A Masking “Work-Around” for
Photoshop Elements®
“Using Masks in Elements®”
By: Marty Kesselman
The mask is a powerful feature of the full version of Photoshop® (it was available earlyon and carried through to the CS versions. It permits you to direct an operation to a
specific area of pixels in your image while not affecting other areas. The beauty of the
process is in the ease by which it is accomplished, using a brush to control what is
affected and by how much it is affected. Along with the mask is an entire palette called
“Channels”. These features are not available in the “Elements” version of Photoshop®.
Photoshop Elements® is a powerful tool for picture processing and with its low price
brings the power of editing images to the masses. It appears to the writer that Photoshop
has made a conscious decision to reserve the features of masking pixel layers and the
usefulness of the channels palette for the more expensive full featured package.
As you probably know; there are many ways to do most everything in Photoshop®. The
masking features, although not included in Elements, can also be accomplished with a
work-around.
Before I start I would like to pass along one of my suggestions about photographic
equipment.
Learn your equipment and use it. When you find there is something you can not
do that you feel is important to you, you can consider upgrading to a newer
more featured piece of equipment. This goes for cameras, lenses, tripods, and
software. As a result I am still using the antiquated Canon 10D, and older
versions of Photoshop®.
It takes a long time to learn a software package, particularly one as powerful and full
featured as Photoshop®. With a team of software experts, Adobe is planning new
features and version upgrades years before you have purchased the latest version
available on the market. Before you have had a chance to learn how to use the software
package features you have, a new version is out and the pressure is there to buy it for the
new and better features it offers. I suggest you relax, save your money, learn to use what
you have, and suffer with it for awhile. Once you have had time to digest it and see what
you can do with it you are in a better position to decide if it is really important enough for
you to upgrade. Admittedly, Adobe makes it difficult for you to lag behind since they
stop supporting older versions when a new one comes out. This precludes things like
RAW conversion of new camera bodies, etc.
Let’s talk about masks. The purpose of the mask is to prevent the effect that has been
applied to an image to affect all areas, and limit the affect to only certain areas of the
image. In addition it would be nice to be able to control the amount of the effect, if
possible. This is a carry-over from the wet darkroom days when during the enlarging
process one could cover parts of an image with a “mask” to avoid exposing the paper
below. The exposure was controlled by waving the “mask” and or exposing for varying
amount of time to allow for more or less exposure for different parts of the picture.
Photoshop Elements® has “adjustment layers”. All of the adjustment layers come with a
mask attached. So, Elements® can handle masks to some extent. These adjustment layer
masks work just as the masks in CS work and perform the same function in both
packages.
We need to find a way to allow Elements® to do the masking process without using the
masking feature, since there is none. There is a way, probably more than one. We can
use the “group” feature of “layers” to force one layer to use another layer to direct or
control the first layer’s effects.
Since all of the adjustment layers come with a mask attached, let’s consider an operation
involving a filter to direct the effect to certain parts of the image. Filters need to work on
layers with pixels and it is those layers that the full featured version of Photoshop works
so well with using masks and channels.
The problem we will consider is the introduction of a blurred background to create
a feeling of depth to an image that has been taken with the background in sharp
focus.
Here is a photo that has some
background blur but the leaves on the
top are sharp. They could be blurred
and pasted over the other leaves or
cloned out etc. I will show you how to
blur the entire image but mask it so
that only the leaves you want to blur
will be blurred. All done in Photoshop
Elements 5.0®.
Step 1- Copy your background layer so
that you do not change your original
image and can always return to it if
you make a mistake. This is always a
good practice. You can copy it by
highlighting/selecting the background
layer, click on the word background in
the layer palette (default is selected
when opened). Press Ctl+j, or drag the
background layer to the “create new
layer” icon (page-in-page” icon). You can name the copied background layer “blur”
since that is what we will do to it (double click the words on the layer to highlight the
letters and type in your new name for the layer). With the new layer selected
(highlighted) go to filter>blur>Gaussian blur and the Gaussian blur window will open
with a slider marked “radius”. Assure that the “preview” is checked, so that you can see
the affect on the image. Adjust the slider to your liking. Remember to be looking at the
parts that you REALLY intend to blur. The entire image will blur but we will fix that
with the “mask”.
Step 2- We will now do the magic of the
mask. We need to place an adjustment layer
containing an attached mask below the blur
layer to affect the operation of the blur (we
will paint on the mask later). To do this first
open a new LEVELS adjustment layer above
the blur layer by clicking the “create a new
adjustment layer” icon ( the black & white
cookie icon) and selecting “Levels”. Do not
make any adjustments and click OK to close
the window. This will place a new LEVELS
adjustment layer above the blur layer. To
move the layer below the blur layer click
and hold the left mouse key while the cursor
is in the blue area to the right of the word
“Level 1” and drag the layer down below the
“blur” layer. When you do this a line will appear between the background layer and the
blur layer to indicate the layer will be placed there.
Step 3- Now here is the magic. Return to
the top layer (the blurred layer) and select
it by clicking on the layer. Press and hold
Ctl while pressing g (Ctl+g). This will
group your top layer with the layer below.
This will be indicated in the layer palette
by the top layer icon moving to the right
and a small arrow appears at the left of the
icon pointing down to the layer below.
The “Levels” layer is now grouped with
the blur layer and so too is the mask
attached to the “levels” layer. Click inside
the mask icon on the “Levels” layer to make it active. A white frame will appear around
the mask icon indicating it is active. Remember that white reveals and black conceals for
masks. At the moment the mask is filled with white (default). That is why the image is
still blurry on the screen. We will fill the entire mask with black by inverting the mask
by pressing Ctl+i with the mask active. This will hide (conceal) the blur layer as though
we had the mask attached directly to it. The image will then appear sharp as in the
background layer.
Choose a soft edged brush and adjust the
brush size using the “Hard Bracket” keys
([]). Select the layer mask by clicking on
it. Assure you have white as your
foreground color by pressing d on the
keyboard. If black is foreground press x
on the keyboard to toggle between
foreground and background colors. Paint
over the area on the image that you want
to have the blur come through. The mask
icon will indicate the paint strokes, and the
image will reflect the blurriness of the top
layer in those areas.
Even though Photoshop Elements® did not have a mask feature, we were able to
simulate the process with good results.