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Masks
4:11As we make adjustments to our photos, we’ll take a look at using masks with layers to isolate adjustments to a specific portion of our photo.
Now that we have a couple
of adjustment layers for
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our photo, let's take a look at Masks.
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Masks allow a layer to
affect only a specific
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area of a canvas that
you are able to define.
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This is super handy when you want to
adjust the greens in the grass, or
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the blue in a sky without changing
those colors in the rest of the image.
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Let's view our Layers panel.
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White rectangle and our adjustment layer,
is actually a mask.
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When Option clicking on a mask,
we're able to view just the mask itself.
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Masks use gray scale to determine
how much of the layer is applied.
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Since it's white, it means the adjustment
layer is affecting the entire canvas.
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If it were a 100% black,
it would make no difference or
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would make the layer transparent.
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Before we make some adjustments
on what we want to do,
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let's visit the History panel and
take a snapshot of where we're at.
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The History panel tracks each action on
your document for the current session.
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To save a point in history
we can take a snapshot.
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Click on the camera icon in
the History panel to do so.
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This creates a thumbnail at
the top of the History panel.
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Now we've saved a point in history of
our document that we can revert back to
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at any time.
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We can take as many snapshots as needed
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which can help us compare
paths we might explore.
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Okay, back to our Layers panel.
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Let's test out our mask by
using our Marquee tool.
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Choosing a portion of the mask and
deleting it.
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So again,
we're viewing simply the mask itself for
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this brightness in contrast layer.
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Notice how we've got our background
color black in our deleted section.
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So this area will not be
affected by the adjustment layer.
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Click on a different layer or on the
adjustment layer icon to view our image.
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Now we can see how this adjustment layer
has affected our image in this area.
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Let's try another example
outside of an adjustment layer.
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Let's add a brand new blank layer
from the Layers panel by clicking
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on the New Layer icon.
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I'm gonna go ahead and
move this up in the order as well.
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And I wanna add a gradient
to this entire layer.
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I'm gonna use the Gradient tool, and
just click and drag to make a gradient.
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Now, let's add a mask to this layer
from within the Layers panel, and
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then Option-click on
the mask to view the mask.
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Now let's see what happens when we
select just a portion of the mask and
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fill it with a white to black gradient.
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Notice how our gradient now,
while we're viewing the mask,
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is only in black to white.
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Click out of the mask.
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And wallah, the green is only visible
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in the white portions of the mask and
it's completely empty in the black.
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Masks provide a lot of options for
creativity, as well.
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So now that we've properly mucked
up our photo, for the client, let's
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undo all those changes, and revert back
to the snapshot from our History panel.
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And I save that snapshot
while viewing the layer.
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So I can actually just click out of
that mask layer and view our image.
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These are incredibly helpful for
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allowing us to explore our
creativity without consequence.
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The only caveat is that the history clears
out the document as soon as you close it.
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So the snapshot itself is
not saved to the file.
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We're now ready to prep this image for
use in our project.
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Since we have multiple layers affecting
this image, we'll wanna go ahead and
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flatten them, so
they don't carry over to the final image.
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To do this,
we're gonna go into the Layers menu.
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And choose Flatten Image.
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We can export this image to a new
file such as a JPEG if we want, but
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in this case we're gonna go ahead and
leave this tab open.
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In our next video, we'll now use
the properly adjusted image and
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combine the other assets we received
from the client into the proper layout.
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