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How to: work with clipping masks
Clipping masks are often overlooked or even unknown by many Photoshop users. In this tutorial I will introduce them to you, and hopefully show you how useful the can be for many different uses in Photoshop, from photography editing to web design.
Clipping masks are often overlooked or even unknown by many Photoshop users. In this tutorial I will introduce them to you, and hopefully show you how useful the can be for many different uses in Photoshop, from photography editing to web design.
For our tutorial I used these two pictures as a base.
- Open the picture you will use as a background.
- With the pen tool or any other drawing tool, circle the zone you would like to change.
- Fill this zone with a dark colour in our case, generally with a colour that will fit with your background element.
- Go to File > Place… and place the image you would like to blend in the background image.
- Your layers should now look like the image below: a background layer, a layer where you drew a shape (layer 2), and then your second image (layer 3).
- Here is the last step. Simply place your mouse between the layer 2 and layer 3 while holding the Alt key (Option on a Mac). Two overlapping circles should appear, then click! Another possibilty is to go to Layer > Create clipping mask.
Here you go! Your second image is now visible only in the places you added a color on the layer 2. You can easily move both layers and modify them, or add new clipping masks and change the pattern on the T shirt of our guy! In a newt tutorial I will show how to use clipping masks in web design!
Any remarks? Questions? Do not hesitate to let us know in the comments section!
May 22 at 07:13
Nice work! : )
May 25 at 14:50
Awesome tutorial. Clipping masks are really very useful and effects with them can make one picture look a way different.
Jun 10 at 18:16
I have a scanned image that I am trying to utilize in creating a logo. I need to cut the image from its background, and I have read that the best way to do this is with a clipping mask. When I try this utilizing the pen tool, it says that the clipping mask cannot be used because more than one object must be selected?
Jun 10 at 19:26
I am not quite sure I understand how you get to this error message.However you may want to make sure you have actually transform the shape you created with the pen into a selection (by doing a right click on it, then Create Selection), create a new layer, and then fill this selection with a color.
The next steps are described above, you should not hve any issues later!
Jun 19 at 05:28
thanks alot!!! Was searching for a simple exemple on google. Find it!
Jul 20 at 13:16
Awesome work ! ^_^
Thanks for sharing !
Jul 24 at 16:29
i like very much.
Jul 28 at 18:28
This is a great effect that I’d only read about before, so thanks for your guide with images.
I think it gives a really professional advert-style look!
Sep 03 at 20:18
I just tried this technique but not able to make a separate lair of t-shirt.
Sep 14 at 05:31
VERY VERY cool! Im learning how to use Fireworks right now – not photoshop – I assume something similar can be done there? Im now searching for more tutorials about this but I think I can probably work it out just based on your tutorial – thanks!
Nov 13 at 16:31
Very well written, and clear explanation of how to PROPERLY use clipping mask! Nice tutorial, well played.
Nov 18 at 11:09
nice piece of artwork!
keep on sharing
Nov 27 at 17:18
Thank you Roberto and Quileutte!