From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

865 Masking layers in Adobe Fresco

From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

865 Masking layers in Adobe Fresco

- Hey, gang, this is Deke McClelland. Welcome to "Deke's Techniques." Over the last couple of weeks, we've been working in Adobe Fresco running on an iPad Pro or other device. But here's the thing, our robot is being attacked, despite the fact that he is clearly an emissary of peace. See that heart on his chest? He is being attacked. "By what," you ask? By too much color. Which is why we need to mask our layers in order to achieve this much more reasonable effect, entirely inside Adobe Fresco, by the way. Fresco actually has some very decent masking skills. Here, let me show you exactly how they work. All right, so at the risk or repeating myself, I'm working in Adobe Fresco, running on an iPad Pro, and I need to mask this very colorful layer, so that we're not seeing through the robot. All right, so, the colorful layer is selected over here on the right-hand side of the screen, and so what I want to do is add a layer mask, and there's a couple of ways to approach this. One is to just tap on the triple dot icon over here on the right-hand side of the screen, that ellipses underneath the eyeball, and then you would select Create empty mask, and you would paint inside that mask in order to paint the robot away. You do not want to select this next option down, Mask layer contents, and that's because what that's going to do is take the transparency mask that's already associated with the layer and turn it into a layer mask, which is rarely what you want, and definitely not what you want at all in the case of this layer. All right, so that's one approach. The other approach is to begin with a selection outline. And so, I'll just go ahead and tap on the Lasso tool in order to select it. It's tempting to grab this Selection Brush and then brush inside the image in order to create a selection outline, but what you need to remember is that this is just a dumb brush tool. It has no real automation associated with it. That said, it is pressure sensitive, assuming that you're working with an Apple Pencil. But you can get that behavior just by brushing inside the layer mask as well. So, not sure this is really the best way to go, even though I might try it out down here at this location, and it looks like I'm getting a pretty good selection going there. But instead, because there's so many straight edges here, I'm going to switch back to the Lasso tool, and, as you may recall, you can drag with this tool if you want, in order to add to the selection outline like so. Or you can tap with the tool in order to create a straight-sided selection as I'm doing right now, and in fact, if you like, you can go ahead and combine those feature together. Now, you may have noticed that I lost a segment there, and that's because I must have accidentally done a two finger tap, which invokes an undo. And so you can undo the creation of every single one of these segments if you like. In my case though, I'm going to attempt to drag up this shoulder, up to a point, anyway, and then I'll tap my way over to about here, drag down like so, and then I'll go ahead and drag my way down into this region under the arm. I don't actually like that little segment, so I'll go ahead and undo. And so you can just undo one little segment at a time with this tool. It's very flexible. I have to say, I wish you could do that inside Photoshop, that would be awesome. All right, now just tap my way down here, and while this isn't going to be the most precise selection outline on earth, it will give us a good place to start. And so I'll just go ahead and drag down and back around to the beginning of the Lasso in order to create that selection outline. All right, so even though I haven't really selected everything, it's a good place to start. And so now I'll tap on that ellipses icon once again, and notice that first masking command is now changed to Create a mask. At which point, if I tap on it, then I will mask everything outside the selection and keep the stuff inside the selection. That's actually the opposite of what I want, so I'll tap on the ellipses icon again and then select Invert mask, and that will give me this effect right here. All right, now I'm going to go ahead and switch to my Brush tool, which Fresco has actually done automatically. And notice I'm working with a basic brush, which is going to give you the best edges. And I'm going to select this guy right here, Hard round variable, which will allow me to paint a pressure sensitive line. And then notice that I have these options, Reveal and Hide, down here at the bottom of the screen. You'll probably want to start with Hide, in which case you'll go ahead and paint like so, but I've made a mess of things, so just undo that brush stroke there, and I'll try to take it a little easier just by brushing lightly with my stylus, like so, and that way I might be able to better stay inside the lines. You could even try painting with your finger if you like, and that way you're taking the pressure stylus out of the equation. All right, so I'll just go ahead and paint in this big area here, and it looks like I could do a better job right here at this location, and so I'll go ahead and do so. And then notice I masked away too much around this arm right here, in which case, to bring back the detail, just go ahead and tap on Reveal down here at the bottom of the screen, and then I'll paint very lightly next to that arm in an attempt to not mask away too much, like I just did, but in that event, I would just switch back to Hide and I would go ahead and paint like so. All right, so obviously, I can brush like crazy inside this region up here near the top of the image, and I can go ahead and brush inside the head as well, if I like. Another way to work is to fill a selection outline, and to do that, I'll just go ahead and switch back to the Lasso tool right here. And let's imagine that I want to select this region, and so I'll just tap around here in order to draw a straight-sided selection outline down to this location, and then I'll just paint around this detail, back over here, and then I will resume tapping up the arm, like so. And I'll just go ahead and select that region by dragging back to the beginning of that Lasso tool. And now, notice these options down here at the bottom of the screen. One of them reads Erase. If you tap on it, then you will erase the contents of the selection outline. In other words, you will add black to the layer mask. And by the way, you know that you're working with a layer mask, 'cause you're seeing a little layer mask thumbnail over there in the Layers panel on the right side of the screen. If you want to switch back to editing the image, then you would just drag inside that thumbnail, and that will make the image active. If you want to switch back to the mask, then drag to the right. All right, I'll just go head and tap Deselect down here at the bottom of the screen. And I'll draw another selection outline using the Lasso tool around that midsection, and I'll go ahead and drag around this shoulder here in order to try to select it, and I'm just being careful with my stylus. It's a little easier to work that way when you're trying to draw a freeform selection outline as opposed to just dragging with my finger, for example, or if I were working inside Photoshop dragging with a mouse. All right, so I'll just go ahead and complete that guy, and I will once again tap Erase down there at the bottom of the screen in order to mask away those pixels. All right, and now I'll tap Deselect in order to deselect the image. Now, there are a couple of ways to look at a layer mask. One is the way we're seeing it right now, which is known as On Layers, that is to say we're seeing all the layers piled on top of each other, but if you tap on the triple dot over here on the right side of the screen, notice that right here at the bottom of the menu, we're seeing Red overlay. If you tap on that, then you're going to see a quick mask version of that mask. That is you're going to see a Rubylith overlay, at which point you can continue to edit the layer mask, if you want to, using the brush. So I'll go ahead and switch back to that Pixel Brush tool up there at the top of the Toolbox. And, in my case, I'm painting in a Reveal. I don't want that, so I'll undo, and then I'll tap on Hide down here at the bottom of the screen, and I will then brush in these details just to make sure that I'm masking everything away that I should, and I'll go ahead and paint inside the head as well. So you may find that this is an easier way to really see what's going on here. And I'm making a few mistakes as I work. Actually, I'm making plenty of mistakes, but I'm just going to go ahead and mow forward, because I think, at this point, you get the idea. Gee whiz, I am doing a terrible job. All right, so I'll go ahead and paint there and I'll paint here as well, and I'll paint away this section of the head, and then I'm going to switch back to the normal view by tapping on that ellipses icon once again, and selecting on On Layers down here at the bottom of the menu, at which point I can see that I've made a couple of mistakes, so I'll switch back to Reveal and I'll paint very diligently around these edges right here. And that, my friends, is how you go about creating a layer mask, either by starting with a selection outline, or just painting using your Apple Pencil or your finger, if you prefer, here inside Adobe Fresco, running on an iPad Pro. All right, so far we've managed to clean up the robot, but he's a little flat compared to his very colorful background. Wouldn't it be so much better if he, himself, looked more colorful and sculpted, like so? That's why I have a followup movie. Things always look better in the followup movies. "Deke's Techniques" each and every week. Keep watching.

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