Adobe® Photoshop® CS2 Studio Techniques

Creating a Layer Mask

You can add a Layer Mask to the active layer by clicking on the icon third from the left at the bottom of the Layers palette. (It looks like a rectangle with a circle inside it.) Once you click this icon, you'll notice that the layer you're working on contains two thumbnail images in the palette. The one on the left is its normal preview thumbnail; the one on the right is the Layer Mask thumbnail. The Layer Mask is not empty (empty looks like a checkerboard); instead, it's full of white. After adding a Layer Mask, you can edit it by painting across the image window with any painting tool. Even though this would usually change the image, you're really just editing the Layer Mask; it just isn't visible on the main screen. ...