GIMP Layers and Layer Masks Explained | In-Depth GIMP Basics Tutorial

hello and welcome to yet another tutorial by davies media design my name is michael davies and in today's tutorial i'll be covering layers and layer masks i'll be using version 2.10.20 for this tutorial which is the latest version of at the time of this tutorial before i get into that don't forget to check out my website at daviesmediadesign.com as always i have tons of video tutorials on here my book of layers and free software help articles so definitely check that out you can enroll in my 2.10 masterclass from beginner to pro photo editing on udemy you can enroll in any my skillshare classes by visiting gimpschool.com and that does include my gem 2.10 layers and layer modes class and you can get more with a premium membership to davie's media design i'll include all the relevant links from this tutorial in the description of the video i will be using a free photo for this tutorial which is on pixabay click the free download button and i went with the 5000 by 3333 download click the download button there all right so let's dive in here layers play a very important role in whether you are editing photos or creating graphic design compositions but layers by their most basic definition are transparency stacked on top of one another and there are multiple types of layers you have your standard pixel layer so that's just a layer that contains a color or a set of pixels you also have layers that are fully transparent so they basically don't contain anything they're just fully see through we'll get into that a bit later there's also text layers so layers that only contain text and you have image layers which are going to be the same as a standard pixel or color layer of course those colors and pixels though are arranged in an image there are no limitations in theory as to how many layers you can have in a composition so it's basically as many layers as your computer can handle so here i am inside a and for many of you opening up for the first time this is exactly what you'll see i did not apply any customizations to this yet on the left side we have our tools this is our toolbox down here we have our tool options and some other tabs these tabs are all called dockable dialogs on the right side we have more dockable dialogs and down here you'll see one with an icon that looks like three sheets of paper stacked on top of one another this is going to be the layers panel so this is where everything regarding layers for the most part is going to be located as of right now because we just opened and don't have a composition open we don't have layers so when we create a new composition the size of our layers is going to depend on the size of the document we create or the size of the image we open so let me demonstrate here if i wanted to create a new composition which would also be my first new layer i would go to file new and you can see the shortcut key for that is control n so let's say for example i went with a width of 1920 and a height of 1080 and the unit here is going to be pixels this means my first layer that i create will be 1920 by 1080 in terms of its dimensions and if i come down here and click advanced options i'm not going to get into this stuff for now but what i will get into is the fill with options so right now this is going to fill my first layer with the background color which is over here i also have a variety of other options so i have my foreground color which would be black in this case i can go with straight up white if i don't have black or white as my foreground or background color so that's just a quick way to fill this with white which is a common layer color transparency which would be totally see-through which i'll get into or you can fill it in with whatever your current pattern is set to so i'll just go with background color for now which is the same as white and click so here you'll see we now have our first layer and let me come over here i can actually click my mouse and drag this out so that we have a bit more room with these dialogs and let me just keep dragging this out until the icons down here are all viewable and we will get into those icons but here's our first layer and by default it'll be called background because this is going to be our bottom most layer for now which will create a background on our composition one thing you should notice is that your composition is outlined by a yellow dotted line so it's like a yellow and black dotted line this always denotes the boundary of your active layer so this is the active layer boundary if you don't see it you might have it turned off which is fine you can go to view show layer boundary and that will turn that off or if i have it off already i can go to view show layer boundary and that will create an x there and now we can see the layer boundary on the other hand if i opened up a new image into the size of our canvas would take on the size of that image so let me show you if i go to file open if i haven't opened an image before or in my case open recent since i did recently open up the image i want to use which is going to be this image here so click on that so here you'll see we have created a new composition using this image and instead of this being 1920x1080 which is the size of our other composition you can see up top here the size of this composition is 5000 by 3333 pixels so anytime you open up a new image into a new composition the size of the layers for that composition will take on the size of the photo so coming back here to our document you'll see this one is 1920 by 1080. so now that we've covered those basics let's get into another important concept with layers in and that is going to be layer transparency and to understand layer transparency we have to understand the different color channels found in so is going to allow you to edit in either red green or blue color channels so those are the main three color channels found in every document you edit in and you'll remember we were working on our layers panel here there's also a channels dialog so it's the tab next to the layers panel and you'll see here we have our three channels red green and blue the reason i mention this is there is also a fourth channel known as the alpha channel the alpha channel is going to represent transparency so in this image you're seeing that we do not have an alpha channel and that means that this document does not have transparency so if i come over here to my layers panel and let me come over and switch my color so that black is now my background color if i were to grab my eraser tool and then erase on this it's just going to basically paint black with the eraser tool so it's not actually erasing anything it's just painting black it's painting whatever our background color is i'll hit ctrl z to undo that if i came over here to my layer i can actually add an alpha channel which is the same thing as adding transparency to this by right clicking and you'll see an option here called add alpha channel if that's grayed out it means your composition already has an alpha channel and therefore already has transparency but i'll click on this to add the alpha channel and you'll see the layer here will go from being bold to now no longer being bold the layer name so let me just show you ctrl z the layer name is bold there that means there is no alpha channel control y to redo that now we do have an alpha channel and that's no longer bold and if i come over here to the channels tab you'll see we now have red green blue and alpha so the alpha channel is our transparency i'll come back to the layers panel now with my eraser tool instead of painting black when i erase this you'll see we have a gray checkerboard background behind here so this gray checkerboard background means that this layer now contains transparency and there's no other layers below that are displaying other pixels so in other words we kind of reach the end of the line here and below here there's nothing so i just want to pause for a moment here and mention a couple of important concepts with transparency number one once we add transparency to a layer like we've done here all future layers inside this composition will contain transparency so we don't have to keep doing this for all future layers in our composition secondly i want to further define transparency so for those of you who are still confused as to what transparency is whenever something is fully transparent it is fully see-through so our layer wherever there is transparency will be fully see-through in those areas partial transparency is going to be partially see-through so some of the pixels will still basically cover up that transparency and obstruct whatever the layers are below and there's also full opacity as i mentioned earlier and something that is fully opaque is not see-through at all so fully opaque pixels are going to totally obstruct the layers below as you can see here the white pixels right in this area are going to be fully opaque if i hold ctrl and zoom in because i used a fuzzy brush with my eraser tool you can partially see the checkerboard background here but you could still also see the white pixels so that's partial transparency and then here where you can only see the checkerboard background that is full transparency so if i hold ctrl and use my mouse wheel i can zoom out if i wanted to adjust the opacity of the entire layer simultaneously i can come over here and adjust the opacity slider so this is going to adjust the opacity of all of my pixels simultaneously on the layer you can see this is making those fully opaque pixels now partially transparent it's not going to have an effect on the pixels that are already fully transparent because those can't be made any more transparent but essentially what the opacity slider represents is a percentage of opaqueness so right now this is around 59.1 percent opaque if i go all the way up that's 100 opaque if i go all the way down that's 100 transparent or zero percent opaque so that's just a quick way to add or remove opacity to the entire layer if i were to add another layer to our composition and then put that layer below the background layer you would be able to see the pixels in this little transparent patch here so let me demonstrate i'll come over here and click to create a new layer and i'm going to fill this with our background color which right now because we switched it is black and let me rename this layer here i'll rename it black layer and i'll come over here and click ok so now we have an all black layer this is a fully opaque layer there's no transparency on it right now but if i go to my channels tab you'll see this does have an alpha channel so as i mentioned all future layers will contain that alpha channel but now i can actually click and drag this layer below the background layer and you'll see that those transparent areas we created with the eraser tool on our original background layer are allowing us to see the now black layer below so that's what transparency does is it allows you to see through that part of the layer that is transparent to the layer below if i were to come over here to the background layer and make that my active layer and start erasing on this again you'll see now it's just going to reveal more and more of that black layer below and on the other hand if i clicked on this black layer and made that my active layer and then use the eraser tool on that because the white layer is transparent on this area and then the black layer is transparent where we are painting the eraser that's going to reveal the transparent checkerboard background there so that's saying that there are no more pixels below this black layer so in other words we've hit the end of the line and all there is is transparency so this ability for layers to contain transparency multiple layers for that matter and the ability to stack multiple layers one on top of the other is part of what makes so powerful it allows you to do things like add effects to photos blend multiple layers or photos together make image adjustments add or remove objects to layers or photos and more so these are just a few examples of what you can do with layers and layer transparency but now let me come over here to this black layer we created and i'm going to hit this x icon in the layers panel that's going to delete the layer and one last thing i want to point out with transparency is if i come over here to the channels tab you'll see we have an alpha channel here so right now this is where our transparency that we created with the eraser is currently painted so if i were to hide this layer you'll see that will cause that little transparent area to disappear and i can unhide it now but i'll come back over here to the layers panel if i wanted to remove the transparency i created here i could right click and go to remove alpha channel so this no longer has an alpha channel i can also come over here grab my white color click and drag it on top of my layer and that will paint over that black area that had replaced the transparency and now we're back to where we were before of course i do still want this to have transparency so i'll right click and go to add alpha channel and now we have transparency on here again so we've covered layer transparency now let's move on to another important concept for layers in and that is going to be the layer stacking order so the order of the layers does matter inside of right now we only have one layer so that's the only layer in our stacking order but once again if i wanted to i could come over here create a new layer and we will just keep this name black layer fill it with the background color which is black and click ok now we have two layers in our composition so the layer stacking order does matter now the black layer is going to be the top layer in the stacking order and the background layer or the white layer will be at the bottom so whatever is at the top of the layer stacking order are going to be the pixels that are displayed if there's no transparency so in this case there is no transparency on our black layer so all we could see right now is black pixels even though there is a white layer below since i do still have my eraser tool selected here if i were to erase part of this image and actually right now this is not erasing because i need to go to my channels tab and make sure my alpha channel is an active channel here so you'll be able to tell if it's active because it'll be highlighted in a slightly darker color there so there you could see that let me come back to the layers so now if i use my eraser on the black layer that's going to reveal the lower layer in the stacking order so now it's revealed that white layer below and you can see over here in the layer thumbnail there's a little transparent patch on this layer now and if i wanted to increase the size of my thumbnails here i can click on this little menu go to preview size and we can go with something larger like extra large so we can see the layers a bit better so there you can see that little transparent patch you can see the gray checkerboard background there on this layer if i were to create a new layer in this layer stacking order it would show up above whatever my active layer is so in this case the black layer is my active layer let me come over here click to create a new layer and i'm just going to name this layer shape and i'm going to fill this with transparency and by the way if you guys want a more in-depth look at creating new layers i have an entire tutorial dedicated to that subject which i will link to this video so definitely check that out but this is just going to create a transparent layer so i'll click ok you'll remember at the beginning of this tutorial i mentioned you can have transparent layers as one of your layer types but now let's come over here and grab a selection tool and i'm just going to quickly draw a circle let me drag this in this is actually more of an oval shape and let me come over grab a different color so let's go with the red color here for my foreground color and i can just click and drag that inside the circle and i'll hit ctrl shift a to deselect that area so now we have this new layer at the top of the stacking order and what it's doing because we have all this transparency and then we have these pixels inside the circle shape the circle shape is obstructing the layers below and then all the transparent areas aren't obstructing anything because there's no pixels to do any obstruction but if i were to come over here and click and drag this layer below the black layer now that's no longer obstructing any of the black layer because that's at the top of the stacking order and then we have that transparent patch on the black layer which is showing the circle shape layer here and wherever that circle shape layer is not obstructing the white layer that's displaying below that so i can always click and drag layers to change the stacking order or come down here and use these little icons so i can move that shape layer to the very bottom of the stacking order and now we can't see it because it's obstructed by the background layer or i can move this back up so as i mentioned new layers created will go above the active layer in the stacking order so if i come over here and click on the black layer to make that my active layer and then i come over and grab the text tool from my toolbox you'll remember text layers where another layer type i mentioned can be created inside a so if i were to click on my composition here let's turn on the caps lock key and type this is a test you'll see that that text layer is created above the black layer since the black layer was our active layer at the time we created the text layer so now the text layer is below the shape layer in the stacking order but above the black layer and because of its position in the stacking order it's being obstructed by the shape it's kind of hard to tell because the shape and the text are the same color let me hit ctrl a to select the text and just click to change the color here to blue so i could come over here and change the stacking order by clicking and dragging the text layer up top now it's no longer being obstructed by the shape on the other hand i could drag it below for example the black layer and now it's basically obstructed by everything except the transparent portions here or whatever the shape does not overlap finally i can also create a new layer and therefore add it to this stacking order by dragging another composition into this composition so for example we opened up this image earlier on in the tutorial i can come over here and click on this tab drag it over to the tab we've been working on and then come down here and release this onto our canvas so that will create a new layer above my active layer so my active layer was this text layer the new layer that we dragged from another composition is called dropped buffer by the way if you want to drag the entire composition you drag the tab if you just want to drag a single layer from the composition you can come over here and drag the layer and then come over here and release it on this canvas which i'm not going to do right now mostly because there's only one layer for this image composition but i'll come back over here to the composition we were working on and let me just adjust the stacking order so i'll change the text layer up to the very top and same with the image layer i'll drag that to the very top of the stacking order and you'll see the image is not fully being displayed inside the canvas so i'll hold ctrl zoom out as you can see the yellow dotted line denoting the layer boundary is going way outside the canvas boundary so that actually leads me to the next important concept which is going to be layer sizes layers can sometimes be larger than the overall composition like in this case and when that happens there are several things we can do so we can either change the size of the overall composition or change the size of the layer that we're working on i can also reposition a layer that is larger than the canvas so for example if i hit the m key on my keyboard that'll grab my move tool and i can move this layer around to reposition it so this canvas now acts as a sort of frame so let's say i want to reposition it about right there if i wanted to see the rest of the layer that's going outside of the canvas boundary i can come over here and go to view show all and so now what you'll see is the entire layer and that's going to be the yellow dotted line and then you can also see the canvas boundary which is the red dotted line here and if i hold ctrl and zoom out you can see that there's this checkerboard background which represents transparency and because we have this set to show all it just kind of goes off into infinity so hold ctrl and zoom back in and then if i hit the m key on my keyboard again and drag this around we can see how the layer is positioned relative to the actual canvas and relative to the entire layer so this just allows us to see other elements inside of our layer and get those elements inside of the canvas boundary if we want to i'll turn this off by going to view show all again so as i mentioned i can change the boundary size of the layer or of the canvas and there are a variety of ways to do that so for example let me start by changing the size of my layer boundaries if i wanted to match these boundaries to the size of my canvas i can go to layer layer to image size and when i do that that will shrink the size of my layer down to the size of the canvas now when i go to view show all you'll see that all that excess pixels all the excess pixels from that original layer are now gone so this is now the entire layer and if i move it around now it's going outside the canvas and you can't see any portions of the original there i'll hit ctrl z to back up so that brings back all of the original pixels and let me go to view show all and that will turn that off so something else i can do is make the size of the canvas the same size of our image layer so that'll make our canvas much larger remember our canvas right now is 1920x1080 but if i go to image fit canvas to layers that will enlarge the canvas size to the largest layer size so now you'll see our canvas size is 5000 by 3333 and if i come over here and hide the dropped buffer layer which is that image layer now you'll see that all of those original layers we created look much smaller because our canvas is much larger and if i click on for example the shape layer you can see there's the original layer boundary size and same with the black layer and the background layer those all have layer sizes of 1920x1080 so i'll come back up here and show the larger layer size and let me just hit ctrl z to back up so now our canvas size is back to 1920 by 1080 we can also go to layer layer boundary size if we want to manually set the size of the layer boundary so for example let me come over here and click this little chain link icon that just maintains the original aspect ratio of the layer and if i know that i want the width to be for example 2000 i can type that in hit the tab key you'll see that will shrink the layer size down to this little box and i can center up the original layer if i want to or i can drag it into place and once i'm ready i'll come over here and click resize and now the layer boundary will be resized and of course i can move this to reposition it and the last way to change the size of our canvas or the layer is to come over here and use the crop tool and i'm not going to fully go through this tool because i will dedicate an entirely separate tutorial to this tool but basically if i choose delete crop pixels and come over here and just draw my crop area this will change the size of both my canvas and my layer so now if i click on here you'll see that both of those items now have shrunk down and the new dimensions are up here so i'll hit ctrl z to back up and control z again to bring back my original layer size all right so now that you know how layers and canvas sizes work now let's move on to the actual layers panel there are many features in this panel that i think are worth mentioning so let's just cover all of them so for starters the layers panel itself as i mentioned is a dockable dialog so i can click and drag this off of the little area that it's in right now and release and that will create a little floating dialog and we can move this to wherever we want so i can move it up here for example i'm just going to click and drag this back to the default position but the very top portion of the layers panel it says mode and if i click on it it's a drop down with 38 different layer modes so these layer modes allow you to essentially blend the layer that you're on the active layer with the layer below in some cases it goes the other way i'm not going to go through all the layer modes right now because i do have an entire tutorial dedicated to that subject but let me just come up here and choose a layer mode real quick to show you one example so for example i'll go with overlay and now you can see that this layer the layer with the guy on the dirt bike is blending with some of the layers below so it's actually skipped over the text layer and it's just blending with the shape layer here so that's why you can see the little guy in the dirt bike blended with this red circle shape i'm going to come back up here and just scroll up to the top and change this back to normal so there are 38 layer modes and then below that we have the opacity slider which we went over earlier in the tutorial that allows me to change the opacity here of this layer so i can have this be partially opaque which is going to also be partially transparent if i wanted to i could middle click with my mouse wheel and manually type in a value here so i can go with 50 for example which is 50 opacity 50 transparency or i can use these little arrows to just adjust this by one i can also use my scroll wheel and that will adjust it by one as well so below the opacity slider we have our lock icons so we have three icons here the first icon is going to lock the pixels on this layer this icon when active essentially is going to lock that layer and therefore not allow you to use any of the paint tools on this layer as well as most of the transform tools so for example let me click this lock icon and then come over and grab the paint tool now if i try to paint on this layer you'll see there's a little x on my mouse pointer as well as over here it says the active layers pixels are locked so i can't paint on that also if i were to come over here and let's go with warp transform for this example and i try to warp this the same message will pop up the one exception to this is the move tool so if i grab the move tool i can still move this layer around and that's pretty much the only exception to that so let me come over here i can click on the icon and that will unlock the pixels so the next icon here is to lock position and size when i click on that icon this will lock me from basically moving this or performing any transformations on this so i can't scale this layer up or down let me hit shift s that will grab my scale tool now if i try to scale this this will be locked however i can still paint on this layer so if i hit the p key to grab my paint brush tool i can still paint on the layer and let me just turn the opacity all the way up there you can see we painted red on here let me hit ctrl z to undo that so i'll come back over here and click on this to remove that the final lock option is going to lock the alpha channel let me actually just hide this top layer and the text layer click on the shape layer and now come over here and lock the alpha channel so right now the alpha channel is all the transparent portions this basically means if i come over here let me reset my colors and then switch my foreground color to white if i use my paint tool i can paint on the shape because this is not an alpha channel this is just opaque pixels but if i try to paint outside the shape you'll see it'll stop so my alpha channel is locked right now which means i am not allowed to paint on the alpha channel but i can still paint on these pixels let me hit ctrl z to undo that this comes in handy whenever you want to quickly change the color of a shape on a transparent layer so in this case if i wanted to change the color of this red shape and not have it affect any of the outside pixels because i have the alpha channel locked on this layer i can come over click and drag this foreground color and release and now the color of my shape has been changed to white so i'll hit control z to back up let me click this lock so that this alpha channel is no longer locked so those are all of the lock features the next feature i want to go over in the layers panel is the show hide icon so i've already used this a couple of times that's going to be this little eye icon on the far left so whenever you can see the icon that means the layer is visible if i click that icon that icon will now disappear which means this layer is now hidden and you can't paint on a hidden layer so you'll see here with my paintbrush tool when i'm trying to paint on this it says the active layer is not visible if i show this layer and then i shift click on that eye icon it'll hide all of the other layers and then if i shift click on this again it'll show all those layers so that applies to any of the layers here in the layers panel if i shift click on the shape layer that hides all the other layers shift click again that shows all the other layers that is something i commonly use the next feature in the layers panel is the transform lock feature so you can't see this icon by default but it's just to the right of the show hide icon and you'll see here it looks like a little link icon this usually confuses new users because it looks like a lock feature but it doesn't actually lock anything those are obviously going to be what the lock icons are that we just went over but what the transform lock icon does is it locks multiple layers together so that whatever transformation you perform on one layer is going to be transformed on all the other layers that it's locked to or that it's linked to i should say so for example let's transform lock this first layer and then come over here and transform lock the shape layer so these two layers are now locked together which means if i hit shift s on my keyboard to grab my scale tool so now i'm scaling the dropped buffer layer if i hold ctrl zoom out you can see the transform handles but now if i scale this down so let's just scale it down like that right now it just looks like the layer we're on is scaling down but actually if i come over here and hit scale you'll see both this layer and the shape layer have scaled down equally so that's what that transform lock icon does it also applies to moving the layers so if i wanted to move both these layers simultaneously i'll hit the m key and then i'll just move this around and you'll see both of those layers will now move in unison i can always add more layers to this lock feature so now you'll see the text layer is also moving with this and when i release they all release together so that's what that feature does just like the show hide icon if i shift click on that all of the layers will be locked and if i shift click again only the layer that i'm clicked on will be transform locked so let me click on that one more time to hide that so let's just realign this if i hit ctrl shift j by the way that will center up my canvas and fit it inside of the entire image window the next feature of course is the layer thumbnail so that's just displaying a preview of what is displayed in the layer the text layer is going to have this little t icon so let's come back up to the top layer the next feature is the layer name so we can change the name of any of the layers by double clicking on the layer name and i'll just name this dirt bike hit the enter key so that's how you change layer names so now let's move on to the bottom portion of our layers panel so we've already gone over the first icon which is to create a new layer if you just want to create a new layer with the same characteristics as the last layer you created just shift click on that and the last layer we created was the shape layer so that had a transparent background and the name is shape and because this is already a duplicate name so we already have shape down here it's just going to add number one to differentiate it the next layer icon is to create a layer group so when i click on this it's going to create a little folder icon and by default it'll be named layer group we can double click on this and rename it just like any other layer so let's rename this image with shape hit the enter key and what i can do with layer groups is i can drag layers into them so for example i can drag my dirt bike layer into here as well as my shape layer and now both of these layers are inside the layer group and you'll see there's a little icon here this just allows us to collapse the layer group which helps to clean up our little space down here so i can always expand this or collapse it i can also show or hide both layers simultaneously inside this layer group or if i expand this i can show or hide just one of the layers in the layer group so apart from keeping our composition organized i can also simultaneously add layer modes to the layers inside the layer group so for example i could change this to overlay and now both layers inside the layer group have the overlay feature on here and because the layer below that this is interacting with is the black layer the overlay effect isn't really doing anything so let's come back up here and go to normal you can also add layer masks to layer groups which i'll get into momentarily but the next icon is another icon we already went over and that is going to be the ability to raise or lower layers in the layer stack so for example if i click on the shape layer and click on this icon that'll move the shape layer this is the shape duplicate layer to the very top of the stacking order on the other hand if i come over here and click the other icon it'll move it down if i shift click it'll move that layer to the very bottom of the stacking order shift click on the other icon it'll move it to the very top the next icon is the duplicate icon so for example if i came over here to my black layer and i hit this icon that will now create a duplicate of the black layer so there you'll see its name black layer copy and i can move this up to the very top so now we have two of these layers in two different positions in the stacking order the duplicate icon is something i use pretty often especially when i'm editing images because i can duplicate the original image that i'm editing and that just allows me to keep a copy of the original image or a copy of an image at a particular stage in my photo editing so that just helps preserve the original image the next icon is the merge down icon so this just allows me to merge multiple layers together so for example if i wanted to merge this black layer with the shape layer i'll hit the merge down icon and now that black layer and shape layer become one and it'll take on the name of the layer below so if i wanted to rename this i can double click on it and once again name this black layer copy hit the enter key i can also merge a layer with a layer group which i'm not going to do or i can merge for example a text layer with the layer below so let's click on this text layer click the merge down button and now the text and this black layer have become a single layer i'm going to skip over the layer mask icon here which is the next icon because i'm going to go over that in a bit more detail but the final icon is the delete this layer icon so let's come back up here to the black layer copy and delete it and so all that icon does is delete whatever active layer we're on i'm also going to come over here to the black layer and delete that layer for the next step an important thing i want to mention before i move on to the last section of this tutorial which is going to be layer masks is that at the time of this tutorial does not have the ability to select multiple layers simultaneously although i have seen evidence that the team has been working on integrating this feature in a near future release version again so i do believe that this will be a feature coming to very shortly that being said let's move on to the final portion of this tutorial which is going to be the important topic of layer masks quick disclaimer i'm not going to totally cover layer masks for this tutorial because i could spend hours on this topic however i do have my book of layers as well as my master class i do cover the layer masks topic in depth in both of those resources so check those out if you want to know everything about layers and layer masks but what i'll do is come over here to the dirt bike layer so this is inside of a layer group but it's still its own layer and i can add layer masks to either a single layer or to a layer group so right now i'll just add this to the dirt bike layer and i can add a layer mask by clicking the layer mask icon here or i can come up top right click and go to add layer mask so here is our add layer mask dialog box and for those of you who don't know what a layer mask is a layer mask is going to allow you to create areas of transparency on a specific area inside your image so that's going to be different from the opacity slider because the opacity slider is going to add or remove transparency to the entire layer or the entire image this allows you to create concentrated areas of transparency some of you might be asking how is that different from the eraser tool it's essentially not different from the eraser tool except for the fact that the eraser tool works directly on the layer whereas the layer mask removes that and adds a separate area where you can work on the transparency so in that respect it is a non-destructive way to add transparency to your images also you can use the layer mask to add things like gradient transparency so you can use the gradient tool or any paint tools for that matter on a layer mask to create various transparency effects i'll show you guys what i mean but first we have to choose how we want to initialize the layer mask so in this case i'm going to go with white full opacity i'm not going to explain all the various ways to add a layer mask because i do have an entire lecture on this which is 17 minutes long so it's quite a lengthy topic but i'm just going to go with white full opacity for now the reason white has full opacity next to it in parentheses is that white on a layer mask represents full opacity black on a layer mask represents full transparency so let's go with the white full opacity option and click add that will add a white layer mask to my dirt bike layer let me just click and drag this out so we can see the full picture here so once we added this layer mask to our layer nothing has happened yet because as i mentioned white is going to be full opacity or in other words it's going to fully display the layer below but if we wanted to add transparency to this we would want to paint black so let me hit the p key on my keyboard switch my foreground color to black and now making sure we are on the layer mask as opposed to being on the layer so you can click on either the layer mask or the layer so make sure the layer mask is active now if i paint black on this layer mask you'll see it's going to reveal the layers below so in this case we have the red shape layer below or if we come over here we have the white background layer below so anytime we paint black on a layer mask it's like using the eraser tool except it's not happening directly with the pixels on our image layer it's happening on the layer mask so that's why it's non-destructive you can see here in the thumbnail that the image is totally intact on the other hand if i switched my color here to white and i paint that color back in you can see that's bringing back the opacity on this layer mask and let me come over here click on the dirt bike layer and bring the opacity up to 100 and then come back to the layer mask and paint on this so white is going to bring the image back hit the x key to switch back over to black and that's creating transparency wherever we paint on the layer mask so i'll hit ctrl z to back up so now we just have our white layer mask again if i hit the g key on my keyboard that's going to grab my gradient tool let me hold the ctrl key and zoom out using my mouse wheel so now while we're on the layer mask if i were to paint a gradient on this layer mask and right now my gradient if i click on it it's set to foreground and background rgb which is this option so foreground is going to be black to background is going to be white so this is a black to white gradient remember black is going to paint transparency on a layer mask white will paint opacity so what this will do if i draw the gradient is it's going to create this gradient where on the left side in this case is going to be fully opaque so this is the white area and then on the right side this is fully transparent and then the areas in between are going to be a middle gray color so anytime we paint middle gray or any shade of gray on a layer mask that's going to paint partial transparency and because this is a gradient i can shift what's called the midpoint and that's changing how this is fading i have an entire tutorial dedicated to the gradient tool if you want to check that out but if i hit the enter key that'll apply the gradient to the layer mask so you can see what's going on over here with the gradient and the layer mask and this is just one way to create some effects as i mentioned you can also add layer masks to layer groups so not just a single layer so in this case because one of our layers has a layer mask in the group this is a way to essentially add a second layer mask to a single image but it's also going to add a layer mask to the shape layer as well so let's come up top here to our layer group and i'll come over here and click the layer mask icon and let's once again go with white full opacity and click add so now our layer group has a layer mask and if i wanted to for example add another gradient to this layer mask let me this time change the shape here to radial we're still going from black to white here or white to black so if i draw this radial layer mask on the layer group you'll see what happens there so this area below is white the area up top is black let me just come over here and switch the gradient colors so that's just going to reverse that and let's also just shift the gradient so i can live edit the gradient on the canvas here so this is applying this layer mask to both the dirt bike layer and the shape layer below so you can see the red shape layer is fading out here and when i hit the enter key you can see that's what's happening over here on the layer mask we've got black in the bottom left corner it's fading to middle gray and then fading to white and as i mentioned these layers are non-destructive so the layer masks themselves are separate from the images so if i wanted to go in and delete any of these layer masks i can right click and you'll see there's a variety of layer mask options here in this little layers menu but i can go over here to delete layer mask if i wanted to apply the layer mask to the image i can click apply layer mask i can show just the layer mask here so we can see what's happening on the layer mask and you'll see that whenever we have that option selected it's going to outline the layer mask in green so i'll go to show layer mask again to turn that option off if i wanted to temporarily hide this one layer mask i can right click and go to disable layer mask so now the only layer mask that's showing is going to be the layer group layer mask and this is outlined in red which means it's temporarily turned off so right click choose disable layer mask again if i wanted to turn this layer mask into a selection i can right click and go to mask to selection so now you'll see that our layer mask is selected here the reason this doesn't look right is just based on how selection areas work so everything that is 50 opacity or more is going to be inside the selection area everything 50 opacity or less is outside the selection area so this is selecting the entire gradient it just doesn't look like it based on how selections work i do have an entire tutorial dedicated to how selections work if you want to check that out but the cool thing i can do with selections and layer masks is i can transfer this layer mask now basically to this other layer so for example the shape layer if i right click on here and go to add layer mask and choose selection and click add that essentially copies our layer mask to the shape layer and now you can see this has a gradient going from black to white and i'll hit ctrl shift a to deselect that i can always delete a layer mask by right clicking and going to delete layer mask or if i wanted to basically merge the layer mask with the layer i can right click and go to apply layer mask and now you'll see the layer mask and the layer have been merged together so this is no longer non-destructive this is now happening directly on the layer and i can hit ctrl z if i want to undo that and if i wanted to get rid of this once again i can right click and go to delete layer mask and now we have our original image let's do the same for the layer group mask so right click delete layer mask and now all of our layer masks are gone so there is obviously a lot to the topic of layers as well as layer masks but hopefully i was able to clarify some things for you guys in terms of both of those concepts if you still have questions in regards to layers or layer masks there are a few different resources i have available that dive deeper into these topics for example you can check out my git master class my book of lairs or become a premium member otherwise that's it for this tutorial hopefully you liked it if you did you could check out my youtube channel at youtube.com daviesmediadesign don't forget to subscribe and click the bell icon to be notified each time i have a brand new tutorial you can also check out any of the links to my resources in the description of the video but thanks for watching and i'll see you next time

Channel: Davies Media Design

Views: 52,159

Rating: 4.955915 out of 5

Keywords: gimp, gimp tutorial, gimp for beginners, how to gimp, GIMP 2.10, GIMP, basics, GIMP 2020, layers, layer masks, transparency, GIMP 2.10.20

Id: dvWoQ8_HhBI

Length: 45min 52sec (2752 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 18 2020