A beginner’s guide to clipping masks in Photoshop
Are you an amatuer Photoshop graphic artist who is trying to learn the ins and outs of how to master Clipping Masks in Photoshop?
If so, then this beginner’s guide to Clipping Masks will be extremely helpful!
From understanding exactly what a clipping mask is and its use cases, to walking through the steps of creating a clipping mask within Photoshop – by the end of this post, you’ll have all of your questions about clipping masks answered.
Take it from someone who has been using Adobe Creative Suite for years: learning how to incorporate clipping masks into your workflow can take your projects from ordinary to exceptional.
So let’s dive right in!
Creating a clipping mask
- Do one of the following:
Hold down Alt (Option in Mac OS), position the pointer over the line dividing two layers in the Layers panel (the pointer changes to two overlapping circles), and then click.
In the Layers panel, select the top layer of a pair of layers you want to group, and choose Layer > Create Clipping Mask.
- When making a clipping mask from an existing layer and one you are about to create, first select the existing layer in the Layers panel. Then choose New Layer from the Layer menu or the Layers panel More menu. In the New Layer dialog box, select Use Previous Layer To Create Clipping Mask, and click OK.
The layers in the clipping mask have the opacity and mode attributes of the bottom most base layer in the group.
Removing a layer from a clipping mask
Ungrouping the base layer from the layer above it ungroups all layers in the clipping mask.
- Do one of the following:
Hold down Alt (Option in Mac OS), position the pointer over the line separating two grouped layers in the Layers panel (the pointer changes to two overlapping circles), and click.
In the Layers panel, select a layer in the clipping mask, and choose Layer > Release Clipping Mask. This command removes the selected layer and any layers above it from the clipping mask.
In the Layers panel, select any layer in the group except the base layer. Either drag the layer below the base layer, or drag it between two ungrouped layers in the image.
Conclusion
I hope you found this helpful! if you have any questions feel free to leave them in the comments. As always, thanks for reading and Happy Designing!