Making Selections with Masks Copyright 2003 - JMA - All Rights Reserved

What are masks anyway, something you wear at a masquerade ball? Well, not quite. PSP uses masks for protecting an area of an image from being altered. Masks are analogous to MASKing tape used by painters to protect objects from being covered with paint. Put simply, they are grayscale images that you apply to a layer, and they can be used to hide and display the layer in parts or they can be used as a means to fade between layers. Masks can be created from selections, and selections can be created from masks. When a mask is applied to a layer, it can cover the layer completel or with varying degrees of opacity. When the grayscale value of the mask is Black, the mask will completely cover the layer, producing a transparent area. When the grayscale value is White, it leaves the layer unmasked or completely visible. It the areas where it is Gray, it produces a semi-transparent effect that becomes more transparent as the levels of Gray increase in darkness and it becomes more revealing as the levels of Gray increase in lightness. A mask can be saved with the image in an Alpha channel or as a separate image in PSP format on a disk. When working with Alpha channels, you can load a selection as a mask and a mask as a selection. Quite a nice feature.

FIgure 1. The Raw Image The Venetian mask is well suited as a subject for this tutorial, and as a reminder of the technique that we will be using for making the selection. With this image the basic selection tools would be difficult to use partly because of the many intricate edges around th perimeter of the subject and partly because of the varying degrees of contrast between the subject and the background.

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Figure 2. Promoting the Background Before we can apply the mask to our subject, we need to promote the image to a layer. On the Main Menu bar, select Layers > Pronote Background Layer. In the Layers Palette, the layer titled Background will be replaced with a Raster Layer labeled Raster 1. To rename the layer, Left click the Mouse on the label Raster 1 and in the layer dialog window enter a new name for the layer. There are other ways of promoting the background to a raster layer and renaming it, I am mearly showing you the easiest way.

Figure 3. Applying the Mask With the image on its own layer, we can now apply the mask. On the Main Menu bar select Layer > New Mask Layer > Hide All. The image window will display a transparent background and the image will appear to have vanished. Don't worry, it's still there, (see figure 3a). Now go to the Layers Palette and click the mask icon located on the same line as the Layer labeled Mask. The image window willnow turn a reddish color (see figure 3b). Next we want to view the image behind the mask, so go to the Layers Palette and click the eye icon on the layer labeled Mask to reveal the image underneath the mask, (see figure 3c and 3d).

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Figure 4. The Selection Brush With the object in view behind the mask, we can now choose the paint brush to make the selection. Click the Paint Brush icon on the Tool Bar. Since we want to fully expose the image as we paint, keep the Hardness, Density and Opacity at 100%. A Round brush, 10 pixels in size, was used as a starting point. You can change the brush shape and size as you make your selection, (see figure 4a).

Notice that the Color Palette has gone to a Grayscale one, (see figure 4b). This is always the case when working with Masks. Remember that painting with White will removes the mask. Painting with Black will re-install the Mask and painting with shades of gray will remove or install the mask with varying degrees of opacity depending on the lightness value.

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Figure 5. Painting the Selection Make sure your foregroung color is set to White. To begin making the selection, select a starting point anywhre inside the object, then using the Paint Brush  paint away the mask.

Figure 6. Smaller is Better Here along the critical edges of the object, the Paint Brush size was reduced to 6 pixels. As you progress with your selection, keep in mind that in addition to brush sizes, PSP let's you choose from a variety of brush shapes, all which can be used to conform to the shape of the edges where you're working. That's a big time saver

Figure 7. Making Corrections Making corrections is relatively easy and almost second nature. If you accidentally expose parts of the image that are outside the boundaries of your object, you can correct the mistakes by clickng the Right button on the mouse and painting the mistake over with the Black color. Painting with the Black color restores the Mask over the area where the mistake occurred.

Figure 8. Converting the Painted Area to a Selection Once we have painted away the Mask from the object, we can create a selection from the exposed area. On the Main Menu bar choose Selections > From Mask. Once the Marquee is in place, zoom in on the image to see the results. If there are areas of the object that have not been selected, undo the Selection > From Mask command and paint in the proper color (White or Black) to add or remove the areas in question. Re-apply the Selection > From Mask each time to review the final selection.

Figure 9. Creating a New Background With the final selection marquee in place, we can now copy the object to a new bakground. The image shown here was created by opening a new file with a Black background and filling the area with a Sky-Blue gradient. Sheet music was then added as a separate layer over the background. To blend the music with the background, the music layer's opacity was reduced to 50% and the Blend mode was set to Multiply. The object was then transferred to it's new background using the Edit > Copy and Edit > Paste > As New Layer commands.

Figure 10. The Finished Image With the object on a separate layer, we can reposition it anywhere on the new background. We can even apply filtering effects at this point. Here we applied a small amount of sharpening using the Unsharp Mask filter and then added a drop shadow effect to make the object appear lifted slightly from the background. As a final step, text was added using an Elephant type font set at 100 points and then filled with a Gold gradient color. The 3D lood was obtained by applying an Inner Bvel effect to the text layer.

Tip: When making selection with masks, you can speed up your work by using a small brush and painting away the Mask along the perimeter of the object. Then you can increase the brush size and paint away the Mask inside the object.

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