In this exercise I'll show you how to create, save, and modify a very basic mask inside Photoshop. I have open an image called toolman.jpg. It features this guy with these opaque goggles and what I am hoping is an unlit cigarette, because as we all know lit cigarettes are very dangerous for you. We are however going to line up the scene by adding some lasers blasting out of this guy's eyes and ultimately heating up this wrench, and to do so we need to create some selections. So I'm going to start by selecting the dark faces of these goggles and I'll be using the Quick Selection tool which you can get by pressing the W key.
Now as we'll be discussing in a future chapter the Quick Selection tool is rarely the most efficient selection feature inside Photoshop, but in the case of these goggles it performs admirably. So I'm going to go ahead and drag inside the first goggle and then drag inside the second one as well and you just have to paint very tiny brushstrokes in order to select both of those faces. Now one of the great things about working with an Alpha channel is you get a sense for the quality of the selection and as it just so happens the Quick Selection tool is notorious for generating ragged selection outlines.
But you wouldn't know it from these animated outlines that we see on screen now; better known as the marching ants. Insofar as marching ants are concerned we have what appear to be is some near perfect ellipses and I would gather from looking at them that they're smooth as well, but that's hardly the case. So what we're going to do is convert these selections to a mask, and then we're going to smooth them out. Now I'll be showing you the most obvious way to save a selection as a mask in this exercise, and then we'll see some quicker techniques in the next exercise.
But for now go up to the Select menu and choose to Save Selection command. That brings up the Save Selection dialog box. Now you can save the selection to a different document if you want to, you could go ahead and choose New, for example, and that would create a new multi-channel document which might prove useful, for example, if you're trying to share a mask with a team or something along those lines. In my case however I'm going to go ahead and create a new Alpha channel inside the same document toolman.jpg. The channel will be set to New; you can't actually overwrite any of the color bearing channels, which is a good thing.
Then we can go ahead and name that new channel as well. I'm going to go ahead and call it eyes and then click OK. Now let's switch to the Channels panel and you'll see that there's a new Alpha channel at the bottom of the list. Go ahead and click on it in order to select it. We don't need the selection outline anymore. That animated selection and the Alpha channel are exactly the same thing, by the way,. So go ahead and press Ctrl+D or Command+D on a Mac in order to deselect the image and let's zoom in a little bit here and you'll see what I mean by a ragged selection outlines.
We have some big gray jagged blobs around the edges of what should be smooth ellipses. So let's go and fix those edges. Now when you're working with selection outlines, you typically smooth out and feather the selection by choosing commands from the Select menu. When you're working with a mask you smooth and feather the results using filters. To get to the smoothing filter go to the Filter menu choose Noise and then choose Median and if you loaded Deke keys, I have given you a keyboard shortcut of Shift+F8, because this is one of those commands you'll be using on a regular basis where your masks are concerned.
Now by default the Radius value is set to 1 pixel, which is I'm going to do you much good as you can see. But if you take it up to 12 pixels then we get some very smooth outlines indeed. Now go ahead and click OK in order to accept that result. So there is our first Alpha channel, I'm going to go ahead and switch back to the RGB image press Ctrl+0 or Command+0 on a Mac in order to zoom out. In a next exercise we'll create two more selection outlines and I'll show you some quicker methods for saving those selections as Alpha channels that don't involve choosing a command.
Author
Released
11/4/2011- Setting up a workspace
- Working with the seven key selection tools
- Using the Color Range command
- Automating masking
- Matching a scene with Smart Filters
- Choosing the ideal base channel
- Converting a channel to a mask
- Painting with the Overlay and Soft Light modes
- Using History to regain a lost mask
- Working with the Calculations command
- Extracting a mask from a Smart Object
- Masking and compositing light
- Masking with black and white
- Working with path outlines
- Combining pixel and vector masks
- Creating and feathering a vector mask
Skill Level Intermediate
Duration
Views
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Deke's Techniques
with Deke McClelland157h 16m Intermediate
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Introduction
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Adjusting the color settings4m 29s
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Setting up a power workspace5m 59s
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Welcome1m 8s
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1. It All Starts with the Channel
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How color channels work7m 7s
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Viewing channels in color3m 24s
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How RGB works4m 12s
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Single-channel grayscale5m 12s
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2. The Magic of Masking
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How a mask works7m 10s
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Making an alpha channel4m 2s
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Using the new channel icons6m 27s
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Putting a mask into play3m 55s
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3. The Science of Compositing
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Painting inside a mask6m 3s
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Cleaning up and confirming5m 18s
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Combining masks5m 10s
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Blending image elements6m 1s
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Introducing clipping masks5m 29s
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4. The Essentials of Selecting
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The marquee tools6m 31s
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The lasso tools5m 49s
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The Quick Selection tool8m 13s
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5. The Versatility of Combining and Transforming
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Selecting an eye7m 1s
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6. The Unmatched Power of Color Range
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7. The Unearthly Joy of Refinement
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Automated edge detection8m 23s
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Turning garbage into gold6m 19s
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Creating a fake blood effect5m 38s
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Establishing trails of blood7m 40s
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8. The Rewards of Everyday Masking
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9. The Mechanics of Layer Masks
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Working with path outlines7m 10s
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Recreating missing details8m 49s
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Masking glass5m 50s
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More to Come
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Next steps1m 17s
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Video: Making an alpha channel