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Adobe Photoshop Selections & Masking

April 15, 2011 • University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu • $135 • Register

The ability to make accurate selections and masks is one of the keys to doing good work in Photoshop, especially if you need to make a composite image. This 1-day hands-on class will focus on core Photoshop concepts that relate to selections, channels, alpha channels and layer masks.

Masks can be used in a variety of situations for many different types of digital darkroom work, including contrast and color correction masks for photographs and intricate masks for compositing multiple images together. In many cases, there is a mask, or the beginnings of one, already present in your photograph. You just need to know where to look for it and how to modify it to suit your purposes.

Some of the topics for this class include: • Selection Tools and Skills: Beyond the Basics • Gray Matters: Understanding how grayscale tonality relates to selections and transparency • Using existing channel information to “jump start” a mask. • How to create and edit a Gradient Mask • Creating a mask that has both hard and soft edges. • How to create precise layer masks for localized tonal adjustments • Techniques for mask editing, adjustments and combining masks. • Layer Clipping Groups and Blending Options: Masking without a mask • One Mask for Many Layers: Masking layer groups