographs in Photoshop

How to Retouch Skin in Adobe Photoshop CC

Class Project - Retouching

Enhancing Eyes in Adobe Photoshop CC

How to Fix Teeth in Adobe Photoshop CC

Retouching

How to Instantly Remove the White Background of a Logo in Photoshop

Using Blending Modes as Color Accents in Photoshop

How to put Images Inside a Bottle Using Photoshop

Class Project - Boat in a Bottle

How to Create the Spotify Duotone Effect in Adobe Photoshop

Class Project - Duotones

How to Create the 3D Glasses Anaglyph Effect in Adobe Photoshop

Class Project - Anaglyph Effect