The Professional Photoshop Book - Volume 7 2015

QUICK TIP

When editing the layer mask on a layer,

don’t just use black and white color

brushes. Grey tone brushes are good for

04

FINALISE THE MAGE

Create a new layer, set the blend mode to

Soft Light and Opacity to 15%. Paint on the cloak to

darken it. Next, create a Black & White adjustment

layer. Set the values to 25, 52, 40, 60, 20, 80. After

that, select the layer mask of the adjustment layer,

grab a black brush and paint the eyes and parts of

the skin. This means the black and white will only

affect the white areas of the layer mask. Then

create an Exposure adjustment layer. Set the

values to +0.34, 0, 0.89.

05

CREATE THE BASE OF THE MASK

Open mask.jpg. Cut out the mask from the

background by using a layer mask. Right-click on the

layer then select Rasterize Layer. Now right-click the

layer mask and select Apply Layer Mask. Next create

another layer mask and cut out the beak part of the

mask. Create new layer, and clipping mask it to the

mask. Set the blend mode to Soft Light and paint on

the left and right edges of the mask to create the

shadow of the cloak.

06

AD JUST THE MASK

Create a new Exposure adjustment layer

and set the value to 0, 0, 1.29. Clipping mask it to

the mask layer. Next add the shadow of the mask

dropping onto the mage’s face. To do that, create a

new layer and move it below the Black & White

adjustment layer to clipping mask. Set the blend

mode to Overlay. With a soft black brush, paint

underneath the edges of the mask.

07

ADD ORNAMENTS

Import the file crown.jpg. Right-click>

Rasterize Layer. Desaturate layer using Shift+Cmd/

Ctrl+U. Cut out the crown using a layer mask. Since

we will be using the same stock image to create the

ornaments, it’s best to duplicate the original masked

layer. Use Transform tools such as Warp and

Perspective to line up parts of the crown to the

mask. If parts from the crown need to be deleted,

just edit it using the layer mask. Repeat the process

until both sides of the mask are completed.

08

IM PROVE THE ORNAMENTS

Repeat Step 7 to add centre pieces to the mask. The trick is to align the parts of the mask with the

lines from it. After setting up the ornaments on the mask, make it more realistic by adding shadows and

some highlights. Similar to creating the cloak shadow in Step 5, create a new layer, change blend mode to

either Overlay or Soft Light and paint with a soft black brush on the right and left edges of the ornaments.

erasing and blending adjustment layer

effects. Play around with brushes and

shades to extract specific parts of a layer.

Photo editing

42 The Professional Photoshop Book

040-045 PPB 007 Master Masks Tutorial.indd 42 06/10/2015 16:02