Hi Everyone,
Clipping masks seem to scare a lot of people. But, they’re incredibly easy to work with and so very handy!
First, what is a clipping mask?
Well, a clipping mask is a way to ‘mask’ a layer with the transparent pixels from the layer below. That sounds way more complicated than a clipping mask really is. Here’s another way to say it. A clipping mask allows you to show one layer in the shape of the layer below it.
Maybe the best way to explain clipping masks is with an example.
We’ll open a digital paper from our new ‘Sail Away’ collection in Photoshop Elements. When we do this, you can see that we have just one layer in our Layers Panel that resides along the right side of our workspace:
We want to add a layer in below the layer of the paper. To do this, we have to change the background layer to a regular layer. This is easy to do. Just double click on the name of the layer (‘Background’)in the layers panel and the New Layer dialog box will pop up:
Click ‘OK’ in the dialog box. Your background layer is now a regular layer with the name ‘Layer 0′:
Now, I’m going to add a new layer below this layer. To do this, I’ll hold down my CTRL key as I click on the ‘Create a New Layer’ icon at the bottom of the Layers Panel:
A new layer appears below the layer of my digital paper:
I want to add some text in below the layer of my digital paper.
Since the digital paper is going to make this hard to see, first, I’ll temporarily hide this layer by clicking on the eyeball next to that layer in the Layers Panel:
The digital paper layer disappears.
With the new, blank layer selected (Layer 1), I’ll click on the Horizontal Type Tool from the Toolbox to select it:
Click on the blank layer and start typing:
Click on the green checkmark when done typing:
Now we have a layer of text below our (hidden) digital paper.
Let’s un-hide the digital paper layer by again clicking on the visibility box in front of the layer:
The digital paper is now showing and covering up the text layer:
Now, we’ll create a clipping mask. To do this, hold down the ALT key while moving the cursor over the line between the two layers in the Layers Panel. The cursor will change to a small double circle icon:
When this happens, click the mouse button to create a clipping mask.
The digital paper layer is now clipped to the type layer and the result is that the digital paper only shows in the places where there is text and is transparent in the other areas:
The effect is a little hard to see with a transparent background. But when I add a colored background and a drop shadow and white stroke on the text, you can see we have a pretty cool type effect:
Pretty cool, don’t you think?
Clipping masks can be used for all sorts of things. Like above, you can use them to create text filled with a photograph. Or, you can use other shapes other than text. And, clipping masks can come in very handy for controlling the effect of adjustment layers.
The Everyday Elements blog is running a three part blog post on the basics of clipping masks that you’ll find very helpful. Check out ‘Basics of Clipping Masks for Photoshop Elements Part 1‘. And, I’ll let you know when the other tutorials in this series are out.
Happy Scrapping!
Mary
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