Add power and precision to your editing with masks

[jfrancho]

There is always a lot of buzz about using "non destructive" editing with layers, using masks to protect the details, and other advanced editing techniques. In this quick tutorial, I will show you how to add power and precision to your masks. Here are the tools you'll need to play along:

one nice image file
Photoshop CS or greater
a selection (saved as an alpha channel)

The first two are easy, but the last might be tricky if you've never built a mask. Well masks are easy to make, once you understand one thing: back conceals and white reveals. You can make a mask by simply creating a new alpha channel and painting with a black brush on the canvas. You can also make one by making a selection, using tools like the lasso or magic wand, to select a color range. There countless other ways to create a mask. I suggest some googling or a trip to the bookstore to find out more.

Once you have a selection, go to Select > Save Selection... and name it. When you look in your Channels pallet, you'll see a black and white thumbnail of your selection.

To load it, you can either use Select > Load selection... or simply Ctrl-Click that saved selection in the Channels pallet.

For this tutorial, I use the TLR Professional Masking Toolkit, which can downloaded for free here: Digital Darkroom @ The Light's Right Studio. If you find this site helpful, I recommend you send Mitch a small donation - he works hard and has a lot of tools and knowledge stored there. He's also very accessible via email.

Here, I ran the script with options to create a surface mask that isolates the skin tones. Now, there are some better ways to soften skin, or other advanced airbrush techniques, but for this tutorial, I'm demonstrating what can be done with a mask. You can pretty mush substitute any edit that requires localized control to protect other elements of the image.



Once the scripts runs, and it may take a few minutes depending on the image size and the horsepower of your computer, it doesn't look like anything happened. Open the Channels pallet, and you see a new alpha channel below the usual Red, Green, and Blue channels that are there in RGB mode. Click on it so you can see what the mask looks like:



It looks a little funny, like a charcoal drawing or something. Remember: white reveals and black conceals. I want to use this mask to be able to run Noise Ninja (you can substitute your favorite NR plug-in, or just use Gaussian Blur) but protect all the details excepts the skin. I also want to be able to hand brush in where the smoothing will take place.

I'll start by duplicating the background layer by hitting Ctrl-J. Then, I switch over to the Channels pallet and Ctrl-Click the "Skintones Luminosity Surface Mask" I just created to load the selection. You can also use, Select > Load selection.. from the menu, and pick the channel from the list in the drop down.

Once you have the selection active, click the Add Layer mask icon back in the Layers payers pallet (its the third icon from the left along the bottom of the pallet) to create a layer mask. You can also use the menu, its Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal selection. Now, you can take a look at what the mask is revealing, and what its hiding by concealing the background layer (click the eye to toggle visibility).



I want the mask to be a little more solid on the skin, so I decided it needed a bit of editing. Now, I could have done this all the way back in the alpha channel itself, but I prefer to see what the result is in full color. Also, you might want to reuse that channel to make an inverse selection to mask the edges for sharpening later (cool, huh?).

I grabbed a soft, low opacity brush, and began to carefully hand paint in vast expanses of skin. I like to start at 100% zoom, and often get down to 400% or more for delicate areas.

[jfrancho]

Now, if I reveal the background layer, you'd see that nothing has changed. Well, like good cooking, a big part of good editing is in the prep work. We can start use the noise reduction filter to add the effect to the image.

Before I fire up the filter, I need to click the thumbnail to the left of the layer mask. Otherwise, the filter will applied to the mask, and not the layer itself. Now this might seem strange, but its actually another useful feature of layer masks. Experiment with different adjustments like Curves, or a Gaussian filter on a layer mask, and you might discover some very useful applications.

Here, I've used Filter > Picture Code > Noise Ninja... to and made some adjustments to the defaults in the Filter tab. These are purely subjective. I'm using a mask, so I can be a bit more aggressive with the setting I chose, since most of the details are protected by the layer mask.

Notice that in the Noise Ninja dialog, the preview shows all the image data. I think this is useful, since I can judge better just how far to go with the settings. I like to go one or two ticks beyond "perfect" with the settings when using a layer mask. Again, "perfect" is completely subjective - there are no right settings for any image.



Once I like what I have, I click OK, and the filter does its thing. At this point, you can go back to the mask, and make any fine adjustments, like concealing the eyelashes if the filter crept in and blurred them beyond your liking.

Once everything is perfect, I am going to apply or flatten the mask. This basically create a layer with an effect applied to the masked areas. Now, you might be asking, but now I can't go back and edit the mask anymore? Hold on to your seat, the next few steps will create more questions....

Here, I've applied the layer mask, by right clicking the thumbnail and choosing Apply Layer Mask. There is a menu item for this as well, and I'll give you a hint: its in the Layers menu .



Now hide the background layer (I'm setting you up for a shock here). And Alt-Click the new layer mask icon in the Layers pallet (alternative: Layer > Layer Mask > Hide All). Take a look:



Where did all my hard work I just did go? Remember the Layer Mask Mantra: black conceals and white reveals.

All that work is still there, but its underneath the new layer mask I just made. I'm going to reveal painting on that mask with a brush, in the exact areas I want it, with as much of the effect I want, without fear of overdoing it or overrunning the edges. That original mask that created now works like a stencil. Pretty cool, huh?

First I need to set up the brush tool so that its comfortable for airbrushing. I created a new scrap document with a white background. I selected the brush tool and activated the airbrush button. Now I just messed around with the settings until I found a combination that worked for me.



Once you get that perfect feel, you can save it as a tool preset. Just click the little down arrow next to the brush tool, in the tool options bar at the top, and choose New Tool Preset from the fly out menu.

[jfrancho]

Now I can get to actually editing this puppy. All that work was just preparing me for this point. You are just going to paint (or airbrush) small amounts of white on the layer mask to reveal the effects that the Noise Ninja filter had on the image. I can overrun the edges, and nothing will happen. If I add too much of the effect, I can switch back to black, and paint my mistake away. Below, I painted on the mask in a sloppy way, to show you haw the protection works.

One thing I didn't show, that I like to do: create a second copy of the background layer, and change its opacity to 50%. Then I can see the effect getting airbrushed in, a little better. You will need to toggle the background layer on and off, and toggle the noise reduction layer on and off to see how you edit is progressing.

I also recommend using the snapshot feature in the History Pallet to do a "mini save" of your progress as you get each part of the airbrushing completed. That way, if you screw up, you can simply go back to the most recent snapshot instead of backing up a million steps in the history. Once taking frequent snapshots becomes ingrained in your work flow, you can reduce the number of steps saved in your History to save on memory. I use 10 steps.



Good luck, and happy editing!

[jfrancho]

Again, the point of this isn't to show the best way to airbrush skin, its to sow how to use masks in a powerful way. Some other applications: making a selection of the sky, and adding saturation to create a striking landscape; adding sparkle to the eyes with drastic use of Unsharp Mask; use the surface mask created above, and invert the selection to sharpen the edges of the skin; this is a powerful way to use selective color/desaturation but give it a pastel look; it goes on and on.

[phototakeouter]

Ok, I admit I haven't read the whole tutorial yet. Images are too large for me to load them all right now. But what I've read so far looks good and thanks too for the TLR toolkit link.

[jfrancho]

I used full screen captures so you could see exactly what was going on, especially the beginner, since some of the steps involve tiny icons and Ctrl/Alt - Click combinations. I can try to work on a PDF or similar that can put in the Downloads section for those in your circumstance, if you think that would be valuable.

[phototakeouter]

Ok, came back this morning and read the whole thing. I agree you needed to use fairly large screen caps for this. The best route would probably be if you could use 800x600 images in the tutorial that would click through the full size image.

The history snapshot tip is excellent! I will be using this from now on. There isn't a keyboard shortcut for it is there?

I would have liked to see a finished version, ideally a before and after side-by-side at the end of the tutorial.

I think the bit on choosing an appropriate brush that starts "First I need to set up the brush tool so that its comfortable for airbrushing..." down to the end of that message could be somewhere else. It breaks the flow of the explanation as it is. Maybe you could put it at the top, and say you'll explain what this will be used for later, or break it out into a separate sub-tutorial that you can just reference as necessary.

[jfrancho]

The best route would probably be if you could use 800x600 images in the tutorial that would click through the full size image.

The forum software resizes embedded images to 800px. by default, allowing you to click to see the larger image.

The history snapshot tip is excellent! I will be using this from now on. There isn't a keyboard shortcut for it is there?

Not that I know of.

I think the bit on choosing an appropriate brush that starts "First I need to set up the brush tool so that its comfortable for airbrushing..." down to the end of that message could be somewhere else.

The tutorial flows in order of operations.

[phototakeouter]

Originally Posted by jfrancho

The forum software resizes embedded images to 800px. by default

It sets the display dimensions in pixels in the IMG tag, but doesn't actually generate a smaller JPEG file byte-wise.

[jfrancho]

I would have liked to see a finished version, ideally a before and after side-by-side at the end of the tutorial.

Since its a methodology, not an actual technique, there really isn't a before and after. There are similar images using this processing methodology here: Steph: The Re- Edits.

The best route would probably be if you could use 800x600 images in the tutorial that would click through the full size image.

Click thru images are PITA, so I'll look at making a document for the DL section.

[felix.reichardt]

In went to TLR website but it looks like he is doing some work there. I cannot open the link.

[phototakeouter]

Felix, it's working fine for me now. Give it another try.

[Rense]

Nice tutorial Jfrancho.
Thanks for sharing

Another way to get some masks that also works in elements version and paintshop is using the simple maskerade plugin