Lessons

Lesson Info

Mask on a Group Rather than each Layer

Hi there. This video we're going to look at adding a mask to a group basically we just added to this group here so that things that are inside, you can see okay are all just masked by there's one banana mask that we've made. We don't have to apply to all the different layers. If you've done it before, there's going to be a few extra little tricks, like a little color range trick, a shortcut for blending modes. Plus we'll add some shadows to it to kind of make it look more realistic. Lots of value in this one. We'll start with just the simple mask and move our way through. Alright, to get started. Let's open up our files and it is in the 02 selections and masking folder. We're going to open up group mask 123 and four. It's open all of those up now throughout this video you're probably gonna have some construction because I've been waiting all day for them to finish so I can record. There they are there, they are not going to finish anytime soon so we're just gonna have a little tapping ...

and banging in the background. So let's start with the group mask one psd. Remember him the banana, we use color range to select him And like you said at the beginning we're going to kind of combine them inside that shape. Good thing we're going to learn is if you're on a Mac hold down command key. If you're on a pc just hold down the control key and if you click on the mask, it loads that mask back into a selection. You can see the little ants running around which is cool. Another cool little tip you might not know about is you can go to select and you can save selections. Sometimes you spend like all day kind of getting halfway through a selection and then you have to go, you can actually save this thing. So I'm going to call it banana. I'm going to click OK Because what I want to do is I'm going to go select de select and I'm going to turn that mask off. So I'm going to right click where the layer mask is and say let's delete that layer. Mask that hard work all gone. Don't worry because we've saved it in that selection. So what do I want to do? Let's just get started quickly. So you understand the concept. So I'm going to go to group mask too. And my command C command V doesn't work with this man. It's always the bane of our life. Right? The locked one. So just double click the word background click. Ok. Now we can use command C. Command V. And we have far too big strawberries. I'm gonna shrink them down. And I'm just going to kind of put him where am I going to put him about there to get started? Let's grab group mass three. Do the same thing, unlock the background or you can just do your drag into the tab option. I'm using the command c. Command V. Scale it down to kind of an appropriate size. I'm just doing haves and haves now. It's not going to look perfect yet I guess. I don't want to get the concept through first and then we'll go and finish it off. So I've got these two here. Now what we've done in the past and what you might have done like me is you're going to add a layer mask to every one of these images. So let's go to select load selection. Where are you load selection? Go to channel, go to banana. There's my selection pack. So that selection you have that layer selected and you go you and then you do the same thing. I'm going to use that cool shortcut where I command click or control, click the mask on this layer layer mask and it works right but you end up with like loads of these and sometimes if you're trying to make a kind of a collage, you'll end up with a zillion different masks and that's not the pro way. So we're going to go a step backwards until all that's gone. What we're gonna do is I'm just going to make a layer group here. I'm going to call this one a banana mask. I'm not sure why I say banana that way. Um And we're gonna stick these two guys in it so select both of them and just drag them and click them on top of the folder. So you know they're in there. You know they're in their way, you're turning the eyeball on and off of the folder and now the cool thing is is with this layer selected, I can go to my select load selection, banana click. Ok? And if I play the layer mask to that group, okay, they're all inside, they're all happy in there. So it's just an easy way now I can grab the blueberries, drag them in. Go back to my old ways of selection. Can you see because it's just inside this group, they all just come along for the right now. You can skip ahead now we're going to do a little bit. I'm gonna show you some extra tricks but if you came for the masking on a group you're satisfied you can move on. There's gonna be some cool extra tips coming. So I'm going to delete these two guys. The stories are going to kind of like fill the background part, somewhere, somewhere like that. I'm going to go to my group three Now, how would I select these guys? Color range won't work because there is little this white pith in the middle, not sure what you call that stuff, but it's the wrong color. So what we're going to do is use the quick selection tool and I'm going to kind of do a reverse selection, we're gonna use the quick selection tool. I'm gonna make my brush a bit bigger and quick selection tool be perfect for this. I hope I've already practiced. That's pretty amazing. I'm going to make it a layer mask. I'm gonna go back to my move tool. I'm going to go command C on a Mac or control C on a PC. Jump back to this original here and I'm going to paste it cool. Probably gonna resize it a little bit before I do dun dun. Right click where it says later to make sure it is a smart object. So when I shrink it down, I don't lose that lovely resolution that's in there. Turn my keyboard, Let's now do the blueberries. Okay, we've played with this one before. I'm going to show you another little color range trick in the last video was reluctant to make a like 1/5 video on color range, so I thought I'd throw it in here. Let's go to select color range and what you can do is watch this if I click on the actual blueberries and I click on plus and I add a few more to them and I try and play with fuzziness that works to a degree and it works really great when we're doing our localized colors Okay, because we just wanted these two. But when you want the whole lot often is I'm going to go to this first eyedropper, click on the background. So in this election we're gonna be selecting the background but then just inverting it. So I'm going to add the little plus, I'm gonna say a little bit of you in there. It's going to work for me. Perfect. Let's click OK. If I mask it now though it's the wrong way around, I'm gonna undo and just go to select inverse. Now I'm going to add my layer mask. There's a few little holes in it from the white parts. We'll learn another little trick in a minute quarter channel mask which will really fix this one up. But for the moment we're using the tools that we've got. That's one worth mentioning copy it back to the beginning here, paste it, shrink it down a bit. Here we go. Blueberry goodness. You can see here some of the centers are showing through to the orange so I might just grab the mask, grab my brush tool, shrink it down and paint it with white just to fill in these guys nice and easy little drops. Mhm. Alright, so that should be the end of this one. What I want to do though is I really want to add some shadows to it and when I was practicing I guess I want to show you the trouble I ran into. You can skip ahead Now there's not anything to do with Masking left. I just want to show you that shadows to it. A little bonus chapter. So what I normally do and we did this quite a bit in the essentials courses, I just grab this layer, I duplicated by dragging onto this like new layer icon here, drag it to the top, come on and there. Double click in here. I'm gonna call it shadow name. At least two of my six layers I. D. Saturated by going command shift you on a mac or control shift you on a pc. Or here's the long way under image adjustments, hue, saturation gets a curious sort of the color, otherwise it looks weird when you start using blending modes, right kind of colors everything. So if I do say to read it first normally what I can do is just go multiply and often networks cast the shadows on the background but because the photographer of this banana kind of spend a long time lighting it and making it look great with no real strong shadows, I'm missing them from what I need it for. So I'm gonna have to kind of accentuate what I really want. Is this line through the middle, I feel like that gives the banana, it's banana characteristics plus these little end pieces. But I also want some kind of shading around the outside to give it some volume And I'll show you the tricks that I used to do that. So I've decelerated the layer. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna use the burn tool, remember the burn tool, makes things darker, you're gonna have to play around with the range of the top here. I'm gonna play with shadows, exposures 100%. You have to play around with these settings depending on what you're working on. But I'm gonna brush slides here. I'm just can you see if I'm working with shadows? Just going to accentuate those shadows. I want really bring that out and do the same with that, I want that to be nice and strong, that's already probably fine. I won't do him any more. Of course, that's a strong line here, I wanna do the same for the edges. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to just make the brush bigger. Maybe you lower the opacity a little bit or the exposure in this case the mid tones is what I wanted to do and you can kind of see what I'm doing, I'm just trying to like give it some volume around the outside was clicking and dragging slowly, maybe a slightly smaller button just to give it some depth. I'm not spending too long. Alright, so now we've got some kind of strong colors. I want to get rid of the mid tones. I just want these black bits left. So the easiest way to get rid of mid tones is to use levels with this layer selected, I'm going to use, it doesn't really matter if you use adjustments or the other one, I'm gonna use adjustment layers because we are being super professional, I'm going to make sure the levels only affect the layer underneath, so levels only affect the shadow by clicking that button there and I'm just gonna work with this not to make it look better but to try and get rid of that kind of mid tone grace, you can see just yanking up, there's a white slider here playing with the gray slider. Darken this up. So this is what I'm trying to do right, just add shadows. Cool. Now I'm going to click on my shadow layer and then just work with the lamb modes and figure out which one's gonna work. It's gonna multiply as often as you can see it there. Multiply is quite good. I'm gonna work my way through and if you are like me and you hate doing this for good though, you know, going through the mall and going man, this just takes forever, you just don't Right, so the shortcut for cycling through these Okay, it's a cool little shortcut. You have to be on your move tool though for some reason that only works when you're on your selection tool. Sorry, the move tool and you hold down the shift key on your keyboard and tap plus plus again plus again case holding down shift tapping plus that's Mac and pc just cycles through them. Super useful, helpful tool. Now I'm actually looking so multiple is good, linear burn is okay. Should really have checked this before you watched. Let's turn it on and off. Can you see what I mean? I want to kind of add that little bit of realism in there. Alright, one last thing before I go, I just noticed that this kind of spilling over here so I'm gonna click on my layer mask and because they're all in the same group, ties it back nicely. Nice work. Then we're gonna layer mask, make sure black is my foreground color. I'm gonna make the brush size nice and big and fluffy. I'm just going to kind of ease it in there. There you go. Bit of reflection. Alright, so thanks for hanging around for the bonus shadow section. We had a really simple thing at the beginning there just just putting a mask on an actual layer group and then throwing everything inside of it. All right, That is it. Let's get into the next video tutorial.