Adding masks to composite the images - Photoshop Tutorial

- Now what we essentially have to do is start to make a selection on each layer of the parts we want to keep and then apply a layer mask. Fortunately Photoshop has some great selection tools, like the Color Range command and the Quick Selection Tool. But if you're totally rusty on making selections in Photoshop make sure you check out the full length course we have in the online library to help you master this skill. All right, let's get started. What's going to happen is you'll turn the next layer on and what you're looking for is to find the object that you want to keep. So easy enough, we've got our skater back here, and what I can do is make a simple selection. I'm just going to switch to the Lasso Tool here and make just a basic selection. And we'll choose Select and Mask with a little bit of Feather. That works well. And what I can do is choose to see that as a basic selection or composited over the layer down below. When satisfied I'll just tell it that I want that to output as a Layer Mask, and click OK. And now that piece of the photo is added in. Let's keep going here. And I'm actually going to start at the top for a change where we've got some bigger action, and we'll start to combine. Now you might need to change the stacking order depending upon how this works, but let's zoom in, and I'll grab the Quick Selection Tool here, and just paint over our subject. There we go, you can hold down the opt key if you need to subtract at all. There we go. Not bad. I'll choose Select and Mask. And what we can do is take advantage of Smart Radius and Edit Detection to get a nice, clean edge. And I'll just output that to a Layer Mask and click OK. Now you see that our guy is added in. Now fortunately this layer mask is non-destructive, so if needed you could paint with white and your paintbrush to add in more if his shoulder was clipped for example. But it looks pretty good. I'm going to move that down to the bottom, shift + cmd + left bracket, and it goes to the bottom of the stack. Let's take the next one here. And similar, with that layer selected we'll just make a basic selection, use the Quick Selection Tool here, w, there we go. I'll choose Select and Mask. I'll turn on the Smart Radius option there. There we go. And you can Feather that, as well as shift the edge in or out if you need to erode or expand. When ready output as a Layer Mask. Now let's do a couple more of these and I can start to move things down to the bottom, Shift + left bracket. And depending upon the overlap, you might start to move them in front. For example, as we continue to go our rider may eventually need to pass in front of himself. You can decide whether or not you want to keep options like shadows as well. So let's grab this, Quick Selection Tool, just make sure I've got the accurate layer selected, and click and drag. Remember, you're not trying to be perfect here, just get a generalized selection. If there's really close overlap, well, then you might have to get a little more perfect, but the Quick Selection Tool works pretty well. Click Select and Mask and you can adjust the Feather, as well as the Radius, and take advantage of options like Shift Edge to erode or expand. Make the Layer Mask, click OK. And you see, it's really starting to come to life as our athlete rides through the scene. Let's go ahead and send that down. And I'm just using Command + left or right bracket to judge the stacking order. Now I'm going to continue to do this and it's going to take a little bit, but we'll jump forward here in just a second. Now in this case let's take a little bit of a refinement here. I see a problem with the arm as it overlaps the other shadow. I can Feather that a little bit. That's looking better. And let's take advantage of Smart Radius to clean that up. That does a good job. Now what I'm going to do is output that to a Layer Mask and click OK. Let's move that down the stack a little bit, and then we can do a little bit of refinement. Put it in front of the shadow and click on the layer mask. Now by zooming in, using my paintbrush tool, I can paint with black to subtract. So right here along the arm where we have that little bit of a glow I could just paint to remove that, so that the arm blends better with the shadow. If the arm's not showing well enough I could also paint a little bit more to paint in some of the hand that looked like it was missing a bit. Now remember, he's moving pretty fast here, so there is a little bit of motion blur on the shot. But that worked better, by being able to paint on the mask I could refine it. If needed, you can also click on the image itself and take advantage of tools like Dodge and Burn if needed, so you can lighten or darken an area. I'm going to do a little bit of burning here, for example, just to darken down the arm a bit, so it blends a bit better. There we go. Let's go to the next image. Now in this case I'm going to opt + click with the tool here while in the Refine Edge command and I can subtract away that little bit. This is what's nice is you can actually click on an area while in the Refine Edge command or the Select and Mask command and start to clean things up. A little Feather there, click OK to output that to a Layer Mask. And it updates. Remember, if the selection doesn't look correct you can actually paint right within the Select and Mask command to add things back. And if you need to you can hold down the Option key to remove things. So this makes it easy to pick up any areas that were missed in the initial selection. There we go. If you decide a layer's not needed you can evaluate those. I'm going to go ahead and get rid of a couple of these here, 'cause I have more shots than I need, but I do want to see him starting to ride off. And remember, stacking order matters. So if a layer looks like it's on top of something here you might decide, even though it comes later in the scene, to drop it down below. In this case, if you look really closely at where the hand is intersecting, changing the stacking order can affect whether or not the other hand seems to pass in front. And I'm just going to go ahead and click on that layer mask there with the paintbrush tool and a nice, small brush, and paint a little bit more of that hand back in. There we go. Let's finish this out. That one's not doing much. That looks good, we'll take this shot here. I think these two are similar enough, so I'll get rid of this shot, not needed. You might find it easier to zoom in, so you can better see the details as you make a selection. Remember, the Option or Alt key subtracts. In this case I'm going to move this one more to the bottom, so it passes behind the rider in front. And I think we're just about done with this image. We'll just one more or two of him riding up the edge to finish the run. And where they're not crossing with as much overlap you don't have to be as careful with the selections. You can, in fact, be quite quick about it. There he is as he finishes the ride. Let's go ahead and make a quick selection here, in fact, we'll just go back to our Lasso Tool and make a generalized selection. There we go. And I'll send that all the way down towards the back and we can just get rid of this last layer here. And that looks good. So if we evaluate the scene here you see it's a really cool composite. We've got our rider dropping into the bowl, he starts to make his ascent, and crests around the edge, then rides back down, and finishes off on the other side. Now this is a bit of work, but the more you have practice the quicker it is to composite all of these layers together. Now let's move onto finishing the image.