In this Adobe Photoshop tutorial, we're going to look at one of the most essential features in all of Photoshop - layer masks. We'll cover exactly what layer masks are, how they work, and why you want to use them.
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!
A wise man once said, "Nothing worth doing in life should be done without layer masks". Apparently, the wise man was a big Photoshop user who may have spent a little too much time alone on top of the mountain. But enough about him. Layer masks are right up there at the top of the list of things you really need to know about when working in Photoshop because without them, your work, your creativity and your flexibility all suffer. It's that simple. It's a good thing for us, then, that layer masks are so incredibly simple and easy to understand!
Before we continue, if you're unsure of what a layer is, you may want to read our tutorial on Photoshop layers before learning about layer masks.
But here's the difference. The Opacity option changes the transparency level for the entire layer at once. If you lower the Opacity level down to, say, 50%, the entire layer becomes 50% transparent. That may be fine for some situations, but what if you want only part of a layer to be transparent? What if you want the left side of the layer to be completely transparent, the right side to be completely visible, with a gradual transition between the two through the middle of the layer? That's actually a very common thing to do with a layer in Photoshop, allowing you to fade from one image to another. But you can't do that with the Opacity option since as I said, it's limited to controlling the transparency of the entire layer at once. What you would need is some way to control the transparency of different areas of the layer separately. What you would need is a layer mask.
Let's look at an example. Here I have a couple of wedding photos that I think would work well blended together. Here's the first one:
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!
A wise man once said, "Nothing worth doing in life should be done without layer masks". Apparently, the wise man was a big Photoshop user who may have spent a little too much time alone on top of the mountain. But enough about him. Layer masks are right up there at the top of the list of things you really need to know about when working in Photoshop because without them, your work, your creativity and your flexibility all suffer. It's that simple. It's a good thing for us, then, that layer masks are so incredibly simple and easy to understand!
Before we continue, if you're unsure of what a layer is, you may want to read our tutorial on Photoshop layers before learning about layer masks.
Download our tutorials as printable PDFs! Learning Photoshop has never been easier!
So what are layer masks then? Well, if the term "mask" is what's confusing you (and who could blame you), replace the word "mask" in your mind with "transparency", because that's exactly what a layer mask does. It allows you to control a layer's level of transparency. That's it, that's all. There's nothing more to them than that. Now, you may be thinking, "But... I can already control the transparency level with the Opacity option, can't I?", and yes, you certainly can. The Opacity option in the top right corner of the Layers palette also allows you to control a layer's transparency. But here's the difference. The Opacity option changes the transparency level for the entire layer at once. If you lower the Opacity level down to, say, 50%, the entire layer becomes 50% transparent. That may be fine for some situations, but what if you want only part of a layer to be transparent? What if you want the left side of the layer to be completely transparent, the right side to be completely visible, with a gradual transition between the two through the middle of the layer? That's actually a very common thing to do with a layer in Photoshop, allowing you to fade from one image to another. But you can't do that with the Opacity option since as I said, it's limited to controlling the transparency of the entire layer at once. What you would need is some way to control the transparency of different areas of the layer separately. What you would need is a layer mask.
Let's look at an example. Here I have a couple of wedding photos that I think would work well blended together. Here's the first one:
The first wedding photo.
And here's the second one: The second wedding photo.
In order to blend them together, whether I'll be using a layer mask or not, I need to have both photos inside the same Photoshop document, so with each photo open in its own separate document window, I'm simply going to press V on my keyboard to select my Move Tool and then click inside one of the documents and drag that photo into the document containing the other photo: Dragging one photo into the same Photoshop document as the other photo with the Move Tool.
Now both photos are in the same Photoshop document, and if we look in the Layers palette, we can see that each one is on its own separate layer, with the photo of the couple facing towards the camera on top and the photo of the couple walking away from us into the woods below it: Photoshop's Layers palette showing each photo on its own separate layer.
So far, so good. Now, how am I going to blend these two photos together? Well, let's see what happens if I simply try lowering the opacity of the top layer. I'm going to lower it to about 70% just to see what sort of effect I end up with: Lowering the opacity of the top layer to blend it with the layer below it.
Here's my result: The image on the bottom is now showing through the image on the top layer.
Hmm. After lowering the opacity of the top layer (which again contains the image of the couple facing towards the camera on the right), the image on the bottom layer of the couple walking in the woods is now showing through the image above it. This effect may work if I was trying to turn the wedding couple into a couple of ghosts, but it's not really what I was hoping for, so I'm going to raise the opacity of the top layer back to 100% to make the top image fully visible once again.
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