Masks - An Introduction

There are two types of masks—layer masks and vector masks. Both control which parts of an image or layer will be hidden or revealed, and the masks can have special effects and styles applied to them. Once you’re sure of the effects that you want to add, you can then apply them. This allows you to see what the changes will look like before actually changing any pixels in the image itself. Layer masks are created with the painting and selection tools; vector masks are created with the Pen and Shape tools.

In the Layers palette, the masks that you create are shown as thumbnails inside the appropriate layer. A vector mask’s thumbnail image is the path that you’ve created using the Pen tool. A layer mask’s thumbnail is a rectangle with a black background that represents the grayscale channel created when you add the layer mask. You can create a vector mask that shows or hides an entire layer and shows the contents of a shape, or you can create an inverted mask, where the entire page is colored and the shape is knocked out of the image.

Using Vector Masks

Let’s look at the different ways that a vector mask can be used, created, and/or edited:

Add a vector mask that shows or hides an entire layer

Add a vector mask that shows only the content inside the shape that has been created by a path

Edit a vector mask that is already created

Remove, d.