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Photoshop Masking Techniques / Finalizing a Layer Mask




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Subtitles of the Movie (Adobe Photoshop CS5 / Photoshop Masking Techniques / Finalizing a Layer Mask)

So what do you do with your layer mask now that it's completely finalized and you've really worked out all of the imperfections in your mask? Well, you know, one more time here I'm going to hold down Alt or Option and click here. I couldn't help myself. It had to be perfect and it's still not absolutely perfect but I really wanted to clean this up and get it, you know, more to a, sort of a, a final state. So now what? Now what do I do? Well, let me just zoom out just a little bit here. What I can do now really is any number of things. I'm going to head to my Layer Menu up at the top and then back down to Layer Mask and we have some options here. I could choose Delete, which would delete the layer mask and take me all the way back to the three trucks, all the way back to where we started or I could say Apply. Now check this out. I'm going to choose Apply. It removes the layer mask. It actually sort of applies the layer mask to the image really, hence the command. The other two toy trucks are gone and all I'm left with is the selection or the mask that you and I had created, right? Now I'm going to Undo that. I'm going to have to use my history as well because I moved my guy around so I'm going to choose Edit and then step backward and then Edit, step backward and I'm back to my mask there inside the Layers Palette. So I can certainly apply a layer mask if I wanted to. I'm going to go back to the Layer Menu here and then back down to Layer Mask. I can also disable the layer mask as well and if I choose that, what happens is, well, it appears that I'm taken all the way back to where we had started but check out the Layers Palette. I'm just going to zoom in here on my image. You can see that the mask thumbnail now has this red X through it indicating that it's disabled so I see my other two toy trucks and you know, a shortcut for disabling, temporarily disabling your layer mask is just holding down the Shift Key and clicking on that icon. So enabling and disabling just by Shift clicking on it. But you know, I go to be honest. Myself, I would probably leave the toy truck exactly the way it is. In other words, once I get my layer mask looking perfect, looking exactly the way I want it, I don't do anything. I leave it the way it is and then I add in some additional images, maybe some other graphic files and so on, create some kind of a composition but I always leave the layer mask intact because who knows? Down the road I might have, you know, a need for the yellow truck or maybe the red truck, right? And I don't want to permanently delete them. Again, I like to keep everything as editable as possible. But, you know, myself, I would probably just leave it exactly the way it is. In other words I get my layer mask looking good, looking the way I want and then I don't do anything. I leave it the way it is. I want to keep it editable. I want to be able to temporarily disable it or I want to be able to add to the mask or subtract from the mask. So I would leave it as is and then perhaps drop it into another layout or add some other files to this file and build up some kind of a composition. But I leave the layer mask intact so that I can always go back and edit it. Again, I like that option of editability, right, inside my Photoshop files. So there you go. So if you are indeed working on a different file, if you're working on your own layer mask inside your own file, just make sure to save your document as a .PSD and you'll always have an editable file. So there you go; layer masks.

Tutorial Information

Course: Adobe Photoshop CS5
Author: Geoff Blake
SKU: 34150
ISBN: 1-936334-46-1
Release Date: 2010-08-06
Duration: 7.5 hrs / 95 lessons
Work Files: Yes
Captions: No
Compatibility: Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux
QuickTime 7, Flash 8

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