Photoshop® CS4 All-in-One For Dummies®

Chapter 3. Getting Exact with Advanced Masking Techniques

In This Chapter

• Creating and editing layer masks

• Using vector masks

• Working with channel masks

If you haven't already checked out Book VI, Chapter 2, which covers Photoshop's quick and easy masking tools, you might want to breeze through that chapter first, especially if the word mask brings to mind an image from Halloween rather than a selection technique. In this chapter, I dive into some manual masking techniques.

Layer masks are tremendously useful, and if you're like me, you'll find yourself addicted to them. They can be fantastic for blending layers and making multiple images dissolve into one another. Vector masks create shapes defined by vector paths and produce clean, smooth-edged graphic elements.

Channel masks are probably the most time-consuming of the masking lot, but they're powerful and accurate. Like anything in life, the more you practice using them, the faster and better you get.

But Photoshop CS4 includes a new feature to help in your masking tasks — the Masks panel. This handy panel enables users to add, control, and refine masks of all sorts.

After you get through this final chapter of Book VI, you'll be familiar with every masking technique Photoshop has to offer. By then, you'll be prepared to use masks to select a very hairy orangutan, dyed green, perched in a tree in a lush rainforest. And how many people can ...