AnGeL_04

hi there.....have a fascination with photography (got my first digi cam late last yr), am a total newbie with PS and a relative newbie to the computer. For the last few months PS has just been relegated to the too hard basket but it's such a waste of an awesome program......I want to learn.

Thought I'd work my way through the tutorials and hopefully come out with a better understanding of what layers and masks are.

Did manage to play round with this pic today using 2 layers and desaturising one of them and taking the red out of the other......now I want to learn how to just have the wasp highlit.....not the stamen of the flower. This is the first time I've tried to do this......been some really interesting effects. What I'm aiming for is a b/w image with the wasp highlit in his original colours.

John1

Hi Sue, welcome [righton]

It was good of you to take the red out first, a quick way to desaturate the most important areas.

What you have to do now is this[list][*]Copy the layer with the yellow and grey[*]Desaturate that complete layer: image/adjust/desaturate[*]Then you add a mask by clicking on the new mask icon (1)[*]Click on the mask. A mask icon will appear (2) in front of that layer to show that the mask is active[*]Select black/white for for- and background color. It doesn't matter which one is black or white, as long as one is black and the other one white[*]Paint with black where you want to mask (hide) pixels (to make the yellow bee on the bottom layer visible)[/list:u]

One useful shortcut: use the X key on your keyboard to quickly switch between for- and background color. That makes it easier to make corrections. Paint with white to make pixels visible again.
Use the [ and ] keys to change the size of your brush if necessary. Use { and } keys to make your brush softer or harder or change the opacity of your brush if you want to make smooth transitions.

Feel free to ask any questions you might have about Photoshop.
I'm more than happy to make you a guru in a short time!

Hercules

suemack, Welcome to the Forum and enjoy your stay.
Nice photograph! [righton]

AnGeL_04

[righton] thanks for that John.....will go and have a play and post the result.

was so pleased to find a ps site......it's awesome, but when you're starting out with it can be a bit bewildering

and thankyou both for the warm welcome

sue

AnGeL_04

here's the result but ended up using the history brush as I couldn't work out the background layer painting. Did something wrong.

Got the duplicate copy, the mask ok....but selecting the background/forground colour was where I started to lose it - when I painted I got a pale yellow coming through. Not sure where I went wrong there. So.........

.....used the history brush to get the bright yellow of the wasp.

John1

This is what you wrote earlier
Sue, if you don't understand something you should have asked. You would have gotten an answer from me or anyone else in a reasonable short time
Don't be afraid to ask either, people love to help others on this board.
That's the best way to learn and not to continue experiments, because you obviously got stuck, otherwise you wouldn't have posted your question.

It's really (!) important that you learn how to use masks.
Layers and masks are probably the most important tools of Photoshop.
You didn't know how to select black/white background/foreground?
Click on (1), then select a brush (2) and switch colors when needed by clicking on (3) or pressing X

The reason why it's so important to use masks is because it helps the user to make adjustments to layers without destroying the original pixels. You can even save a file with masks, come back a year later and still undo the correction you made, something that isn't possible with a history brush, because the history brush is useless once you open the image again, because the history is gone.
I can honestly say that about 95% of my stuff contains masks.
There are also other techniques and tools that help you to make non-destructive adjustments to an image. This is very important, because it makes working with Photoshop so much easier!

The history brush is a solution for this image, but not the best one. I seldom use the history brush. It might be useful for some people, but there are other approaches that work much better, at least that?s my opinion.

If you did see yellow coming through, well Sue, that's the whole trick! If you paint with black on the mask, then you're hiding pixels of this layer. It's like making a hole in the top layer so that you can see the layer underneath. You close that hole (or make the pixels visible again, whatever you want to call it) by painting with white. You can also use a soft brush with a low opacity to make these corrections with more care. And the beauty of this is that you can adjust these corrections any time, even next year, when ever you feel like it.
Maybe masks might be too confusing for you up till now, but please, do yourself a favor and learn everything about masks, serious!

The problem is that I didn?t have the original. Normally I would start with the original as background layer, add a hue & saturation adjustment layer on top and use its mask instead. Yes, even Hue & Saturation adjustment layers have masks! You gotta love them!

AnGeL_04

hi again John ...here's attempt no 2 [righton]

got original, made a duplicate and desaturated it, then followed the 1,2,3 directions you gave working on the mask. Am posting original and ps. I really do appreciate your time and help

sue

\:] or should it be attempt no 42

John1

Well done Sue [righton]
Btw... never struggle too long Sue, just ask; it's the fastest way to learn new things. Don't you worry about me spending time on helping you, I really love to help others.

Here are just a few examples of what you can do with layer masks.
Look carefully at those examples that include parts of my layers palette and you'll notice that I never touch the original image.
That's why we call that a "non-destructive" way of using Photoshop.

John1

In this example I used a layer mask to create cracks in the word 'test', just by drawing with the pencil tool on the mask (1), using black as color. You'll also notice that the layer style will follow these cracks (2), which creates interesting effects.
And again, the cracks are always editable. Also, if you want to remove all cracks, all you have to do is make the mask completely white.

John1

Eye, changing color of the iris: