Lessons

Lesson Info

Masking Multiple Images Together

first here I'm taking a photograph Iceland of a waterfall. And instead of just taking one version of the image, I ended up capturing, too. I took one with a fast shutter speed that would freeze the water. And then I took a 2nd 1 with a slower shutter speed that would give Ah silkier look to the waterfall. And when I look at those two images, I find that I liked the silky version where the water is falling. But when the water hits the bottom him this area and in some areas up at the top before it actually goes off the edge, I prefer the crisp version that has the faster shutter speed. So I want to combine those two together. So I get the best of both to do. So I'll start off here in bridge and I'm going to select the two images I'd like to work with. I'm gonna then go up to the tools menu. I'm gonna choose Photoshopped, and I find a choice called load files into Photoshopped layers. Now, I could do the same thing from Adobe Light Room. If you happen to use that for adjusting your pictur...

es in organizing them. I would select the two images there, and I would go to the photo menu where I would find a choice called Edit in. And then I would find the choice of load files into Photoshopped layers, which would do the exact same thing Is this When you load files in and Photoshopped layers, you should end up with a single document in one layer for each of the files that you had selected. So in this case I have my two layers, and if I turn off the eyeball in the top layer, it's obvious that the top layer was the fast shutter speed because the water is more frozen and then I can reveal was on the layer below. Now, if I turn this off and on off and on, I might notice that the land moves the tiniest amount. Like if you look at the rocks in the lower right of the image and I turn this off and on, there might be the slightest movement. So before I end up masking this, I'm gonna first do something to ensure that the two layers are lined up is closely as they can be. To accomplish that I'm going to select both layers, the top players already selected. So hold shift and clicking the layer that's below. Then I'll go to the edit menu, where I'm gonna find a choice called Auto Align Layers. That's the same technology that's used to stitch panoramas when you put them together in photo shop, it looks for content that is identical in two layers, and it finds it. It tries to line them up. I'm just going to use the setting called Auto and Click OK, and I don't know that that's gonna make a big difference in this particular image. But if you ever shoot images like this handheld, you'll most likely need to use auto align layers. Now if I hide the top layer, I think I see less movement in the rock that's there. One layer is a little brighter than the other, but that's not gonna matter now, with the top layer active, I'm gonna add a layer mask so I go to the bottom of my layers panel. I find that icon. It looks like a rectangle with a circle inside of it, and I click when I do. The layer mask is added to the layer that is currently active. And if there was no a selection on my screen at the time I did that, the mask should start out being white, white in a layer mask allows that layer to completely show up. And so now if I grab my paintbrush tool, I want to paint with black. He has black is gonna hide this layer. And the only thing is, I'm gonna come up here to my brush. I mean, the standard brush tool. I mean it click on the brush preview in my options bar, and I'm just going to make sure that my hardness setting has turned all the way down. So I have a really soft edged brush. Therefore, you won't be able to tell exactly where I stopped painting because it will fade out on the edge. All right, now I'm gonna get my brush and start painting wherever I would like the more silky version of the waterfall to appear. So I'm gonna come over here to the right edge of my picture, in paint right where the waterfall is. I'll stop when it hits the bottom. The pool of water that's there, do that. I'll go to the next area in the waterfall and do the same thing as a paint when I released my boss. But I can look in my layers panel and actually see the black paint that I'm adding that black paint is hiding the layer that the mask is attached to. That happens to be the layer that contains the fast shutter speed water. Do that. If I were to hide the layer that's underneath, you might be able to get a better idea for what's happening because then you'll see the top most layer, with some areas missing, those of the areas where I've painted with black and a layer mask. And so the black areas hide the layer that it's attached to. I turn on the layer that's underneath, and it's just filling in those holes. So Onley portion of that layer you see, is where you could see it through those holes. When you use a layer mask, you can at any time, switch over and paint with white. And let's say I want the little bitty part of the waterfall in here to be more of the short shutter speed, so I paint that back in Any time I paint with white, it makes the layer I'm currently working on visible. And so in this case, I see that more short shutter speed. Now, if I hide the top layer, you'll see just the layer that's underneath, which is where it's all the slower shutter speed and turn this layer back on. You get the idea of what I've done. Now let's do that to a bunch of other images here. I took a picture of some birds. I don't like that all the birds are looking to the right, so I didn't take just one shot. I took a 2nd 1 but when I get the 2nd 1 I liked the middle bird was looking to the left, but I don't like the bottom Bird is looking straight on. I wish she was looking towards me or somewhere else, so I continued taking shots, and each time the birds were in slightly different positions. I would like to create a more optimal version of that by masking multiple images together again. Here in Bridge, I'll select all of those images. I'll go to the Tools menu, choose photo shop and choose load files into Photoshopped layers. Remember that could be done from light room, but you would have to go to the photo menu and choose edit in to find those same choices. Then I believe I was shooting hand held when I shot this, and therefore, if I were to turn off these eyeballs, you see the tree move up and down, so that means I need to select these layers. Top layer is selected. All hold shifting. Get the bottom one, and I need to go to the edit menu and choose Otto a line to make sure the tree is in the same position in each image. And I just use a setting called Auto and Click OK after doing so. If I turn off the top layer, you'll see that the branches in the same position and turn off the next one down and you'll see the branches on the same spots in each shot so that I'm gonna choose one of these images to be the starting or base image. And maybe I'll use this one. Let's say that I think that one of the birds is in an optimal position, either the middle bird or the one on the right for me. I'm just gonna say one of those two. I like I'll go to the next layer up and I'm just going to turn on its eyeball and decide. Are any of the birds and that layer more desirable? So I turn that on in the bird bottom, suddenly looks to the left, and so I don't mind that, but let's see if there's a better version of him looking to the left. So I'll turn that layer off and turn the next one on. No, the next one. No, the next one. Okay, now he's looking to the right. I have to decide. Do I want that bird looking right or left? I think I'd prefer him to look to the right, because then he's looking into the frame instead of out. So I'm going to use just that bird from the top layer. So I'm gonna click on the top layer, and I'm gonna add a layer mask. But so far, whenever I've added a layer mask, if there was no selection active, the mascot ended up with was full of white by default, and that allowed the layer to completely show up. But at the moment. I only want to use a small portion of this layer, and so I would rather have the mask start out as black. That's gonna hide the entire contents of the layer. Then I could just paint in the little area that I want to get a black mask. All you need to do is when you click on the layer mask icon, hold down the option key Alton windows before you click. So I have the option key held down. Right now, I'll click the layer mask icon, and when I do, you see that the mask that was added was full of black. Don't worry about it. If you forgot to hold down the option key or you forget that that's the key that needs to be held because you can always choose. This is, well, image adjustments. Invert to get the opposite invert always make something a negative of itself. So if you had black, you'd get white. And if you had white, you get black so you could use that. After making the mask, I'll grab my paintbrush tool, and now I'm gonna paint just right here where that bird is the need to have a soft enough big brush here, So I get that to blend out where the sky is because the clouds air moving between these shots. Right now, I have him looking in towards the middle, and now I'm gonna look at the guy on the right side. I'd rather not have him looking out of the frame if it all possible. So let's see if he's looking in on any of the other shots. I'll go to the one right above the background. Turn on its eyeball, and I didn't see him move. I'll go to the next one up. They moved a little bit. Next one up, then move. I'm wondering if the same layer I've already masked his head might be pointing in. And if it's not that, I won't have an option to choose from. But I need to figure out how to bring that area to be visible, because right now it's only this part in the lower left that's visible. I could just paint with white right here. I'm working on the mask and he's always looking to the right. I think on each layer he must be looking to the right. I'll double check so if that's the case, I won't have an option for them. Now let's look at the middle one and decide which version we'd like to use. I'll turn on the layer right above the background, decide if I like it better than what was in there previously. Go to the next one up and do the same thing like its little tail wagon there. Kind of like his tail more in this position. And then I can go to the one about the side between these. Now I like that one. In this particular case, I don't even know that I need to do any further masking because, let's see, it all depends on what happens to the guy at the far bottom. If he changes, it looks the same. But I think the bird on the right. If you look at him when I turn on this layer, I don't like it. What happens to his neck? So I'm gonna mask him out. All right, I'll add a layer mask and then I'll paint where this bird is, cause that's what I don't think I liked. I do need to paint with black, though, if I want to hide him to reveal the one that's underneath, and I just need to paint far enough out into the clouds to get them to blend together. Now, if you have some layers in here that are unused and you just don't need them in your file, I wouldn't leave them there because my file size would stay larger than it needs to be. So I can go to the side menu with Layers panel, click on what's noticed the hamburger menu or fly out menu, and there's a choice within here that should be called. Take me just a moment to find it, but I think it's delete hidden layers. If it's not the out right there, that's going to throw away any layers that have their eyeball icons turned off. So let's try that. I'll choose Don't show again. And the only thing I could do is if I wanted more sky at the bottom in that additional sky was in one of those players. I could have gotten it, but I think we're find their and the final thing I would do is crop the image to get rid of the empty space. So choose the crop tool in my tool panel, then bring this in to get an optimal crop. If you don't need the layers. If you know you're not going to be changing making changes in the future, then you're more than welcome to merge these layers together, but instead emerging layers together. Let's just see how could we simplify this image in another way? The other thing you can do is if you have layer mask, you can click on a layer mask and drag it to the trash can. If you do, it'll ask you a question and you can delete the layer mask, which means bring back the entire contents of that layer so that nothing is hidden. The same is filling the mask with white before getting rid of it, or I can choose apply. And if I choose apply then it's actually going to delete the areas that are black in that mask. So I'm gonna choose, apply and watch what happens to this layer you can see through. Part of it is a checkerboard indicates an area that's completely empty, and so now you see it was actually deleted. If I go to the layer above, I could also drag. It's a mask of the trash. Intel it to apply it, and then it will truly delete those areas that were filled with black. To further simplify the image, I could select the layers and shoes, merge or flatten. Now we're down to a single layer, so my file size would be very small. But that's only if I don't need to make changes in the future. I'd rather keep those layers because you never know. I might print this image one day, and when it gets printed large, look at it really close in notice, an issue where I stopped painting a little bit shy of where I should have. And maybe the sky doesn't blend together, right? I'd rather have the option to make changes later, so I rarely merge those layers together. Now let's use this to remove tourists in a shot. Here I was shooting on this nice little road with the church at the end, but there were always people around, and they just kept walking by and walking by, and they didn't care that I was taking pictures. They were just constantly walking by. Well, I don't mind that I'm used to it So all I do is I stand in one position, I take a photograph and I try not to move much. I take another one a few moments later than that might wait two or three minutes and take another picture. And if I remember, there was somebody in a particular position, like like over there in the distance. Then I will end up just waiting for that area to clear. Before I take another picture, I'll select those images. I'm gonna load files into Photoshopped layers and then we can turn these off.