Tutorial: How to get a photo & mask to work together

[prospurring]

Have you ever wanted to use a beautiful mask, but your photo just didn't seem to work with it?

In this example, I'm using a gorgeous mask from ADB Designs and one of her solid papers and a stock photo from Pixabay.

When I was first trying to fit this photo to the mask, here's what it looked like:

There wasn't enough photo around the focal child to fill in all the mask areas, so some of the mask looks black and there are harsh edges to the photo on three sides.

To remedy this problem, I copied and flipped the photo several times, until there were 8 copies surrounding the original photo, like this:

This fills in the space around the original photo, allowing you to fill in all the areas of the mask.

Here's what the mask looks like after doing all the copies and flips:


Special thanks to ADB Designs for the gorgeous masks, which inspired me to share one of my scrapping secrets!

 

[prospurring]

Does anyone else have any tips, hints, or tricks to using masks?

 

[BoatLady]

That works well. I do that sometimes. If you use the eraser tool with a brush you could erase the mask to make it fit your picture better.
I usually make my own masks so I can get exactly what I want. PM me and I help you with that if you would like.

 

[margje]

Sometimes it looks even better if you give the mask a (gradiant) color from your photo you want to clip on the mask! Sometimes I use a gaussian blur on my copied photo and clip that on the mask first. After that I clip my photo. Also wonderful works it if you paint a bit on the mask if you need more of sharper parts like a face before you merge them.

 

[LSlycord]

Lots of good tips here. I need to challenge myself to try new methods like this!

 

[prospurring]

I agree, Linda! Thank you, Debby and Marianne, for sharing your tips and tricks, too!

 

[Jam-on-toast]

Oh, this is such a cool idea - I do copy the photo but the idea of flipping it never occurred to me... I will definitely try that...

That said, unless they are part of a template, I don't like using masks for photos because my photos rarely fit the way I want them to. I do a lot of erasing and/or adding, positioning and repositioning... I also like using masking brushes that come with the software... I once watched a tutorial on how to use a brush to mask a photo and loved it - and it has been my go-to ever since.

 

[cfile]

Great idea Anne. I generally will make the photo bigger with the transform or even adjusting the mask. Your tip on duplicating and flipping is a great trick too. Thanks for sharing!! (Also I like the feature in PS CC that allows you to content aware & generation fills to make the background bigger filling in the extra space!

 

[cfile]

Oh, this is such a cool idea - I do copy the photo but the idea of flipping it never occurred to me... I will definitely try that...

That said, unless they are part of a template, I don't like using masks for photos because my photos rarely fit the way I want them to. I do a lot of erasing and/or adding, positioning and repositioning... I also like using masking brushes that come with the software... I once watched a tutorial on how to use a brush to mask a photo and loved it - and it has been my go-to ever since.

I do that all the time with the black mask and soft round brush to brush in the photo to my background and page

 

[prospurring]

I love brush masking, too, Olga! And I forgot about using content aware and generation fills. Great tips ladies!