To save your time you can have your own collection of ready Photoshop Brushes to show your ideas, styles, and elements. Even though I had previously painted over it with black to hide the cat photo from view, all I had to do to restore it was paint over that same area with white: And there we have it! Apparently, the wise man was a big Photoshop user who may have spent a little too much time alone on top of the mountain. What you would need is some way to control the transparency of different areas of the layer separately. Get all of our Photoshop tutorials as PDFs. While the Opacity option in the Layers panel does allow us to control a layer's transparency, it's limited by the fact that it can only adjust transparency for the entire layer as a whole. Then, since we want to paint with black, we need to have black as our Foreground color, and by default, whenever you have a layer mask selected, Photoshop sets white as your Foreground color, with black as your Background color. There's nothing more to them than that. It uses black to represent areas that should be 100% transparent (completely hidden). The checkerboard pattern we now see on the right side of the document is how Photoshop represents transparency on a layer. Because I'm painting on a layer mask, not on the layer itself, we don't see the brush color as we paint. Pressing X to swap the Foreground color (upper left swatch) back to white. Yet because the Opacity option affects the entire layer as a whole, the entire cat image appears faded. Fortunately, in this case, we planned ahead and saved our document before using the Eraser Tool. It has many uses: one of the most important is to repair problem areas in digital photos, by “ painting over ” them with pixel data from other areas. I'm going to lower it to about 70% just to see what sort of effect I end up with: Hmm. White in a layer mask means 100% visible. Look back over in the Layers palette, to the right of the preview thumbnail on the layer you added the mask to, and you'll see a brand new thumbnail. The layer mask is once again hidden from view. If you've been staying away from using layer masks with your Photoshop work because you thought they were somehow beyond your skill level, well, if you know the difference between black and white and can paint with Photoshop's Brush Tool, you already have all the skills you need! You can skip this part if you like, but renaming layers is a very good habit to get into. Let's look at an example. This is your layer mask thumbnail, and it's how we know that a layer mask has been added to the layer: Notice that the layer mask thumbnail is filled with solid white. Shortcodes, Actions and Filters Plugin: Error in shortcode [ads-basics-middle-float]. And, it uses the various shades of gray in between to represent partial transparency, with areas filled with darker shades of gray appearing more transparent than areas filled with lighter shades. Photoshop brushes usually can be downloaded as an archive that you have to unpack. Holding the Shift key limits the direction in which I can move the layer, making it easier to drag in a straight, horizontal line: Now that I've moved the cat photo to the right, I'll move the dog photo to the left. They … In my case, the white area on the right is where my cat photo remains 100% visible. So to better see what I've done, I'll view my layer mask in the document by pressing and holding Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) on my keyboard and clicking on the layer mask thumbnail, just as we did earlier. But by default, when we first add a layer mask, Photoshop keeps the entire layer fully visible. "Okay," you're wondering, "We've seen how we can hide a layer completely by adding a layer mask to it and filling it with black, and we've seen how we can show the layer completely once again by simply filling the layer mask with white. What I've just described is a very common technique in Photoshop, allowing us to fade one image into another. Unlike the Opacity option which affects the entire layer at once, Photoshop's Eraser Tool can easily adjust the transparency of different parts of a layer separately. The areas I painted over with black are the areas where my cat image is now 100% transparent, allowing the dog photo below the layer to show through. I'm happy with this, I think my client is going to be happy with this as well, so I'll email a copy of the image off to my client, save my Photoshop document, close out of it, shut down my computer and go enjoy the rest of my day while I wait for the client to call me and tell me how awesome I am. We were able to use the opacity slider to reduce the effect of the edit. Click OK to close the dialog box and load the images into Photoshop: Photoshop loads both images into the same document, and if we look in my Layers panel, we see each image on its own layer. You can also select the Brush Tool by pressing the letter B on your keyboard: Since we want to use the Brush Tool to hide areas of the layer we paint over, and we know that on a layer mask, black represents areas that are hidden, we'll need to paint with black. While the Eraser Tool permanently deletes areas of an image, layer masks simply hide those areas from view. As its name implies, the Eraser Tool works by erasing (deleting) pixels in the image. The Opacity option in the top right corner of the Layers palette also allows you to control a layer's transparency. The current Foreground (upper left) and Background (lower right) colors. In my case, I haven't actually done anything with my mask so there's nothing to apply, so I'm simply going to press "Delete". In fact, while the Eraser Tool still has its place, you'll find yourself using it less and less as you become more comfortable with layer masks. After erasing away part of the top image, both images now seem to blend together well. Instead, we use Photoshop's Brush Tool, and with our layer mask filled with white as it currently is, which is making the entire layer visible, all we need to do is paint with black on the layer mask over any areas we want to hide. Unless your photo is also of a cat, you may want to name it something different: I'll press the Tab key on my keyboard to jump down and highlight the name of the layer below it: Then I'll type in "Dog" for its new name. By temporarily turning off the bottom Background layer, it's easy to see the missing left section of the top image. Lowering the opacity of the top layer to 0%. We can see our current Foreground and Background colors in the color swatches near the bottom of the Toolbar. The images as they appear after loading them into Photoshop. I could also select the Move Tool by pressing the letter V on my keyboard: I'll click on the "Cat" layer in the Layers panel to select it and make it the active layer: Then, I'll click on the image in the document and drag it over to the right. Pressing Tab to highlight the bottom layer's name. The image after painting away the left part of the top image to blend it with the image below. Download this tutorial as a print-ready PDF! In other words, the Eraser Tool makes destructive edits to an image; layer masks do it non-destructively. To delete a layer mask, click on its thumbnail and drag it down onto the trash bin icon at the bottom of the Layers palette. And we know that whether the contents on the layer are visible or not, they're still always there. After all, the whole point of them is to show and hide different parts of the layer and it would be pretty difficult to do that if the mask itself was blocking our view of the image. Remember, the Eraser Tool permanently deleted areas of the image. Who needs layer masks! Also, once we close out of the document, we lose our file history, which means that the next time we open the document to continue working, Photoshop would have no record of our previous steps and no way to undo them. "No problem! So what are layer masks then? And there we have it! But before we do, we'll quickly save our document. As I drag, I'll press and hold the Shift key on my keyboard. It's because the way a layer mask works is that it uses white to represent the areas of the layer that should remain 100% visible in the document. It's that simple. Navigate to the location of your images on your computer. All the layer mask did was hide those areas from view. Why not black, or red, or blue? I head back to my computer, open my Photoshop document back up, and all I need to do now is bring back some of the bride's veil on the right by.... by....... hmm. In most cases, you'll simply want to delete your mask and start over, but there are times when you may want to apply the mask to the layer before deleting it, which will erase all the pixels on the layer that were hidden by the mask. As I mentioned at the beginning of this discussion, layer masks allow us to control the transparency of a layer, but unlike the Opacity option which controls overall transparency, layer masks allow us to set different levels of transparency for different areas of the layer (although technically, you could use them to control the overall opacity as well, but the Opacity option already handles that very well and layer masks are capable of so much more). Step 4. Layer masks use only white, black, and all the shades of gray in between, White in a layer mask means 100% visible. Excellent question, and the answer is, very easily! In fact, a layer mask is as simple as black and white! Photoshop started the digital image manipulation revolution more than 30 years ago, and Adobe's groundbreaking application continues to be the … I'll name mine "Understanding Layer Masks" and I'll save it to my Desktop. I can already control the transparency level with the Opacity option, can't I? The Opacity option changes the transparency level for the entire layer at once. The layer mask thumbnail in the Layers palette is now filled with white. What if instead, you wanted to hide everything on the layer when you add the mask, so that as soon as the mask is added, everything on that layer disappears from view? I want to add a layer mask to the top layer, which is already selected, so I'm good to go. Easy. The Eraser Tool. I'll use the Eraser Tool with nice, soft edges to erase the part of the image on the right that I don't need. It does that by filling the layer mask with white. To fill a layer mask with white, or do anything at all with a layer mask, you first need to select the mask so that you're working on the mask itself and not the actual layer, and to select it, all you need to do is click directly on the mask's thumbnail in the Layers palette: You can switch between selecting the layer itself and its layer mask by clicking on the corresponding thumbnail. After adding a layer mask to a layer, a layer mask thumbnail appears to the right of the layer's preview thumbnail. What if, say, you want the left side of a layer to be 100% transparent (completely hidden) and the right side to be 100% visible, with a smooth transition between them in the middle? Instead, since I'm painting with black, and black hides areas on a layer mask, the areas I paint over are hidden from view: I'll continue hiding more of the cat image by painting over more areas with black until I get a result similar to what I achieved with the Eraser Tool: At this point, the difference between a layer mask and the Eraser Tool isn't all that obvious. For Photoshop CC, CS6 and earlier. Photoshop gives us only a limited number of undo's, so if I had done more work on the document after erasing the pixels, I may not be able to go back far enough in my document's history to undo it. Make sure the mask, not the layer, is selected. I'm going to hide the dog image for a moment by clicking on the "Dog" layer's visibility icon in the Layers panel: This allows us to see just my cat image in the document, and look what's happened. Click on the top layer to select it, which in my case is the "Cat" layer: The Opacity option is found in the upper right of the Layers panel.
Loudoun County 911 Calls, Kobalt Kst 120x Replacement Parts, Mondongo Puerto Rico, Pampers Swaddlers Size 7, Ranch Water Brand, Lance Moore Designer, New Girl Oregon Filming Location, Craigslist Motorcycles Illinois, How Strong Is Sakura's Punch, Gta 5 Demo,