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PS CS4: What's New — Masks
No major overhauls here, but I thought I'd hit some of the highlights or significantly different set ups.
The Masks Panel
Here's an image where I wanted it all black and white except for the Union Pacific car in the background.
The first step was to select the Adjustments Panel and click the Black & White icon. This not only applied the effect, but put it on its own layer with an active Adjustment Mask.
I then painted with a black brush over the car. Painting with black will reveal what is contained on the layer underneath.
We can now make adjustments to this in the Masks Panel, so let's focus on that next.
Density Slider
By pulling the Density slider down, I make the mask more transparent, revealing more of the black and white effect.
With this slider at 100%, the black and white effect is completely blocked by the mask and it reveals the color layer. Dragging it down to 0% turns the mask fully white, which is basically removing the mask and revealing the Adjustment Layer effect.
Feather Slider
Moving this slider up, circled in blue, puts more of a fuzzy edge on your mask. This works even for vector masks which usually have a hard, sharp edge.
You might be able to see from the image that the edge has gotten so blurry that it's beginning to bleed into the foreground.
Mask Edge
Clicking the Mask Edge button, circled in red, brings up the Refine Mask dialog box.
There are 5 sliders to move around, 5 different backgrounds on which to view the mask (circled in blue), and a handy (if brief) description of what each does when you hover over the slider name (circled in green).
If you really want to get into the details of each, check out our Refine Edge tutorial.
Color Range
Here you can refine your mask by a range of colors.
There are some new things in this dialog box in CS4 so even if you're familiar with it, do have a look at our Color Range tutorial.
Invert
This one's pretty straight forward. Click the Invert button and the mask...inverts!
Other Icons
Icons circled in red are for adding masks.
- The left icon is for adding Layer Masks and the one on the right is for Vector Masks.
- If there's a plus sign (+) in the icon, it means that that kind of mask does not exist on the active layer. If there is no plus sign and a double border around the icon, it means that the active layer you are on does have that kind of mask and it is available for editing.
Icons circled in green (left to right).
- Load as Selection
- Clicking this icon will place a selection around the white areas of the mask. This could be accomplished in CS3 and earlier, but it's just easier done now.
- If you already have an active selection and click this, the mask selection will replace it.
- If you press Shift and click the icon, the mask selection will be added to the active selection.
- Pressing Option (Mac) or Alt (Win) will subtract the mask selection from the active selection.
- Apply Mask
- This is a way to permanently embed the changes due to your mask into the image. The mask will be removed from the layer leaving only those sections which had adjustments done.
- It's a shortcut for what used to be Layer > Layer Mask > Apply.
- Disable Mask (the eyeball thingy)
- The full layer is brought into view and the mask is disabled.
- Trash Can
- Pretty clear here — trash the whole thing, it was just a horrible idea.
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