Where is mask in photoshop cs6

Press G to switch to the gradient tool, then select the layer mask by clicking on its thumbnail. As you can see, the thumbnail fills with a gradient from black to white and the corresponding layer smoothly transitions between full opacity and full transparency. If layer masks can hold any grayscale information, why not try to mask a layer with something photographic?

Now, the canvas displays the contents of the layer mask. Cool, huh? What we love about this technique is that it lets the layer below, in the case a warm orange color fill, show through the textural variance. You may also be wondering what that chain-link is doing between the layer thumbnail and layer mask thumbnail? Quite simply, this chain-link means that if you move the layer image on the canvas, the layer mask will move around with it.

This can be incredibly useful. In this case you would want to disable the chain-link. Just click it. Now you should feel like you have a better understanding of layer masks! Bringing this tool into your workflow will make you a better Photoshop user based on your increased facility to enter into new creative possibilities!

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Layer mask tutorial — Photoshop provides a complete set of functions for handling layer masks. When you click on this it will delete the current adjustment layer. Figure 1 This shows the Properties panel with a Levels adjustment selected. Keeping the focus on the Properties panel The Photoshop adjustment layers behavior has evolved over the last three versions such that adjustment layer editing is now no longer modal.

Simply press the Esc key to exit the Properties panel edit mode. The Masks panel was first introduced to Photoshop CS4 and could be used to refine the mask or masks associated with a layer. When an adjustment layer is selected, the Properties panel will have adjustments controls and masks controls modes. Which are shown will depend on whether you target the adjustment or the mask icon. In the case of a regular layer with a layer mask, the Properties panel only shows the masks controls as can be seen in Figure 2 below.

The Properties panel won't display anything till you have added either a pixel or a vector mask. Therefore, you can add say, a vector mask to a layer currently masked using a pixel layer mask, or add a pixel mask to a layer currently masked using a vector mask. If you have both a pixel and vector mask added to a layer, you can tell which mode is active because it will say Pixel Mask or Vector mask at the top of the panel and the relevant mode button will be highlighted in the panel.

Below this are the Density and Feather sliders for modifying the mask. I could also select it by pressing the letter E on my keyboard:. You may need to choose a different brush size depending on the size of your images:.

Then, with my "Cat" layer still selected in the Layers panel, I'll click and drag with the Eraser Tool over part of the cat image to erase those areas and start blending it in with the dog image below it. Already, things are looking much better than they did with the Opacity option. Only the parts of the cat image that I'm dragging over are being erased.

The rest of the image remains fully visible:. I'll continue erasing more of the cat image to blend it in with the dog image, and here's the result. As we see, the Eraser Tool made it easy to blend the two photos together:. But here's the problem with the Eraser Tool. I'm going to hide the dog image for a moment by clicking on the "Dog" layer's visibility icon in the Layers panel:. This allows us to see just my cat image in the document, and look what's happened.

All of the areas I dragged over with the Eraser Tool are now gone. The checkerboard pattern in their place tells us that those parts of the image are now blank. If, later on, I realize that I erased too much of the cat image and need to bring some of it back, I'd be out of luck. Once those pixels have been deleted, they're gone for good:. Of course, at the moment, I could probably just undo my brush strokes to restore the areas I deleted.

But that won't always be the case. Photoshop gives us only a limited number of undo's, so if I had done more work on the document after erasing the pixels, I may not be able to go back far enough in my document's history to undo it.

Also, once we close out of the document, we lose our file history, which means that the next time we open the document to continue working, Photoshop would have no record of our previous steps and no way to undo them. Fortunately, in this case, we planned ahead and saved our document before using the Eraser Tool.

To revert the document back to the way it looked before we erased any pixels, all we need to do is go up to the File menu at the top of the screen and choose Revert :. This returns the document back to the way it looked the last time we saved it, restoring the pixels in the top image:.

So far, we've seen that the Opacity option in the Layers panel can only affect entire layers at once, and that the Eraser Tool causes permanent damage to an image.

Let's see if a layer mask can give us better results. We want to blend the top image in with the layer below it, which means that we'll need to hide some of the top layer to let the bottom layer show through. The first thing we'll need to do, then, is select the top layer in the Layers panel if it isn't selected already :. Then, to add a layer mask to the selected layer, we simply click the Add Layer Mask icon the rectangle with a circle in the middle at the bottom of the Layers panel:.

Nothing will happen to the images in the document, but if we look again in the Layers panel, we see that the top layer now shows a layer mask thumbnail to the right of its preview thumbnail:. Notice that the layer mask thumbnail is filled with white. Why white? Why not black, or red, or blue? Well, the reason it's not filled with red or blue is because layer masks are grayscale images. A grayscale image is an image that uses only black, white and the various shades of gray in between.

It can't display any other colors. Many people think of grayscale images as black and white images. But really, most black and white photos are actually grayscale photos, not black and white, since a true "black and white" photo would contain only pure black and pure white, with no other shades of gray, and that would make for a pretty odd looking image.

So, since layer masks are grayscale images, that explains why the layer mask isn't filled with red or blue. But why white? Why not black or gray? Well, we use a layer mask to control the transparency level of a layer. Usually, we use it to adjust the transparency of different areas of the layer independently otherwise we'd just use the Opacity option in the Layers panel that we looked at earlier.

But by default, when we first add a layer mask, Photoshop keeps the entire layer fully visible. It does that by filling the layer mask with white. And, it uses the various shades of gray in between to represent partial transparency , with areas filled with darker shades of gray appearing more transparent than areas filled with lighter shades.

In other words, with layer masks, we use white to show the contents of the layer, black to hide them, and gray to partially show or hide them. And that's really all there is to it!

Let's see what happens if we fill the layer mask with black. Notice in the Layers panel that the layer mask thumbnail has a white highlight border around it. That's because the layer and its layer mask are two separate things, and the highlight border around the layer mask thumbnail tells us that the mask, not the layer itself, is currently selected. If you're not seeing the highlight border around the layer mask thumbnail, click on the thumbnail to select it:.

Then, to fill the layer mask with black, go up to the Edit menu at the top of the screen and choose Fill :. This opens Photoshop's Fill dialog box.

Change the Contents option at the top to Black , then click OK :. What if we fill the layer mask with gray? Let's give it a try. I'll go back up to the Edit menu and I'll once again choose Fill :. So far, layer masks haven't seemed like anything special. In fact, as we've seen, filling a layer mask entirely with solid white, black or gray gives us the same result as using the Opacity option in the Layers panel.

If that was all that layer masks could do, there would be no need for layer masks since the Opacity option is faster and easier to use. But layer masks in Photoshop are a lot more powerful than that.

In fact, they have more in common with the Eraser Tool than with the Opacity option. Like the Eraser Tool, layer masks allow us to easily show and hide different areas of a layer independently. But here's the important difference. While the Eraser Tool permanently deletes areas of an image, layer masks simply hide those areas from view. In other words, the Eraser Tool makes destructive edits to an image; layer masks do it non-destructively.

Let's see how it works. First, let's make sure once again that our layer mask, not the layer itself, is selected. You should be seeing the white highlight border around the mask thumbnail:.

I mentioned earlier that the Eraser Tool is a brush. With layer masks, we don't use the Eraser Tool itself, but we do use a brush. In fact, we use Photoshop's Brush Tool. I'll select it from the Toolbar.