It is worth becoming familiar with the options. From left to right here is a quick overview:
Create a new document, mine is 400×300px. Grab your Gradient Tool and set it to Radial Gradient. I feel like making it green inspired, so I’m going to use #a9fd06 as my foreground color and #006600 as my background color. Create a gradient near the lower left corner of the document. Your new background will look something like this:
The basics of Layer masks are incredibly simple but very powerful.
This is a quick and simple tutorial that will teach you how to use Layer Mask Basics. And the best way to learn is try to follow this tutorial on your own rather than just reading about it.
Now we actually use the mask. While the boy's layer is selected, click on the layer mask button. You’ll also notice that when you click on the layer mask your colors in the color picker turn to black and white. So here it is… the secret of Layer masks: Depending on what the settings are, the color WHITE shows or reveals the image AND the color BLACK hides or masks the image (We’re talking about the image on which the layer mask is applied, not the layer below it). So on to step 4.
Layer Mask added
Step 4: Grab your PAINTBRUSH. Choose BLACK and start wildly painting. Paint over the background of the boy's image. Paint over the background as accurate as you can. Keep on painting until all backgrounds are masked. Now if you make a mistake and hidden part of the boy's image? No problem. Layer masks are not destructive so just change the color to WHITE and paint over the area you want to appear and it’ll magically reappear. You can basically adjust the brush size, or the shade of gray and you get way more control than using destructive methods. If you use an eraser you can’t easily undo something you did 20 steps before etc etc.
Background partially masked
Good thing about layer masks is that you need not worry about being perfect because nothing is being deleted. It’s all there. Just hit the “X” key on your keyboard and you’ll quickly switch between black and white and you can fix your mistakes. Now after you have quickly erased everything that is not needed just zoom away and with a small brush just fix up the edges so they look good.
That's it. In four easy steps, you'll have the final image above.
I hope I was able to show you how layer masks can make your life easier. This is obviously not the only thing you can do with layer masks so keep playing with this and learn more. If you have any questions then leave me comments below and I’ll try my best to get back to you in a timely fashion.
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