The Photoshop CS4 Companion for Photographers

Adding a Mask to the Adjustment Layer

Layer masks may sound a bit intimidating, but once you learn a few basics, they actually begin to make sense. We're going to create a second adjustment layer, this time choosing Hue/Saturation from the Adjustments panel. We'll desaturate the entire image so that it appears black and white. Then we'll mask out part of the picture to let the original colors show through. This is a great way to focus attention on a specific part of the composition.

Start by clicking the background layer once to select it in the Layers panel. Then click the Adjustments icon and choose Hue/Saturation. Move the Saturation slider all the way to the left to desaturate the image. It should look like a black-and-white photograph. If you don't see the effect you expected, you might have to move the layer up in the stack. Just drag it to the top of the Layers panel.

Now click on the layer mask thumbnail next to the Hue/Saturation thumbnail in the Layers panel. This "activates" the layer mask thumbnail so that you can do a little selective editing. Go to the Toolbox on the left side of the interface and check that the foreground color is set to black and the background color is set to white. If the colors aren't set in this way, you can set them easily by clicking the Default Foreground and Background Colors button to set them to white and black, and then clicking the toggle icon to the right to switch to black as the foreground color.

Figure 6-12. Desaturate the image by dragging ...