Photoshop Ninja
Expert Photoshop tips and tricks for designers and photographers since 2005
Altering layer masks the quick and dirty way
Sometimes those often missed filters in Photoshop hide useful functionality – just like in this case with masks.
You may find that you need to shrink in a layer mask to ‘de-fringe’ an image, or enlarge it a little to reveal a little more image.
The long way to do this is to load a selection from the layer mask (Alt click on layer mask) and then use the selection transformations (Select>Modify) to expand or shirk it – then fill it with black on the outside, and white for the visible areas – which is a bit long winded.
Why not use the lesser used filters of maximum and minimum (Filter>Other>Maximum/Filter>Other>Minimum).
Maximum will increase the white area and minimum will increase the black area. Watch out for high settings as this can introduce artifacts, but for a small adjustment these filters work great!
BONUS TIP
Just quickie this week-let the shortcuts D and X be your best friends whilst working on layer masks-hitting D resets your foreground and background colours to the default white and black, and X swops these colours-usefull for all kinds of brush work too!
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Written by Jonny Allbut - freelance graphic designer
Last modified: 9 March, 2009 (12:49) | First published: 3 May, 2005
Filed under Photoshop Top Tips, Techniques - Layer No Comments »
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