Page 62 - CC2018_PS_Look_Inside

EdIt a layEr mask
If you look closely, the bottom-left corner of the masked image layer includes some of
the background water because the dark colors are very close to the dark colors in the
foreground rock. In this exercise, you will use built-in painting tools to manually edit
the mask and remove the remaining water from the visible layer pixels.
1. With cd-artwork.psd open, zoom in to the bottom-left corner of the image.

It might be difficult to see, but if you look carefully you can see that part of the visible
area is water instead of foreground rocks. (We outlined the area in red for the sake of
illustration.)

Some of this area
is actually water. It
should be masked out.

2. In the Layers panel, click the Sunrise layer mask thumbnail to select it.

Clicking the layer mask
These corner icons thumbnail selects the
indicate that the mask so you can edit it.
base layer is selected.

3. Open the Channels panel (Window>Channels), then click the empty space
on the left side of the panel to make the Sunrise Mask channel visible.

Layer masks are not visible by default; you have to turn them on in the Channels panel
to see them. This isn’t strictly necessary, since you can paint a mask without seeing it, but
it is easier (at least when you’re first learning) to be able to see what you’re painting. By
painting on a layer mask, you’re not really “painting” anything; instead, you’re actually
“painting” the visibility of the associated layer.

Making the mask
channel visible allows
you to see the red
overlay in the image.

72 Project 1: Music CD Artwork