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Using Layer Masks in Adobe Photoshop

One of the goals of working in F shop is often to work non destructively where anything you do can easily be undoable, reversible so that your decisions are not permanent and therefore you maintain flexibility. One of the ways of doing that is by using a feature known as a layer mask and that will allow you to hide a portion of a layer in a way that is not permanent where you could always bring that back into visibility in the future. And it really makes working with layers much more utilitarian and versatile. So let's take a look at working with layer masks here, I'm starting in bridge just because I have two images. I want to show you, I'll hit the space bar to show you this full screen. And here we got a waterfall that was taken with a long exposure and that gives you the silky look on the water. But the problem with that is that it was a little bit breezy on this day. So if you were to look over here at the tree branches, you would see that they have some motion blur in them. Well,...

what I'd like to do is take this shot where I did a longer exposure and then take a second shot that has a much more brief exposure, much shorter and therefore capture the greenery and the surroundings without any motion blur problem is going with that shorter exposure doesn't give me the waterfall that I would like. So if you compare this and this, you'll see the two images that I'd like to combine. So I'll select both images here and bridge. I'll go up here to the tools menu. I'll choose Photoshop and I'm gonna tell it to load these into Photoshop layers. The same choice would be found in lightroom, uh especially lightroom classic under the photo menu. Uh Then the choice called edit in and then you would find this. Uh I'm gonna use that that should stack our two images, one on top of the other. And now what I would like to do is selectively hide this top layer before I hide it though. I don't know if I was on a tripod here because if I hide this layer and turn it back on again, and I look at the tree on the right. I see it moving the littlest bit. So what I want to do is select both layers here in my layers panel, then I'll go to the edit menu and you'll find a choice called auto align layers. And therefore, if you moved a little bit because maybe you weren't using a tripod you can just use the default settings in here and click. OK? And now if I hide that top layer and you look at the tree on the right. Sure, the branches might be moving but the tree itself should be staying pretty still. Now, then I'll work on the topmost layer. That's the layer that has the blurry um waterfall. And I'm gonna add a layer mask. You do that at the bottom of the layers panel with this icon right here. If you watch the layer that's currently active, when I click here, you should end up seeing this. That's the layer mask. A layer mask ends up starting out as white. And then we can use the paintbrush tool or any other feature in Photoshop to introduce some black into it. And wherever you have black in a layer mask, it will hide that particular layer and therefore reveal the layer that's underneath it. So just to show you that I'm gonna first hide the layer that's underneath. So if part of this layer disappears, it'll be obvious. And I'm just gonna come in here and paint with black. And when I do you see this layer disappearing and a checkerboard indicates an area that is completely empty where there's just nothing there. And so I could come in here and maybe get a different brush and paint in the areas where we don't need the motion of the waterfall so that I'm just choosing which area I want the long exposure in maybe something about like that. And if you look at my layers panel, you'll see the black. That's what I've been painting on. And any area of a layer mask that is black will hide the layer. So if we slip another layer underneath there to fill in those empty areas and just turn on its eyeball. Now, we have the more crisp looking uh non motion blurred greenery with the motion blurred waterfall. And if you want to see the difference, I can come up here to the layer mask and there's a way to temporarily disable it. If you hold down the shift key and you click on the layer mask, you'll see a red X appears within it. And that means it's currently turned off and therefore everything in that layer is now visible, then I shift click on it a second time and I can enable it again and let's see over on some of these sides. You might be able to see uh a difference in the motion. Let's see. Well, it looks like both of them have a little bit of, of motion blur in it. But if you wanted to have to uh you could do that. Let me show you another example that might be a little better because I think there was a little motion blur in both of those shots. Just one was more extreme than the other. Uh So let's close this and let's go back to bridge here. I have two images. Uh on the left side, I have a picture of my wife Karen and she's in a yoga pose here. And I wanted to get this with a clean shot where there's nobody else in it. But it didn't matter how long it stayed. It always had people in it and I was able to get the second shot where some of these people were behind these fingers that are sticking out of the beach here. But by the time I got that my wife was no longer in her pose. So I wanna combine these two together. And what I'll do is I'll put this one on top of that one. And then I will simply hide these people using a layer mask and hide that person using a layer mask. And if this is on top, it should reveal what's underneath it, which will be this version, which has it clean over here and clean over there. So let's give it a try. I'm gonna select both of these images. I'll go to the tools menu, choose Photoshop and load files into Photoshop layers. When you look in the layers panel, you now see both layers. If I hide the top one, you'll see the other. But I was shooting handheld here and my camera moved a little bit between these two shots. So I'm gonna select both of these layers. I got the top one selected. Now I'll hold shift and get the bottom one. Then I'll come up here to the edit menu and choose auto align layers, default settings and click. OK? Now, if I turn off the topmost layer and I turn it back on again, you'll see the fingers are in a consistent position. And so now I'll make the top layer active by clicking on it. And I'm gonna click this icon to add a layer mask. Then I can grab my paintbrush tool and I'm gonna paint with black and I'm simply gonna paint where I don't want these people to show up. And it is going to hide this layer that I'm currently working on and reveal the layer that is hanging out right underneath that. I'll do the same thing over here where this person is and suddenly they're gone. And now we have a nice clean image where I have the pose that I want and it looks like nobody else was around. The only thing is I have a little bit over here a little bit on the edge uh where it doesn't have the image that's from when it tried to align them. So I'm gonna grab my crop tool and I'm just gonna pull this in a little bit on each side to clean that up, you know, press return or enter. So now I think we have a nice looking result. If I turn off the layer that's underneath, you're gonna see what we've done, which is the topmost layers, all we'll be looking at in the layer mask is hiding the areas where I paint it. You can see it in the layer mask, you can see where the black paint is and wherever you have black in a layer mask that's gonna be hidden and that's where it's gonna reveal what's below. Sometimes I end up with layer masks on all sorts of layers. So let's end up trying a more complex version of this. What I have here are uh I'm shooting from a bridge looking down and I like the riding on the road and through slightly long exposure, I made it. So these taxi cabs that were driving underneath were blurred. And so I ended up just sitting there waiting, trying to hold my camera relatively still. And I took multiple shots to get all these cars driving by because I wanted to look like there were many more cars at one time than there was. So let's see how I could combine those particular images here. I'll make them smaller thumbnails here at bridge so you can see them all. I already have the last one selected. So I'll hold shift and get the first one, holding shift, gets all the ones in between. And once again, I'll come up here and let's load those as layers and now it's done and all I'm gonna do is turn off the eyeball on each layer one at a time. Starting from the top and try to decide which image am I sure I want to use the most of this one's not bad with those two blurry cars. But let's see if there's a better one where I know for a fact, I'm pretty darn sure I'm gonna use the majority of the image and that first one is still looking to be the best. And I do notice that my camera had moved around quite a bit when I was creating this. But yep, I think it's the first or top most image, turn those all back on. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna move that image to the bottom of my layer stack. I'm just gonna click on it. I'll drag it down in my layers until at the bottom and then we can build it up from the bottom. But before I do, I needed to align all these layers. So let's select all the layers. I'll hold shift and click on that topmost layer. Let's head up to the edit menu, auto align layers, default settings and click. OK. Hopefully that will compensate for me moving around a little bit as I was shooting. Let's see if that's the case, I'll turn off the topmost layer. It does seem to align with the one below it and that one seems to align with the one below it. So yeah, they look pretty good. So let's turn off the eyeballs on everything except for that bottommost layer. That's the layer. I was pretty sure I wanted to use all of it doesn't extend all the way out to the edge of the document anymore because those other layers wanted align them, they extend it out a little further. So now I'm gonna just turn on a layer and decide do I want what's in that layer or would I prefer what's here? And I think I want the one that's underneath. So I'll leave that one hidden. I'll go to the next layer up, turn it on and I'll turn it off. And I could say, well, I could use that one car near the bottom or in the bottom of the back. Uh But I prefer the red taxis. So let's turn that off. Go to the next one. Ok. There, there's a taxi in the left lane that I could use. Let's say I want to, I'm gonna therefore click on that layer and we're gonna add a layer mask to limit where this layer appears. Well, so far when we used a layer mask, we've just clicked the layer mask icon. And when we did our mask started out being white, but watch this, you could hold down the option key that's Alton windows. And if you do when you click on the layer mask icon, watch what you get. You get a mask full of black, black is what hides a layer. And so now I could grab my paintbrush tool and instead of painting with black, I need to paint with white to tell it, where do I want to make that layer visible? Because the black mask hid everything in that layer. So I'll paint over here where I can remember that car and now we have it visible. I didn't want the car that it was in the next lane. If I painted here, I'd see it. Let's choose, undo. I only wanted that one. Now, let's just continue. Let's go one more layer up, turn on its eyeball. And if I were to use that, then that blurry uh taxi would overlap one in here, so I'm not gonna use it. What about this one? Same thing. What about this one? Same thing? What about this one? Oh, there's one at the very back. But I think if I make it show up, it might be rear ending this one because they look pretty well. Now I think I can get it where they don't look like they're touching. Let's find out. I'm gonna take that one and I'm gonna add a layer mask, but I'm gonna hold option when I do it. So it hides everything in the layer, then I'll get a smaller brush here. So it doesn't go out too far. And let's see if we can get that guy to be in there right up and tell there I'll paint out here too so we can add the roadway that was in that photograph and we're just gonna continue. Let's go for the next layer. Now, there we have one that's red back here, but it's cut off because the edge of that photo was, um, a little short. So I'm not gonna use that one. I hope I'll have it in another and I'm just gonna keep going to see if one or more of these others could be used. Now, there's another one, it might overlap. I'm just switching back and forth and see, but I could try to make it look like it's crazy traffic in there. Let's see if we can use that one. I'll do the same thing. Option, clicking on the mask which is gonna hide its contents and then paint with white to reveal what I would like. And I just need to be careful when I get to right about here. Probably get a smaller brush so I can be more precise and go out that way and see if I can blend that where it looks acceptable. So there, it looks like it's crazy traffic. Let's keep going one more. Nope, top one. Ok. So it mainly looks to me like I failed in this area here. Well, if that's the case, what it might be is that I really didn't want to use this picture because maybe there was a better one in there. Let's go back. Here's this one. Let's see. There's this, see if I'm just on the layers. We haven't used and watching that one. This one here, I kind of like because it's going right off the edge of the frame. So I think I'm gonna use it to replace what was in the bottommost layer. So let's grab it. Let's do a black mask by option clicking there and I'm just gonna make it visible by painting with white right in here and I'll just paint all the way up to there and let's see if there's something we can get for this area. Uh This one, no, this one, no, no, those two I think would be in an accident if they did. So it doesn't look like it, it looks like this might be about the best I can get. So I'm just gonna paint on its mask because I noticed that car extended all the way down to the bottom edge and I'll see if I can go across the problem is there. We're gonna cover up this other car. So I think after doing this, we'll just need to crop in. So I'll go to my crop tool. I'm gonna pull this in to make sure we have a full image that there is no checkerboard going on there. And I'll do the same thing here on the right side and at the bottom kind of go right up to there. Then after doing so, we have all these extra layers that we didn't end up using. So if I go to the side menu of the layers panel. There's a choice called delete hidden layers and that will throw away all the layers that have the eyeballs turned off. And therefore, we'll have the fewest layers that we need to create this effect. Let's head back to bridge and let's look at other uses for this. In this case, I have another picture of my wife Karen, but the sun was not illuminating her all that bright compared to the rest of the shot. And so I would like to adjust just her. Now, hopefully, that will be easy by just going to the select menu and telling it to select the subject to the photo. And we'll see if it recognizes that it's her and generally looks like it is. Uh the only thing is down here by her fingers. It didn't quite get it to uh do what I wanted to. So I could go to a selection tool like the object selection tool. And if you tell it to take away from you do that by holding on the option key al to windows. I could circle around what I didn't want it to include in its selection to see if I could get it to modify this. I might need to try a few times to see if I can really get it to go away and I could use other selection tools for. Now, I'm gonna say that's good enough. Now, there's a kind of layer, we haven't talked about yet. And that is instead of coming up here to make an adjustment in choosing from one of these. The problem with this is this would affect the layer we're currently working on and it would end up being a change that is generally permanent to that layer. So if I save and close the image and open it a month later, there would be no way for me to get rid of it the adjustment. But if I go to the bottom of my layers panel, there's a half black and half white icon, little circle and that would produce an adjustment layer. And in there, we have most of the same adjustments that were on the other menu I showed you a moment ago and I'll come up here and just choose brightness and contrast because we haven't really talked about how to use adjustments yet. And I'm just gonna come up and say I would like to brighten this and maybe I would like to lower the contrast a little bit. And when I do that, if I had a selection active at the time that I told it to create the adjustment layer and remember I did that with this half black and half white circle, then it automatically converts the selection that was there into this layer mask. So now you can see the layer mask where it is white and that shows you where uh the adjustment is being applied. But then there's more, let's zoom up on this a little bit and there is a way to overlay this mask on the image and to do so you go on your keyboard and right above the return key, at least on a Mac is the backslash key. It's the slash where the top part is leaning towards the left. And I'm gonna press that when I do, it's gonna take that mask and overlay it onto my picture. Unfortunately, the mask is red and we have red content in this image. So that might not be the absolute best, but it allows you to kind of check how close does your mask uh match up to the actual subject of the photo. And if it doesn't, you can grab your paintbrush tool. And if I paint with white, uh I'm going to remove that red stuff, the red indicates where it would not affect the image. And maybe I need to add a little bit here on her hair or other areas to fine tune this or I need to take away by painting with black and maybe it's this little area right here where it is adjusting, but it shouldn't. But in order to get this view, I'm gonna do the same thing I'll do to turn it off, which is on my keyboard right above a return key is the backslash key. And I'm gonna press that to turn off that overlay. The other thing you could do is view the mask directly because this little picture right here is just like this picture in that this is just a representation of the full size image. Well, that means this mask is really full size, same size as your picture. You're only seeing a tiny version of it. If you want to see the full size version, then here's what you need to do. Hold down the option key and click right within the mask. So option click and now we're actually viewing the mask directly and I can edit it while it's in this form. So right here, I noticed where there's a little chunk of white, that's where it would affect the image. So I can paint with black there. I also notice a tiny amount right there and maybe I want to fine tune a few other spots uh I can do. So then to get out of this view, I hold down the option key once again all to windows and I click anywhere within this layer mask, thumbnail image in my layers panel. And it brings me back to viewing the image as a whole. Then let's try to push a little further. There are some features that are gonna automatically use layer mask and then you can sometimes modify the results that that feature provides uh to fine tune what you're getting. So right now, what I'm gonna do is go to the edit menu and I think the sky in this image is rather boring. So if I go up here, there's a choice called Sky Replacement and there I can choose whatever sky I would like uh from this little pop up. And if there are not any skies in here that I like, I can go to this little like gear that's here and say that I would like to get more skies and you can either import your own images or you can download some free ones from Adobe. But for now, I'm gonna use the ones that are built in and I'll just click between them to see. And let's just say I like that one and I'm not gonna mess with the settings, but it would refine the result because right now I'm not trying to teach you sky replacement. I just want to show you that when you click OK, you're gonna notice that what it produces uses layer masks. So here's a layer mask for the sky and I could come in here and option click on it to view it to see what's in there. And I could see that right here that this building uh part of the windows and stuff are included and anything in here that's not black is gonna start having some of the sky um showing up there. So I might need to come in here and refine this. I could come in and just grab my brush and paint it in. Uh Right now my brush is slightly soft edge though. So I'd have to be careful when I get to that edge. But the main thing is I can refine it. You could just click on the next mask that sound here and you don't have to option click. If you are already vis viewing the mask directly, you can click between them. If there's more than one that is found in there. We also have this thing called edge lighting group. If I open it up, there's another mask. If I click on its mask, it has the same issue up there. So I could again touch it up as well. And so if you use certain features in Photoshop, you might find that they might automatically add some masks. And if so you can interact with them and fine tune their results. But there's more, here's an image that I would like to add an interesting kind of edge to. Well, I'm gonna do that with a layer mask. So I'm gonna take this image and I'm gonna add a layer mask. So I'll click the layer mask icon and then I don't want to start from scratch. When it comes to creating the edge, I already have an image in mind. So let's return to bridge and let's look at this image, I'll just open that up. And this is something where I just took a white sheet of paper and a real brush and I painted around the edge when the brush was drying out and painted the middle when the brush was saturated with ink and then I simply adjusted this to adjust it. I went up here, I used an adjustment that was called levels and this slider here forces areas to white. I pulled it in until the sheet of paper I could no longer see any texture in it and I could no longer see anything out there. And then I pulled in this slider of sports' areas to black and I pulled that in until I couldn't see any detail in here. I didn't see the texture of the paper or anything else. And therefore what I have here is largely solid black and solid white. So what I'll do is select all in copy. Then let's switch to the image we had a moment ago and here we have a layer mask. But the problem is if I were to choose paste like edit paste, it will not put what I'm about to paste into that layer mask. Instead, it'll put it in as a brand new layer. And that's what we have. It's a little larger than we need for here. But uh that's what it always does. So let's choose undo if you want to paste something into the layer mask, that layer mask must be visible. There are two ways to make it visible. One is as an overlay and the other is to view it directly. I'm gonna view this one directly by holding option, alton windows and clicking within the layer on that layer mask. Now that I'm viewing it, if I choose paste, it will know that I wanna put it inside the mask. It's still too big though. So I'm gonna type command T and if you want to see the handles that are outside, you can type command zero. And then we could pull this in to get it to be an appropriate size. I'm gonna press return or enter to indicate that is the size that I would like. And now the problem is black hides, things, white shows things. So this would make the image show up on the outside and not on the inside. I want the opposite. So I choose image adjustments, invert, invert gives you the opposite. It makes this a negative of what it was before cool. Now the image will show up here in the middle because white makes them show up in black, makes it go away. So let's stop viewing the layer mask. I'll just hold down the option key al to windows and I'll click and now I can see that we have that edge. I don't want to see a checkerboard out here. So let's create a layer that's underneath. Uh And one method of doing that is to come down here to the adjustment layer icon in there, you're gonna find a choice at the top called solid layer. And if you choose that, you'll get a color picker where you can choose any color you want. I'll use white and you'll get a layer just full of that color. Then in my layers pale, I'm gonna click on it and drag it underneath. Now, the only problem here is that my wife was actually in this photograph and the positioning of this edge is such that I can only see her foot. So I don't think it's very good. I wanna move this down. Well, let's grab the move tool and try, I'll click on it and I'll move it down. The problem is it's moving if I choose undo both the picture and the mask together at the same time, the reason it's doing that is if you look in the layers panel and you look right in between the mask and the layers icon, you see a chain symbol there, that means these two are linked together. And when they are, if you scale, rotate or reposition the layer, the mask will get the same treatment. So what I need to do is click on that lock symbol and that's gonna unlink these two pieces. So now I could move the mask or move the layer independently of each other. So I'll click on the mask. That's what I feel like moving. I'll click here and I'm just gonna drag down so I can reposition it and therefore I can get my wife to be uh still visible in that shot. And if now, I want to reposition it to move it up, meaning the image and the mask, then I'll just link them back together by clicking in between those two. And now when I use the move tool, it moves both pieces and you don't have to have an image that is almost pure black and pure white like we had here to put in a mask. Uh If you want, you can use a more photographic image. Uh Here's a picture of my f friend Cassandra and I wanna do something to make it look different. So let's grab another image to use as well. Let's use these clouds. And what I'm gonna do is get this image of the clouds on top of Cassandra. So I'll click on this with my move tool. I'll drag to the other tab and then drag, oops wrong image. This one drag down into the image and let go. Those are my clouds and I might need to resize these because I wanted to fill this area. So I'll type command. T that means transform and just scale that up a little bit like that. Well, now what I'd like to do is limit where the clouds show up based on the brightness of this picture. So to accomplish that I'll go to the layer that is underneath and I'm going to select all and I'm gonna copy it, then let's work on the layer that's above and make it visible once again. And let's add a layer mask and let's paste that image that I copied into the layer mask. But remember before you can paste anything into a layer mask, the layer mask must be visible. So I'll option click on it to make it visible. That would be all clicking in windows and then I'll choose paste. So now we have this image inside the layer mask. If you think about it in a layer mask, white makes things show up. So you see this little highlight on her skin that should make the clouds show up. Black makes things disappear. So the clouds should not appear out here. Shades of gray make things partially show up. So here where her forehead is where it's not white, we should still see the clouds appearing but they're not going to be at full strength. You're going to instead see them blending with the picture that's underneath. So let's stop viewing the layer mask. I'll do that by holding an option and click on the layer mask. And now I can see our result and I can click on the layer mask to make it active and maybe I should adjust it. I can adjust it and tell her forehead is white because white would make the clouds fully show up. So I can choose image adjustments. I'll use levels and in levels, the slider on the right side forces areas to white down. Here are all the shades you might have had in that mask to begin with. And as you bring this in, it's taking whatever shade this is directly above in all shades brighter than it and making them white. So if I pull this over and let's say her forehead used to be, I don't know about this bright. By the time I get the slider over there, this these should show up completely where her forehead is. The other slider over here, this forces Aries to black, black makes things disappear. So that could make the clouds disappear a little bit more. And then the slider in the middle will change the transition between those two areas. And let's say I want it somewhere in there. Uh Then I can click. OK. I'm not saying this is the best thing in the world. I'm just letting you know that we could paste a photo in there and have it determine where things show up or I could always come in here and not have the original picture underneath. Just go down here and say I want a solid color and tell her you want black. And now we have just the clouds uh in there. The only thing is the clouds did not extend up very far. Uh They have this big gap up there. You can see it in the layers panel, we're up there, there's no more clouds. So if I want to make the clouds bigger, the problem is the mask in the layer itself are linked together. So if I scale up the clouds, it's gonna scale up the mask. If I don't want that to happen, I click on the link symbol. Now I'm gonna scale whatever is active, either the mask or the layer and just click between them to change it. I'll take command. T that's the standard shortcut for transform. If you hate keyboard shortcuts, just go to the edit menu instead. And after transforming it, I might move it around. Maybe I like it where it's right into her eyes like that and I'll press return or enter to indicate I'm done. But if we're going to make it, so we can't see the image that's underneath. We might have preferred a different adjustment. So I can always go back into the mask and make it visible again by option clicking. And you see how our forehead is white in there and this is, it's really dark. Well, I could just paste the image back in because it's still on the clipboard. It's still remembering it. So when I paste it back in, we get back to this because I might have adjusted it in a different way knowing that I was gonna have a black background instead of the original photo. So let's just come up here and use levels once again, I'm sure I'm gonna want some areas fully showing up, but I might end up adjusting this part differently and not bringing in that black like I did previously. So I'm mainly trying to show you here that you could paste into the mask. Then here's just a more extreme example. Uh I'm gonna open this guy up here are some shapes that I ended up creating. I pretty much created one shape and then I duplicated it and rotated it and changed its color and I repeated that again and again and again until I had this. But if you look at this and you follow any one of these shapes, you can see that it's really on a certain layer, meaning that this yellowish one that is here is definitely underneath the red one because anywhere where the red one crosses it, the red is on top. You could also see that the yellow one is definitely on top of the green because if you look anywhere where they overlap each other, the yellow looks like it's on top here and the yellow looks like it's on top there. These are just layers. If I turn these layers off, you'll see there's the one shape that I kind of started with. Duplicate, rotate, change color, duplicate, rotate, change color. And I did that just many different times until you went all the way around. But then if a layer mask hides a layer, why not take, let's say this layer that happens to be the topmost one, it's on the topmost layer. And um in here, do you see where I want this to look as if this might be going underneath the yellow one. Well, I could just use a layer mask in paint where I want it to look as if it goes underneath. So now look at the red one, follow it and you'll see that it looks as if it's going above the yellow and below the yellow at the same time, same with the blue and all that stuff. If I were to do something similar to all of the other layers, using layer mask to hide wherever I want it to look as if it was going underneath something, then I can get something like this, which is kind of crazy. And now if you follow any one of these shapes, you're gonna see as if it's weaving in and out between everything else. And that's only because I'm hiding it wherever I want it to look as if it's going behind something that it otherwise wouldn't. And all of that is possible with layer mask. So layer masks are things that I use every day. Anytime I would think about deleting something that's just part of the layer. If there's any clue that I might want to bring it back later in the future, then I'm gonna use a layer mask because at any time I could just switch and paint with white. And if I paint whatever was hidden previously, with a layer mask will come back into view and I could even lower the opacity of my brush to bring it part way back and all sorts of other things. But layer masks are essential to working non destructively in Photoshop.