Lessons

Lesson Info

Photoshop: Textures With Layer Masks

I captured texture all the time when I'm walking around taking photographs my brain is just searching out for textures in the world when I came into this room and I saw the table that I was sitting at I was like oh if I had my camera with me right now click I'd grab that texture also over by the host task over there were jim is there's this great texture below click I'd grab that texture there's texture on the door in the corner that's a wood texture click I'd grab that texture there's wood texture on the table here there's textures all over the place and so I captured textures all the time and here are textures that if you purchase this course you get for free well not free you bought them because you bought the course but here are textures thes air exotic textures though because these are from spain portugal in morocco who gotta pay extra for those but I just whenever I see an interesting texture I capture it especially if it doesn't have a cz much distinct detail like these cracks t...

hose air a little less useful but if it's just kind of texture like this and at any time I can apply these textures to my pictures to make them look a little bit more interesting and I just want to share with you the technique used for doing so but if you purchase this course you'll get all these textures uh part of the course so that you can use them to text arise your pictures but anyway I have hundreds upon hundreds of them from all over the place but just start thinking about it when you're out shooting on consider capturing them alright so less open a picture I think I already did that letter p uh to put it on and let's pick it's extra to use I'll just open a random texture here hit open image it was a raw file and I'll use the move tool and I'll simply dragged this from within this document over to the other one its not quite big enough I don't mind scaling tech teachers because it's okay if they get a little soft it still looks fine as long as I'm not scanning them radically like to eight times as big as their original soul type command tea for transform and grab the corner remember I hold shift to maintain the proportions so I could scale this up there is another trick when you're transforming if you hold down shift you'll get the proportions but watch what happens if I hold on option ultimate knows I'm grabbing the upper right corner and you see how all right now I don't have option held now it just pulls that corner up but if I hold option it pulls the opposite corner an equal amount so therefore I can easily get this scaled up to where I need it so if you hold down the option key that's all the windows and you grab one corner it's gonna pull the opposite corner an equal amount so that it kind of keeps what you have centered in your document then then I'm going to change the blending mode the bloody motors found at the top of the layers panel it's usually set to normal and there's a whole grouping in here that usually works pretty nicely with textures and that's the grouping that begins with the choice called overlay so I'm going to choose over lane let's see what happens that's going to control how the layer I'm currently working on interacts with what's underneath it so with overlay chosen I'll then toggle the layer to turn off and on and can you see that the layer now has a hint of texture zoom up make a little um easier for us to see but before after we get in texture but that easy just pop it on top change the bloody motor overlay now the only limitation with that they're going to really run into is this will work best with textures that are a medium brightness if you're textures are overly bright overly dark it's going to make your picture overly bright or overly dark if your texture is a medium brightness near fifty percent gray it won't change the brightness so you could always adjust your texture though you just adjust your texture in fact here I'll actually used levels don't tell anybody else I did it but when you go in here with a texture oftentimes you'll see one hump if it's a pretty consistent texture that doesn't vary a lot in brightness and just move the middle slider until it's in the middle of the hump in levels the middle slider determines what is fifty percent gray I'm saying make the majority of this picture fifty percent in brightness so if you do that with even a dark texture or bright texture it will make it a medium brightness don't tell him I use levels there so there we go now overlay is not the only choice we have available we can use any of the choices that are in this general section what's really happens with all of these choice is in here is wherever fifty percent grey shows up the picture goes away I should say that texture goes away and instead you see the picture that's underneath wherever the texture is brighter than fifty percent gray it's gonna brighten the image that's underneath wherever the textures darker than fifty percent cray it's going dark in the picture that's underneath and that's why it's important to have a texture that's near fifty percent gray and if it's not to adjust it so that's true with most of the rest of these two so I can switch from overlay mode too soft light known you see it's slightly different and result or the hard light mode which will usually be more radical radical and how much it applies it vivid light each one of these will give me a slightly different looking and result linear lights looking pretty cool if you really like texture penlight in this particular case isn't doing it and hard mix is a bit much but I think it was linear light that's a crazy amount of texture let's zoom out and see that so oftentimes they'll end up applying texture but the thing is I don't like applying it evenly across the entire picture oftentimes there's a subject matter in there and if it's a person or something having this texture on their face and stuff might not look great but you guys not a fix that already you just add a layer mask and with layer mask active you can paint with black to get it off of anything so I might come in here and use my quick selection tool I'll turn off the texture to begin with just so it has a simplified image to look at and then I might come in here and just say why don't you try to select the letter p should've done that before I added the mask but now that I do have the mask and I have that area selected if the mask is active all I gotta do is tell it to fill the mask and one of things I could tell to fill with his black so now I only have texture and the outer part I could duplicate the texture use a different blending mode on the inner part maybe one that's mellower that kind of stuff so remember if you purchase the class you get this folder full of textures to go along with the class they don't have to be always searching him out because sometimes it's just hard to think about when you're out there and we can do this so let's just grab another one and just try one other image I'll just show you another example of when I might like some texture if you haven't opened the other picture yet you can always if they're in the same folder use load files into photoshopped layers to get things to happen see if I can find where we were a second ago here we go grab my texture grab the move tool drag it over drag it down this texture is a lot larger than that file because that file is not as high rez I'm going to scale it down and I've always showed you for scaling things I type command tea for transform control t and windows and I might need to show you a little tip with this one when I type command tea I can see this handle but I can't get to the one that's over here with one that would be down there and sometimes you can't see any of them because they're like all the way off the edge of your screen because whatever it is you pasted in their was so big that like if I zoomed up on the image right now there I can't see the handles they're still out there if I were to zoom out of my picture but there's a trick if you're in the middle of transforming a layer and you can't see any of the handles were some of them are obscured type command zero that's controls their own windows and what that's going to do while you're transforming is going to zoom out just enough so you can see the handles regardless of where the handles are it'll zoom out so you can see him then another tip is if we choose one of these blending modes and I want to try the other ones I don't always like having to go to this menu change the mode leko go the menu change the mode let go sometimes I want to quickly switch between them and here's how you can do that if I use the move tool when the move tool is active watch what happens to that bloody mode over there if I just price the plus sign of the if I hold on the shift key and hit the plus sign or the minus sign do you see it changing it's going to let you cycle through it the plus sign will go one direction down the menu the minus sign will go the opposite direction but to get it to work you have to be in the move tool you have to hold on the shift key and then hit plus or minus and so I can cite through all the mod's even the modes that aren't usually good with textures you never know one of them might producer pretty cool looking result so I'll do shift right now and I'll just go through the modes that one maybe not so there's a certain group of the modes that the majority of the time will work great for textures and when you're outside of those modes you'll get a bunch of just weird results right now we just got in the section that's usually good with textures we're about to go through them so here's overlay soft light hard like vivid light linear light so maybe I like hard light anyway that's not nice to be able to cycle through them uh then I could just add my mask grab my paintbrush and if I paint with black with my mask I just say don't texturizing er face let her come out of that so she just pops out maybe I keep her arm out of it the texture is not really um fifty percent gray right now it's darker than fifty percent gray so it's darkening the picture of the hole and that's why when I get the texture off she looks so bright she was that bright to begin with and so remember you could click on the texture one of the times I used levels he has moved this little thing to the middle of the hump then you'll find your texture is not going to be bright ning or darkening your image so much so I turned off the texture you see it's more like the original picture whereas before it was darkening a lot so just a little bit of texture could make it look a bit more interesting you can apply more than one texture as well just throw on different layers so this is what my wife did where she texturizing and then she put borders on it and all kind of stuff for a card I think for her then we've talked about masks before where we paint on the mast to control where something shows up but you can also paste things into masks to control where they show up so when I'm out shooting not only am I looking for textures I'm also looking for stuff I could paste into a mask toe limit where my picture shows up and let's look at a couple examples of that first open this guy then let's open this it's just a sheet of handmade paper that I put on a dark background took a picture off I'm going to select all in copy and then I'll close this document now I want a limit where this picture shows up based on that sheet of paper so to accomplish that first here we have a background in the background is locked in that there's certain things I can't do in in most versions of photo shop I can't add a layer mask to the background in this version I can though in newer versions if I click the layer mask icon it'll automatically convert the background into a normal layer um if I haven't older version though I'd have to double click on the name of the layer first then add the layer mask so now what I want to do is actually put that scan of the handmade paper into that mask so the first thought might be well the mask is active right now it's got the corners highlighted done that so if I paint her or five run a filter or something it would affect the mask so my assumption would be if I chose paste it might go into the mask but you might be wrong watch the layers panel when I choose paste bummer whenever you choose get a new layer there is a way to get whatever you paste into the mask though but what you need to do is you need to make the mask visible on the main screen and we could do that we did that a bunch of times the other day you just gotta remember how and what it was as you move your mouse on top of the mask you hold down the option key that's all tum windows I haven't held down right now you click on it and you're looking at the mask and on lee while you're looking at the mask like that can you pay something into it this is a bit too big so I'll type command tea for transform and we'll get it to be smaller now with a mask I don't need the selection so I'll get rid of it with a mass doesn't black hide things there's a white show things doesn't have to be paint that does that it could be just as easily a picture you put in so here I got a picture of something is a picture of a sheet of paper the only problem is the area out here isn't truly black it's near black in the air in the middle isn't truly white it's near white so let's just see what it looks like when I stopped looking at the mask and I look at the result so I'll option clicking my mask again and you see that it's mainly disappearing in that outer area and it's mainly showing up in the middle but not exactly so this is what I'm going to adjust the mask the mask is active let's simply adjust what's in there will do it what we're looking at it just so you could get a better sense for what's happening now here you can use whatever you're comfortable with for adjustments levels or curves I'm gonna use curves this slider right here in curves forces areas to black it does the exact same thing it's a slaughter founding levels since in the upper left of levels if I bring it in watch what happens when you see that we can get that area to be solid black and off to paint up here with my brush to get that to be solid blacks we just didn't have enough info then we can grab the other one and if I bring that and it forces areas to solid white and so if I bring that in to about there now we have a mask that should limit where pictures showing up because a picture usually on lee shows up where there's white and a mask and it disappears where there's black does that make sense notice in the history graham with a simple image like this one there's usually gonna be two humps and all we're doing is moving the sliders to the ends of the homes most of the time so I can also do that when I'm viewing the result of this so let's option clique in the mask so we're looking at this and then I'll come in to curves bring this over to the other side of this hump bring this over to the other side of that hump and that I confined to it you know I could say do I want some of to be see through that kind of stuff because I'm actually seeing the end result like that and then I can paint out the stuff at the top just grab my brush paint with black I'm working on the mask so that's where this paint is going and we can limit where it shows up could also be nice if we used the texture that was in that paper the only problem is we scaled down the paper afterwards and I don't have the texture of the same size right now if I choose paste it will be the original size so let's just try it though edit paste not sure if this will work or not because sometimes it gets great out and won't be available but if I go to the edit menu and choose transform there's a choice called again that means use the same settings I used last time so let's see if that works and I'm just going to turn off this eyeball to see if it lines out it seems teo so we're pretty lucky there that we hadn't done enough other things they're transformed something elsewhere that wasn't stored in there anymore but transform again simply means used the exact same transformation another time now that's texture it's just like any other texture other than it's very bright we might want to get the texture to be about fifty percent grade so I can come in here this is one of those times had used levels and their two humps thie this hump is the dark stuff you see it's above dark stuff this hump is the bright stuff so I'm gonna move this to middle of that so that it's about fifty percent cray and then let's try overlay soft light soft like kinda looks a little better and the only issue that I have is a little bit strong and the black is filling in the checkerboard I might not want it teo so there's a couple things that I could do one is I can limit where this shows up so it only shows up where the layer underneath is showing up uh the way you do that is you go to the layer menu and within the layer menu I'm used to do it with the keyboard shortcuts it'll take me a second to find it um let me show you the way I'm used to it here my brain doesn't feel like finding it on the menu if I moved my mouse between two layers and I option click on that line that's right there watch what happens see that we saw that icon before the time that we saw is when we had adjustment layer and we wanted the adjustment layer toe only affect one layer we did something and whatever it is we did made that little down it pointing arrow to appear and it made the adjustment layer only affect what's directly underneath well when you don't have an adjustment layer instead you have a layer that contains a picture when you do that and in this case it's option clicking on this linus one method for doing it um what does that says let make this layer only show up where there's stuff in this layer or where the stuff in this layers visible so you see how it no longer extends beyond the edge because this layer doesn't extend beyond the edge I could then lower the opacity if it's too strong just click on the word opacity dragged down slowly bring it up and see exactly how much of that texture would you like and if I further wanna limit where it's affecting my picture what I could do is that a mask so just addle air mask and I could paint with black to say this little buddy of mine he shouldn't have texture on him it might be hard to tell that the textures going away but it is because he's kind of textured all by himself but I could get it off of any particulars so whatever I'm out shooting I'm looking for textures and I'm also looking for shapes that are either really bright or really dark compared to their surroundings because those are things that I can copy and paste into a mask and just to get your brain some ideas because just saying that is not usually going to get youto truly think of what capture let's just do a few examples let's make a promo for africa well look at this guy is he not a brighter dark shape surrounded by radically different brightness well that could be putting a mask let's get something to mask to put inside of that shape sunset taken in africa sounds cool let's take that and let's try to get over to our africa promo drug down okay we want that up there then let's go to our ellicott that picture was taken in zimbabwe were gonna select all copy so this is sitting there ready to be pasted I can close that file alex I don't need any more and I can close our other file that contained just the sun sex I already have it incorporated and now let's have a mask to the sunset picture and let's put something in the mask so what I'm gonna put in the mask first off to do that I need to have the mask visible that's when you option click on it all clicking in windows then I could go to the edit menu and choose paste now we have that in there I could possibly since this is too small for this area first off if I look over and my layers I noticed the sun does not extend all the way to the bottom you see that so I could probably just move this up they're so it has the gap in the same location so the gaps look about the same now let's stop viewing this so option click on this to stop and see what we're getting getting a little elfin and their stuff but the thing is it's hiding the sunset where the awfulness because if you look in the layers panel the elephants black and in a mask black hides things I'd really like the opposite of that so remember invert watch the masked you see where the elephant is black now it's going to be white and then this area out here just looks a little odd and that's because if you look in the mask look over there this stuff isn't really black we can adjust it remembering curves thie lower left slaughter forces areas to black just bring it over watch my mask you see it getting closer and closer to blacken the surroundings and that makes it more and more disappear around there and I can manually paint on my mask is that corner in the upper left too screwed up so I'll just grab my brush and just make sure the mask is active that's corners are highlighted which it is and paint around and it depends if I want the dirt at the bottom or not because that's in there I can see it in the mask if I don't want it just come over here get your brush click right about here I'm like a harder edge brush quick write about their hold shift not if you remember or not but shift draws a straight line so hold shift and I'll click over here and just clean that up by painting in the few areas where you see stuff that you don't need finally I want the elephant to be bigger so he feels more of this space now we're going to run into an issue there what I want to do is make the elephant bigger so the son is in a different position within the elephant but if I type command tea right now to transform watch what happens you noticed the sun is going along with the elephant I want the sun to stay the size it wass I want just the elephant to change to do that we need to figure out something in our layers in our layers if you look we if this layers made out of two pieces it's our son in her mask in in between those two pieces you see a link symbol which means that if I move bright transform this layer it's gonna affect both of those because the two are linked together if I simply click on that now these two pieces are independent of each other when it comes to moving or transforming them and it's going to be dependent which one of the two is active as far as which ones affected so I'm just going to make that active now all type command tea and when I scale it up you'll see that the sun should stay where it wass and I could move this transform this and when I'm done I can click on the layer that contains the son not the layer just the part of the layer and use the move tool moving around because it's independent now in if I chose transform command tea if you look in the layers panel we're only going to transform what's active between these two and you see the corners that's making that active so I could come out here and say that's what I wanted when I'm john just so doesn't screw me up in the future because I always expect that to be on by default itan I usually click again to turn on just click in the empty space there so you get the idea that you're not limited to using paint in a lair mask you can use other stuff and so we used this we could also use heck we could use this see that black stuff that could hide a layer of this could show it uh I can use this see all the black surrounding her she could become a mask in fact I've done that here are you champagne bubbles not the best combo but um that's the picture of her being used to mask a bottle shit or a flute of champagne so these are just some of the things we can do I'm sure we have for questions or comments will doom or from when we come back after questions or break okay ben carrie and wanted to know can you retain the texture for instance when it cracks in the wall but discard the color changes that's happening due to the original image get rid of the if you're talking about applying to texture and when you apply the texture it changes the color of your picture yes click in the layer that contains the texture and choose de saturate that's image adjustments de saturate what that will do is it will cause the layer that contains the texture if that's what's active to have all the color removed it'll be a black and white texture then when it's being applied it's not gonna be able to influence the color so if you had a red wall that had cool texture usually when you apply it it'll also make your picture look reddish but if I choose de saturate it won't be a red wall anymore it'll be a black and white picture of what used to be red wall and so the color influence will be removed so it's image adjustments de saturate while the layer that convinced the texture is active great thank you and then jobe would like to know can you just nail down the difference between a layer mask and a vector mask sure a layer mask is made out of pixels if you zoom up on it really really really close it'll start looking jaggi just like a picture would a layer mask is made out of pixels which is the same thing as a picture um so that that means if I zoom up on it eventually I will see these jaggi little squares that make it up and just so you know if you zoom up so far that you see these actual edges like that that's a setting you should turn off go the view menu there's a choice called show in turn off the stupid pixel grid unless you're a web designer and your design icons where you do one I kind of one that picks a lot of time otherwise this annoyance hey that was hindered the view menu but a layer mask is made out of squares of various prentiss levels vector mask is made out of the thing that is shaped tool creates which is where when you click and drag it is a shape that is made out of little points in smooth curves between straight lines or smooth curves between that it's the cooling to text you know text you khun scale text oppa's bigas you want it and it never looks jaggi if it's truly text not a picture of text or is what like adobe illustrator would create which is really crisp laser sharp edges and that would be a vector mask would use one of these toe limit where your picture shows up and so if you want your picture to show up inside of a logo or something you might use a vector mask but otherwise most the time you're using a layer mask so we haven't used vector mass that also if you're wondering