Photoshop’s Image Masking Tools

There are several ways to mask an image in Photoshop. Let me show you some. .

Easy Image Masking!

1. Open an image in Photoshop you want to use for your masking tutorial (go to the file menu in Photoshop and select open, from the open dialogue box choose the file you want to use.

2. Once you have got the file open in Photoshop, select the "Magic Wand Tool (W)" from the tool box (if you can't see the tool box, go to indow menu and select "Tools"). Click on the white background you want to remove and it will select all white area within it's range.

3. Open the layer palette. Make a duplicate layer of the image. This way the original is preserved on the background and we are working on a duplicated layer. Hide the background by clicking off its visibility icon. Select the "Background copy" layer and press the Delete key (Backspace on Windows). Now the image you have got with no background.

 

            

4. Take a new layer by clicking on the"Crate a new layer" from the bottom of the layer palette and put the color you want to use or paste the background image if you want from another source.
 

Complex Masking!

1. Open the file you want to work with. Make a duplicate layer of the image. This way the original is preserved on the background and we are working on a duplicated layer. Hide the background by clicking off its visibility icon.

2. Choose Select> Color Range from the Menu. When the Color Range Dialog box open, choose the Left Eye Dropper tool and click on the background color in the image window (blue). You will see the selected color turn white in the dialog box.

Move the Fuzziness slider until the image is mostly black and the background is a clean as you can get it. Tip: To add a color to the selection click on the eyedropper tool with the plus sign and click in the image. Click OK.

3. Now you will see that the blue (background) color has selected itself all around the image. Press the Delete key (Backspace on Windows), but make sure that the "Background copy" layer is selected, in case we do anything on the original layer.

     
4. Open the background image you want to put behind this photo, select all (ctrl/cmd+A), copy (ctrl/cmd+C). Come to the file you was working with and paste (ctrl/cmd+V). Make sure that the new background image layer is underneath of the masked layer.
     Now you can see that the photo is along with different background. Some other techniques could be applied to get the best result for example, touching up some portion of the background with Eraser Tool.

There are still some other super complex image where different method of masking should be applied. However, if you do have so, do not forget to let us do your masking, while we have very expert hands to dealing with.