Clipping Masks: A Different Approach to Masking in Photoshop

Let's talk about clipping masks. Now, please don't confuse clipping masks with layer masks or opacity masks like we talked about earlier. They are similar, but they do different things.

Now, you'll see the term masking a lot in Photoshop and it's not always meaning the same thing. So there are different types of masks, even though fundamentally the idea of masking is kind of this on or off kind of concept. So in a layer mask, like we did before, we had a separate little icon over here on the right that was black and white, and that controlled the visibility of that layer that it was on.

That's one form of masking. We're gonna see a different form of masking. And this one is not gonna be using a pixel-based opacity mask or layer mask.

This one is gonna be using another layer. Let me explain. So here I've got an image that I had hidden, this coastline photo, and I want this Hawaii layer, which this could be, in this case, a vector object, it could be type, it could be anything you want, but that you have a layer that has the shape of an object and you wanna put something else into that object.

You want the shape to be defined by one layer, the Hawaiian logo layer, but you wanna see something else in that. So instead of having an opacity mask or layer mask as a separate side one, we already have our two layers, and I want to clip this on to that layer. That's why it's called a clipping mask.

So you're using two layers together to do the masking. And to do this, I can select the top layer. So the mask, the thing that's providing the shape, that's the underlying layer.

The thing you see is the thing that's on top. So you put the thing you wanna see on top and then you select that and you say, hey, I want this layer and I wanna create a clipping mask, which will use the layer below it as the mask and clip itself onto it. And look at what happens.

You now see the photo in the shape of the underlying layer. So the layer order is very important. Notice the little arrow now shows that this visible item, whatever that layer is, is visible in the shape of the underlying layer.

Now, these are two separate layers. So I can use my move tool here to move the coastline photo around. You won't see the original artwork unless there's nothing to cover it and then you will see the original artwork, but you can move this around and get the part that you want to see.

You can also select the Hawaii logo and you can move it. Oh, no, that's not working. That's because auto select layer is turned on.

So auto select is that when you click on something, it selects the thing you see. Sometimes that works against you. So we can turn that off and I can click on my layer here and then it will only move what I actually clicked on there.

So now I can move the logo, but notice it's not moving the photo. The photo remains where it was. If you want to move the two together, you can either click on one and hold shift and click on the other and then move them together, or I could put them into a group.

So if I select those two by clicking on one, holding shift, clicking on the other, I could give that a group. I could say group those layers. So this is my Hawaii logo.

And with the group selected, now when I move this around, notice how it moves everything in the group. So I can still go in and move one thing in the group or the other thing in the group, or I could select the group and move them together. Now that I have a group, if I turn on auto select, if auto select is based on the layer, it'll go to the visible layer.

If auto select is set to the group, then it will move the group as a whole. So just keep that in mind if you're using auto select or turn it off and you choose the layer that you want to move and it will only move what you have selected. Okay, great.

If you ever want to remove the clipping mask, you can select the layer and you can go in and you can say to release the clipping mask and it goes back to being normal. The other way that you can also create a clipping mask instead of selecting the layer and choosing the menu item is when you have these two layers next to each other, when you put your cursor over the divider line between them, if you hold Option on the Mac or Alt on Windows, notice your cursor will change, but only when it's right in between those two layers. So you hover over the line between those two layers, holding Alt on Windows or Option on the Mac, and then click and it clips it onto it.

Still the same layer setup is just your Option or Alt clicking rather than going up here and choosing either to make or release the clipping mask. Now, one little final touch here is let's say on this logo here, I want to put in a shadow. So I could go in to my effects menu here and you can add different layer effects such as drop shadows.

Here I have a drop shadow turned on. I can see the shadow here. I can move the distance so it's farther away.

I can change the size, which is really like a softness or a feather amount. The angle changes which direction it is. So especially if I increase that distance and I'm gonna make this a little harsher here so you can see this better.

You can change the angle there. You can also change how light or dark this is. But here's a cool little thing that you might not think to do.

You can actually just go out here and just drag the shadow around. Notice how that's gonna be changing the angle and the distance. So instead of dragging this and dragging this, you just move it into place.

Drag it. Drag and drop is one of those things that's not necessarily apparent that you could just go out here and interact. Normally you're locked in a dialogue.

You would never think to come out here and drag, but you can. Just drag it around. Put it into place.

And let's say I like it. I hit okay. Drop shadows are editable.

You can turn them off. You can turn them back on. If I double click on them, I can go back and see all the settings for them.

So I can edit these and change these whenever I want as I do this. One last thing here. If let's say I want to do other things to this artwork.

Let's say I want to saturate this. I still only want that saturation to show up in the area of the Hawaii logo. So I'm gonna select the coastline and add a new layer on top so that it'll go next to it, right on top of it.

And if I go into the menu and just choose let's say vibrance here, and I change the vibrance, notice how that's changing the entire image because I'm not clipping it onto the previous layer. So I could clip it on now. I could option click and notice how that too is being clipped on.

And notice how it only now affects everything in the Hawaii logo. So this makes more vibrant colors or saturates the colors of the coastline. I could also, if I don't want to option click or alt click, there is a button here, right here.

When you click it, that's the same thing as doing that option or alt click. So you can also just click the button right there. Or let's say you want to start right away from the very beginning.

You know you want it to apply only to that layer. If you select your layer and you go up through the menu this way, instead of it just creating the layer, let's say I want to do vibrance. It says, hey, you want to give it a name.

It's always a good idea to name it. So I can just call this vibrance. And there is a use previous layer, or in other words, use the selected layer, whatever you have selected right now, and create a clipping mask.

Boom, right from the beginning, it's already clipped on. We can change just that area. So you can clip on as many different changes as you want.

If you want to go in and do, let's say a curves adjustment, notice how it's affecting everything, but you could click the little clip button right here, clip it on. Now it's only affecting the Hawaii logo. So all of these clipped layers only show up in the shape determined by that underlying layer.

Pretty cool. And different than having a layer mask or opacity mask, because we're using a different layer rather than a pixel based icon over here to represent the visibility of a layer. So try this out yourself in exercise 5B.