UnMASKing the MASK

Y’all remember Karyn Concannon‘s comment a few weeks ago where she offered me some topics for discussion? Well, we’ve done some paper-making (with one more version yet in the works) and now we’ll look at making masks. There has been a mask-making tutorial some time ago, but this one will go a little further and in a bit of a different direction.

Let’s get to work! Go big… it can’t possibly hurt. I’m going 12×12 here.

The whole process uses only brushes. If you’re low on awesome and fabulous brushes, there are TONS of free ones online, my favourite source being brusheezy.com where they have a huge assortment and literally something for everyone. Set your foreground colour to black then select your Brush tool.

I love the look of watercolour paint so I have several brush sets of watercolour swashes. This particular set is called 20 Watercolor Masks and they’re truly fabulous. I’ve got my brush size set to 1600 pixels and the Opacity to 100%.

This is the result of a single click with the brush. Looks like a cloud, doesn’t it? And almost as um… ephemeral.

So I made some copies (CTRL/CMD>J) and stopped when I thought it had enough presence. Then I Merged all the copies into one layer.

But unless I use a very long-distance landscape photo, this isn’t going to be enough of a statement. So I added some more substance by choosing another brush from the same set.

(Notice this second brush is on its own layer. If you get in the habit of doing things on their own layer you’ll have infinite control.) Single click. Interesting! But again, light on the weight.

So I made some more copies. And I shifted them around a little to distribute some of the more obvious aspects. Then I Merged (CTRL/CMD>E) them.

Mmmm. Still not quite the look I’m going for. So I made another copy of the FIRST layer. When you think about masks, you’ll remember that the darker (black) the area the more of the photo is revealed. So you can’t get blacker than black. You can always go back and adjust your layers until your mask pleases your eye.

Don’t be afraid to move the brushes around! You’re the only one you have to please, so make it what you want it to be!

If you’re still not happy with the way your mask looks, you can use a big, soft, round Basic brush (from the brush set that comes with Elements) to either darken areas more, or lighten them (if you’re lightening, use the Eraser tool and a low opacity to avoid going overboard).

See how I’ve softened some of the edges? I only used a black brush. No erasing.

Like I’ve said, YOU’RE the boss here, so you can go as far as you want with your mask. I decided to add some paint splatters, again with a free brush.

Oh my!! I LIKE it!! (If I don’t like how the more distant splatters look once I’ve clipped a photo to it, I can erase those parts OF THE MASK and still have the splatter effect in areas of the photo.)

Now I’m happy with the depth and balance of my mask, I can Merge the layers all together. That’s an important step if you plan to do what I’m going to show you next.

Some designers make phenomenally beautiful masks that are out of the ordinary. (Irina from PrelestnayaP is one such.) For this next step I used a brush that was part of a set chosen for the Brush Challenge back in October 2015. You can download these brushes, designed by Lileya Brogu, here. Take note that I’ve got the Eraser tool selected, NOT the Brush tool.

Whatdya think?

And here’s what it all looks like with a photo clipped to it. Pretty fancy!

Just for fun, and to show you haw easy it is to customize your mask, I Undid (CTRL/CMD>Z) that last step and tried a few other brushes.

This one is really creepy. I downloaded the eyeball brushes for a Hallowe’en project.

See? There’s really no limit to the possibilities – other than the limits of your brush collection!

So once I was done playing with it, I decided to Save it for later. I chose Save As (CTRL/CMD>SHIFT>S) because that’s where I can decide what format to save it in. To be a good mask, it needs to be saved as a .png with a transparent background. Then I decided where to save it – into my personal Elements folder, and what to call it.

The last step is to select the .png options. To preserve the most detail, go with the settings shown below.

How much fun is that??

Repeating Patterns – Part Deux

As promised, here’s the second installment of creating your own patterned papers. (I hope our lovely designers aren’t mad we’re doing an end-run around them… but sometimes the overall design cries out for a paper they didn’t give us.) Today I’ll show you how to create a staggered pattern repeat the quick and easy way. Refresh your memory if you need to… I’ll still be here when you’re done!

If you remember, my first effort was really odd because I hadn’t made the original stamp image small enough to give it a good repeat. So here’s the Resized stamp. I went with (almost) 2 inches square for a six-time repeat across the page, but you can go with whatever makes you happy. After I Resized my stamp I just pushed the bottom of the canvas up to make it a perfect 2 inch square to calm my OCD.

Then I actually shrank the stamp down a bunch more so the staggered repeat would look better. And I filled the background with a solid colour by adding a new layer BELOW the stamp layer then flooding it with white using my Paint Bucket tool for it’s more usual purpose. And I Merged the layers into one.

This step is something we’ve only rarely done, and that’s to Resize the Canvas. What does that mean? (Yes, I heard that!) The stamp is an IMAGE. The workspace behind it is the CANVAS. The keyboard shortcuts are almost identical. CTRL/CMD>ALT>I for the Image and CTRL/CMD>ALT>C for the Canvas. Easy enough to remember, right?

I doubled the WIDTH but left the HEIGHT unchanged. I also moved the Anchor point over to left-centre by clicking on it in the diagram. This is the most important part of this step. So many new things we’re trying here!

And it’s time for another new thing! We’ve looked at the Blur filter, and the High Pass filter and we’ve played with some of the others but we’ve never talked about the Offset filter.

Isn’t it awesome that all you have to do is choose it from the drop-down menu and Elements runs with it? Now that there are some terrific staggered stamps here, I’m going to Define the Pattern in the same way we did it last week. Edit>Define Pattern… super simple.

I gave it a name that is different from my other defined patterns so Elements wouldn’t mix them up.

Then I went back into the Paint Bucket and chose the Fill Pattern mode. A single click on my gray paper and voilà! A staggered pattern all over my paper. (Of course, the gray paper is completely hidden by the white fill layer from way back in step 2…)

But that doesn’t matter because if I choose the correct Blend Mode, it’ll show back up with just one click. I went with Linear Burn.

And there’s the gray paper! Now to save my paper for future use. I used the Save As (CTRL/CMD>SHIFT>S) method, which lets me decide what kind of file I want it to be. Papers are always .jpg files, so that’s what I’ll do.

I have a folder on my laptop for “my” papers and that’s where I’m putting this one.

And we’re done!! I’m going to experiment before next week to make papers with more than one pattern. Wish me luck!

Repeating Patterns – Basic

Last week’s tutorial attracted some comments, as they usually do, and thanks to Karyn Concannon I have some topics to work with for the next couple of weeks. She’d like to know how to use repeating patterns to create her own paper – let’s take a look at that one now.

I’m pretty sure this has been covered in a previous tutorial but when I went to look for it so I could link it, I couldn’t find it. So to recap… I think. To create repeating patterns you can use brushes, stamps, elements, shapes – whatever your heart desires. For my example I’m using a tribal-looking stamp from Connie Prince‘s Roar.

The first step is to Define the stamp as a Pattern. Click on Edit>Define Pattern. This is the easy part.

The menu opens up this box, where I named my pattern Connie’s Roar Stamp.

Next I chose a background paper (from Aprilisa‘s All American): neutral, gray with a git of texture.

Next, I chose the Paint Bucket tool (Work Smart Not Hard shortcut is the K key); as you can see, I’ve added a blank layer on top of the paper layer. This is an important step, so don’t leave it out.

The Paint Bucket menu has two options. The one on the left is the colour fill setting, the one on the right is the pattern fill one.

When I click on the little triangle inside the frame for the pattern fill setting, the default patterns open up, and so does the one I just defined from the stamp!

I clicked on the stamp pattern and WHOA! That wasn’t what I was ready for…

It turns out I should have resized the original stamp png BEFORE I turned it into a pattern. That can be accomplished one of two ways: Image>Resize>Resize Image or CTRL/CMD>ALT>I. Then decide how small to make it. Keep in mind your canvas size (3600×3600 pixels or 12×12 inches in my example). Once it’d been Resized, I went back and Defined Pattern with it, giving it a different name.

Then I used Pattern Fill and got what I was expecting the first time.

There are so many ways this can be jazzed up – Blend Modes have a lot of options, texture filters can make your paper look flocked or sponged, the colour can be changed in several ways. Give them all a whirl! For my example below, I changed the Blend Mode to Dissolve and made it look like I’d stencilled it on.

One way to change the colour is to add a Fill Layer using the Layer menu. Layer>New Fill Layer>Solid Color

By ticking that box, you’re telling PSE to clip the new colour to the layer below it.

When the Color Picker opens up, you get to choose what colour you want to go with. I like this method because it’s much more reliable than using the Paint Bucket to fill the design – that usually ends up being a lot of work for a not-so-great result.

If you want to make further adjustments to the pattern layer, Merge the pattern layer and colour fill layer together. (CTRL/CMD>E)

The merged layers will lose the Blend Mode so I hit it again with Dissolve.

That’s how to make a simple repeating pattern. All the control is in your hands. Next week I’ll show you how to do a staggered repeating pattern. It takes a few more steps and some experimentation…