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Labcoat Oh, sorry! Okay, let me see if I can whip up a quick tutorial on masking and clipping.
KENT'S SUPER QUICK TUTORIAL ON MASKING AND CLIPPING
Okay, so you've got the layer you're drawing on, right.
If you select that layer, and then click on the little icon at the bottom of the layer window that looks like the flag of Japan, you will create a
layer mask for that layer.
It looks like a white box linked to the actual layer, and it doesn't appear to have done anything.
BUT: if you draw on the layer mask (which is monochrome, i.e., it only allows you to draw on it in black and white and any shades of grey in between), anything in BLACK will become TRANSPARENT on that layer, and anything in WHITE will be VISIBLE. Shades of grey create partial transparency!
So THIS:
(I drew a happy face on the layer mask if you're having trouble seeing it)
Yields THIS:
"ok, that's great, but why would I ever want to do that," I hear you ask.
Well, lots of reasons! Masking can make your life easier in a lot of different ways. For one thing, it allows you to "erase" things without actually erasing them, so you can get rid of an element on a layer (by painting over it with black on your layer mask), and then bring it back later completely intact if you change your mind (by painting over that bit on the layer mask again with white).
It also allows you to stay inside the lines if you only want to paint over a certain shape on the canvas in that layer. For example, let's say I want to make an accent where just the wings and mane on this tundra are red.
Well, I can select the shape of the wings & mane from inside the "Skin Parts" folder:
(you can select every pixel on a layer by just control-clicking on that layer)
then select the red layer, and hit the layer mask button.
The mask:
And the effect:
And no matter how much drawing I do on that red layer, or how sloppy I get (pretty sloppy sometimes tbh), nothing I draw will be visible outside the mask! The proper terminology is that it has been "masked out": the mask has blocked it out of the picture.
You can also apply one mask to an entire GROUP of layers (a bunch of layers in one folder), by selecting the group folder and then clicking the mask button. You can use this to put your entire project in one big folder, and then create a mask that is the base shape of the dragon, to make sure your accent never goes 'over the lines.'
Okay, but now what if you want to use
another layer as your layer mask? Say, you want to draw the shape of a tattoo on one layer, and then add details on the layer above it...but you want to be able to keep adding to and changing the tattoo layer as you go.
Well, in that case, you would
clip the detail layer to the tattoo layer, which creates a
clipping mask. As an example: The "Clip Shadows" and "Clip Lines" layers that come in every FR template are clipped to the "Your Accent Goes Here" layer! So when you draw on that layer, whatever you draw becomes the shape of the mask being applied to "Clip Shadows" and "Clip Lines."
So how do you make your own clipping masks?
Well, here's my tattoo:
(awful tattoo, 0/10)
Then on the layer above it, I've drawn a ton of SPARKLES because this tattoo needs some RAZZLE DAZZLE.
Now what I'm going to do is hold down the ALT button, and click on the line BETWEEN these two layers.
So this:
Becomes this:
And our image becomes this!
This is still an awful tattoo, but you get the idea.
Just like how you can apply layer masks to entire groups of layers, you can also apply clipping masks to entire groups of layers the same way. Just put all the layers you want to act as the mask inside the group folder, then 'clip' (by alt-clicking the line between them) the layers you want to be affected by that mask above them.
I hope this has been helpful!
