New tutorial: Using masks in Photoshop

poopinmymouth

Rather basic, but hopefully a few will find it helpful.

http://www.poopinmymouth.com/tutorial/masks.htm

And as always, every new tutorial posted, means an update to my news page, which is vanilla http://www.poopinmymouth.com

KDR_11k

The benefit of this is that I can paint on the layer, and it will always stay circular. Normally I would have to reselect the circle area, or erase afterwards to keep the layer as a circle.

Um, you do know about the lock transparency button, right? You can just select a circle and fill it then select "lock transparency" and the circle stays a circle.

Of course there's still reason for using masks, the smudging you mentioned and more importantly the easy editing of the transparency.

Slum

Masks are always your friend. It's very very rare that I'll even use a layer in photoshop without it having a mask.

I thought I was proficient in photoshop, but I didn't even know about the tilde key showing the masked parts in red. I guess the old saying still holds true: "you learn something new every day".

peanut™

Yes thank you Poop, im reading this right now, mask are an area in PS that i shrug off and disdain by my deep ignorance of the matter.

cholden

The more of these types of tutors the better. I often forget newer artists are blind to the basic steps we have been using for years. Pull out enough of these, and you'll be ready to publish a book, poop.

Jeff Parrott

Sweet Poop, another few pages for that "Poop In My Mouth's Guide to Game Art" book.

jzero

Ben rocks! I always tell people that using Photoshop is all about the selection...

Ben, you should include a note about QuickMask, which lets you switch a regular marquee/live selection into a 'temporary alpha' mode that you can paint on. It would just go along to explain how PS's masking tech has many forms, but they all work pretty much the same.

/jzero

Joshua Stubbles

Cool stuff. I never use em, though.