- Paint inside the mask. Make sure the blend mode is set to
Normal. Then select a small, hard brush, about 20 pixels in
diameter, and paint along the rim of the mountaintops in the
image window. Assuming that the layer mask is active (as it
should be), you’ll reveal the tops of the ridges.- If you reveal too much of a ridge, press the X key to switch
the foreground color to black and then paint inside the
image window to erase pixels. - If you erase too much, press X again to restore white as the
foreground color and then paint. - You don’t have to limit yourself to brushwork. You can
select an area with the lasso tool and fill it with white to
reveal an area or with black to erase it.
Keep painting until you achieve more or less the effect pic-
tured in Figure 5-48. And don’t fret too much if you end up
with some stray sky pixels from the Badlands layer. We’ll cover
them up in a few moments. In other words, be tidy but don’t
knock yourself out.
- If you reveal too much of a ridge, press the X key to switch
Figure 5-48.If you find yourself adding white or
black brushstrokes to your image, you
accidentally activated the image in-
stead of the mask. (Inspect the dou-
ble outline assigned to the Badlands
layer. A double outline around the first
thumbnail shows that the image is ac-
tive, which is not what you want. A
double outline around the second tells
you that the mask is active and all is
well.) If you encounter this problem,
undo any damage and then click the
black-and-white layer mask thumbnail
directly to the left of the word Bad-
lands in the Layers panel. This returns
Photoshop’s attention to the layer mask,
as the double outline illustrates.Alternatively, you can switch between the
image and the layer mask from the keyboard.
Press Ctrl+ (�- ) to activate the layer
mask. Press Ctrl+2 (or �-2) to switch back
to the image. The double outline in the
Layers panel monitors your status.Masks, Knockouts, and Luminance Blending 159