Right now I'm going to share a tip
with you that's going to help you get much, much smoother masking inside of Photoshop. Hey, Cafe crew. Colin Smith from Photoshop
Cafe. Let's get started. And by the way, if you haven't yet subscribed, do me a favor. Hit that
subscribe button. Become part of the Cafe crew. Alright, so I'm going to show you
something about masking that few people realize. So we're just gonna use this picture
of a woman and a cat on top. So this is not so much about the artwork is this is just
understanding the technique I want to show you. So the first thing we want to do is create a
hidden mask or an inverted mask. So hold down the alt or the option key and then go in
the layers panel and click on create mask. What that does is it creates a black mask
which hides the contents of the layer. Now to bring back the contents of
the layer, we're going to paint white in here. So let me just hit the D key
to reset the foreground background colors. Let's grab a brush and we're going to
start to paint. Now. Some people use flow. Some people use opacity. Check out my
tutorial that talks about the difference. I'm going to drop the flow down to 10% and we're
gonna start to paint in a little bit here. See, so what happens when you want
to paint in a specific value, like maybe you want to do 20% here. This is
the mistake that most people do. Most people drop the opacity down to 20% and that is
wrong. And I'm going to show you exactly why. Let's create a new layer and I'm just going to
fill this with black. And then we're going to create an inverted mask. Okay, so this is just
basically we're going to paint on the black on the side so you can clearly see what's going on.
So let's turn the flow and opacity up. By the way, opacity is basically how transparent it
is in the flow is how fast you get there. How a layer mask works is simple. When
you paint with white, it reveals the contents of that particular layer. If you
paint with black, it hides the contents of that particular layer. Check out my other
tutorial on masking basics. Let's continue. What most people would do is
if they wanted to paint 20% in, they're gonna drop this opacity down to 20%
and this is wrong. And I'll show you why. Okay, so we're going to paint with white. And as I paint
with white here, we're gonna start to paint 20%. Now, it doesn't matter if you're
using a mouse or a graphics tablet. I'm using a graphics tablet right now. But here's
the thing. Yes, it's adding 20%. But if I lift and then I paint again, it adds another 20%. If I
lift, and again, it adds another 20%, another 20. And then at this point to try and get
everything smooth and even, is very, very difficult. So opacity is not the way to do that.
I'm going to turn the opacity all the way up. Rather than using Opacity, go under the
color picker. This is how it normally looks. But choose this item here (B). This is
going to give us brightness. Now choose 20. So rather than choosing an opacity,
we're choosing a shade of Gray with 20% white. Click ok, now watch what happens if I go
up to the other side here and I start to paint and I lift it and I paint on top of it. Look at this. I'm getting exactly 20%.
Even if I go all over the place here, it brings us back to 20. But this does even
more because when we use Opacity or flow, what it's going to do is it's just essentially
going to keep stacking more and more paint. Because we working digitally.
If we're on our mask. Remember this was supposed to be 20. Now if I
paint, this would just take it straight back to 20. So if it's a lighter, it will darken it.
If it's darker, it will lighten it and look how smooth and perfect we can get that.
Now if we combine this with flow and let's take that flow down to a very
low amount like I'm gonna do shift. And then I'm just going to type in 0 5 really
fast with the shift key. That's gonna give me 5%. Now what this is gonna do? I'll just
paint over our A model here with a 20%. What it's going to do is it's still going to get to
that 20%, but it's going to get there a little bit slower so we can start to blend and fade
it that it's never gonna go beyond that 20%. So this enables us to blend these edges and get
them beautiful and smooth and precise. Alright, so how would this apply on the image? Simple.
Let's choose the mask. And if I wanted to create for in this area, I can just go in here and just
paint and I'm going to get this beautiful smooth transition is exactly the
amount of transparency we want. I don't think it's enough. So let's tap on there
(Color Picker). And what if we change it to 40%? Just type in 40 paint on those
edges. And now look at this. We're going to get 40% of that fur. And in fact, let's just turn the flow all the way up.
So it just gets it instantly so you can see what I'm doing and see what we're
doing now is we're getting 40% of that. Look at that. Just a little bit of texture
there. Let's do the same top of the cheeks. So why don't you try this method for yourself
next time you're trying to create a little bit of transparency in your mask and you'll find
that this technique will get you much smoother, more even masks. So I'm curious. Guys, did
you know this already? Was this something new? Let me know in the comments underneath. And by the way, if you're new, welcome to
Photoshop Cafe. And I noticed only 20% of people who watch videos are subscribed. So
do me a favor and hit that subscribe button. And that way you won't miss any of my concise
tutorials. So anyway, guys, I hope you like this. If you did hit that like button, it
helps us with the algorithm on YouTube. And until next time I'll see you at the cafe.
