Get the Image You Want: Essential Photoshop Editing Techniques

Cut out parts of images with layer masks

For decades, artists, photographers, and printers have used masks to isolate and modify specific areas of images. A mask sections off a portion of an image so you can manipulate it or the area surrounding it. Watercolor artists, for example, paint with frisket masks over their work to hold back or resist paint from being absorbed by the paper. Later, they can peel off the frisket and continue to work on their paintings. Graphic artists cut out a rubylith mask for a section of a photo they want to isolate or knock out from a background. Later they use the mask in combination with a halftone negative to burn a plate for printing. Using Photoshop's Layer Masks to isolate areas in an image, you can create ...