From the course: Photoshop CC 2017 One-on-One: Mastery

A quick refresher on layer masking - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop CC 2017 One-on-One: Mastery

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A quick refresher on layer masking

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- [Instructor] We're going to start things off inside this project which features a bunch of elements from the dreamstime image library about which you can learn more and get deals at dreamstime.com/deke.php. Now, notice that just about every layer, over here inside the Layers panel, has a mask associated with it and I've created one of those masks in advance and that's the one that's associated with this sad, little guy, right here and to see that mask independently of the rest of the image you can press the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac and click on its Layer Mask thumbnail, here inside the Layers panel. Now, as you may recall from chapter 17 of the advanced course, white reveals and black conceals which means that everything inside of this white shape is visible where this layer is concerned and everything outside the white shape, in the black region, is invisible. But, of course, because a Layer Mask is applied temporarily I can bring that detail back any time I like. Now, there's no real magic associated with this specific mask. I created it manually by first roughing in an outline using the Quick Selection tool and then, after converting that selection to a Layer Mask I applied a bunch of manual adjustments using the Brush tool, set to a hardness value of 100%. Now, the only exception is his hair, which I smeared around a little bit using the Smudge tool, which is available here from the Blur tool fly-out menu and the Smudge tool can be useful where hair is concerned. I'll just go ahead and increase my brush size by pressing the right bracket key and notice that I can move the hair details back and forth. You're not going to get good results, however, if you're talking about long, flowing strands of hair and we'll learn more about those in a future movie. But the Smudge tool could be quite useful where spikey hair is concerned. All right, I'll go ahead and press the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac in order to return to the full-color image. Now, you also have the option of turning the Layer Mask on and off by pressing the Shift key and clicking in the Layer Mask thumbnail at which point, you'll notice a red X through that Layer Mask and you'll be able to see the entire, unmasked image. To reapply the Layer Mask, just go ahead and Shift + Click on that Layer Mask thumbnail once again. Now, I want to turn it off for a moment, so I will Shift + Click a third time and the reason is that I want to bring back this guy's natural cast shadow and introduce it to our current composition. Now, I could do that by creating a new layer and just manually painting with a Brush tool set to a low Hardness value, such as 0% but I've found that that didn't give me as much control as I liked and so here's the alternative approach I came up with. I'll go ahead and click and hold on the Lasso tool and then select the Polygonal Lasso tool from that fly-out menu and now I'll just go ahead and click around what appears to be this guy's natural cast shadow and I'm trying to basically hit it in the middle. So, in other words, mid-way in-between it's sharpness and it's softness. So, I'll just go ahead and select this region right here and I'll double-click in order to finish off that selection and then to select this little bit of shadow associated with the forward foot, I'll press the Shift key in order to add to my current selection and then I will begin clicking, at which point I can release that Shift key and I'll go ahead and select downward a little bit, like so, and then I'll finish off that selection as well. Now, I want to be able to soften this shadow parametrically, meaning that I can change my mind by adjusting a numerical parameter any time I like and the best way to pull that off is to go up to the Layer menu, choose New Fill Layer and then choose Solid Color. Or, if you loaded D keys, you have that shortcut of Control + Shift + 1 or Command + Shift + 1 on the Mac and I'll go ahead and call this guy's shadow and press the Enter key or the Return key on the Mac, make sure that the layer is filled with absolute black and then click OK. Now, obviously, this shadow should not be in front of the character, so, I'll go ahead and drag it down the stack like so and then I'll Shift + Click on this Layer Mask to turn it back on at which point you can see we have this very hard edge, unrealistic shadow. Now what I can do is click on the Layer Mask thumbnail for that shadow layer and then you want to go up to the Window menu and choose the Properties command in order to bring up the Properties panel. Make sure that your Layer Mask is selected at which point you have access to this editable Feather value and now I'll just go ahead and click on the value and press Shift + up arrow a bunch of times in order to increase that value in whole-pixel increments as you see right here and this is a value that's only available to you if you're working on a Layer Mask inside of Photoshop. So, in the end, I took the feather value up to 10 pixels but, of course, I can change my mind any time I like from this point on just by adjusting this value as you see me doing here. Anyway, I'm going to stick with 10 pixels at which point I'll press the Enter key or the Return key on the Mac to accept that change and then I'll hide the Properties panel and finally I'll press the Shift key to take the Opacity value down to 70% and then I'll press Control + 0 or Command + 0 on the Mac in order to zoom all the way out. And now we have a character who appears to be fully integrated into his somewhat surreal environment and that, friends, is my brief refresher on the topic of layer masking inside Photoshop. In the next movie, we will mask this guy with the help of the Channels panel.

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