Saturday Special 7/24 – Tips for Clipping Masks

PRIVET everyone!
This is Maria with this week’s Saturday Special. I have a couple of little tips for you when working with masks, especially resizing using short cut keys in Photoshop CS3.
Hope it’s useful for you!
Here’s what we are going to do:
- clip a photo to a mask (template shape)
- resize and rotate photo (paper)
- resize and rotate mask (template shape)

First of all open up your photo and drag it to you page.

Find a mask you want to use and drag it to your page too, be sure that mask layer is under your photo layer. Now you are ready to clip a photo to a mask. Shortcut in CS3 to do that is CTRL ALT G. You can try to move your photo and only one part of it will show up to you – repeating the mask shape.

Now to resizing. I will start with resizing of the mask, since it’s size of the mask is what matters on the page. Make sure that mask layer is active and hit CTRL T (free transform tool). To save the mask from distortion, hold down SHIFT key when resizing. Or you can push ‘constrain proportions’ button in the upper menu bar (this button looks like a paperclip in PS7). You can also type in the percentage of difference you want as compared to the original.

OK, now I think I have the right size of the mask (you can always adjust it again using the steps above). Now you see that the photo looks too big. Before you start to change it’s size, make sure the photo layer is active.

Don’t forget to hold down SHIFT key to maintain the original proportions! With the free transform tool you can also rotate your photo to fit your mask perfectly. You can also move the photo to find the perfect crop.

Now, if you want to resize both photo and your mask you should make sure you have both layers active. Just click on layers icons in layers menu holding CRTL key. You can also link those layers together. Don’t forget about proportions while resizing and now you can also move the photo and the mask to place it where you want it on your page.

OK, now I’m finished with resizing and will continue to make a page. If you need more adjustments with photo or mask only, remember to unlink the layers. Here’s my final page.

Don’t forget that you can use this tips when working with templates.Hope you’ve learned something new today!
I used Carry My Heart collab by Graham Like the Cracker and Stolen Moments.
I used some wordings from tuts on ehow.com

Here are some examples from ScrapMatters fabulous CT:
This one is by Heidi, she used a template and shrunk the paper down to 6×6 to clip to the template shapes, so the pattern in the paper shows. She used “Making Waves” by Jenn Barrette and Graham like the Cracker and Bella Gypsy’s “Double Dibbed” Template.

Here’s one by Amanda, using a bunch of products by Britt-ish Designs. She clipped her pics to custom shapes and the paper to scallops:

This one is by LeeAndra using Happy To Be kit by Scrapmuss Designs and Masquerade Vol. I by Jenn Barrette.

And another one by Jaime, using Splish Splash by The Design Girl.She clipped her photo to the mask and then added a stroke to give it a “bubble” effect.

Here are the official rules:
You have until the end of the July to complete this challenge.
You will earn 1 point for your LO and a bonus point if you use a new release (within 7 days of release – be sure to mention this in the forum and in your credits).
You don’t have to use ScrapMatters products, but we love it when you do!
No double dipping, your LO must be unique to this challenge.
At the end I will pick a random LO as the winner to receive an extra bonus point.

Tags: challenge, masking in photoshop, Masks, photoshop, saturday special, Tutorials

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 24th, 2010 at 9:35 am and is filed under The Saturday Special. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.