![]() ![]() Next, choose the third gradient from the left – the Black to White gradient. So, let’s get the Gradient tool from the Toolbar, and once you have it, go up the Options bar, and up near the top left, click on the down-facing arrow to the right of the currently selected gradient to bring up the Gradient picker. One of my favorite ways to blend images using a layer mask is to use the Gradient tool. This will make more sense in a minute, but if you keep that line in mind – “black conceal and white reveal,” it will help you when you’re not sure what to do next. So, if you painted in black on that white layer mask, it hides whatever you painted over. If it’s solid white, you can fully see everything on that layer. If the layer mask is solid black, whatever on that is hidden. If you took a paintbrush and painted with White as your foreground color, wherever you painted, it would reveal what’s on that layer. ![]() OK, before we head to the next step, it’s time to lay one of the old sayings about layer masks, which has been around for 200+ years, and that is, “Black conceals and white reveals.” If your layer mask is black, whatever is on that layer is hidden from view. This adds a white layer mask to this layer (you can see it in the Layers panel – it’s the white rectangle that appears to the right of the Layer). Go to the bottom of the Layers panel and click the “Add Layer Mask” button, as shown here (it’s the 3rd icon from the left and looks like a rectangle with a circle cut out of the center). Now switch to your Piano document (or whichever image you’re using as your background image) go under the Edit menu and choose ‘Paste’ to paste your red rose image on top of the piano image. Press Command-A (PC: Ctrl-A) to select the entire image and then go under the Edit menu and choose ‘Copy’ to copy the red rose image into memory. Now click on the tab for the first image you want to blend with the piano image (in this case, we’ll choose the red rose). Open the piano image (or whatever image you want to use as the background for your collage). If you choose one of those arrangements for your images and want to get back to our regular view, go under that same menu and select ‘Consolidate All To Tabs.” You choose these document “arrangements” by going under Photoshop’s Window menu, under Arrange, and making your choice there (I chose 3-up Vertical). By the way – there is a Photoshop feature that puts your images side-by-side on screen like this (it just resizes your documents so they fit on screen either horizontally or vertically, as I did here). I’m making them available for you to download if you want to follow along using the same images, but I encourage you to use three of your own images. Let’s open the three images we’re going to put together (seen here). ![]() We’ll start by blending three images together, creating a collage (or a montage, or whatever you call it). However, they still allow you to do things you can’t do in Lightroom, so they are definitely worth knowing, and they open a whole new world of Layers possibilities, so this is still really big important stuff. Today we’re talking about using Layer Masks (finally!), which are fantastic, but now that there are a bunch of new masking features inside of Lightroom, you probably won’t have to use Layer Masks as often as you would have before. This week wraps up the Layers portion of our Photoshop journey, so next week, we’ll open a new can of worms…er, I mean some other important Photoshop features. Welcome back once again and by now, you’re probably getting a little tired of the whole learning Layers thing, but I have good news. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |