Today masks are about making portions of images transparent.  Many of yesterday's masking jobs (stuff we learned in older applications) now gets done with selection tools.  Today's masks are all about making portions of your image transparent to varying degrees.

Granted, learning masks doesn't always feel intuitive or comfortable.  Those stinking Menu commands barely hint at what the heck they actually do.  Initially masks can confuse us, annoy us and scare those body fluids right out of us.  But it's all worth it once we get past the initial hump. (that hump is a speed bump and not a mountain ... just slow down)

If you get a little tense or frustrated, take a break to go read an irreverent tutorial for
grasping techno text and then come right back here and leisurely go through this again. 

Look at the Lettering in the image to note how it fades away at both ends. This was a simple operation using the PSP Mask editing feature and a layer containing a clan MacDonald plaid.

In mask editing for the lettering layer, I made a selection of one side of the image, filled it with a black to white gradient, moved the selection and reversed the gradient, flood filled that side too and was done.

Click here to download the zipped tutorial image file or create a new image (16.7 m colors) with a blue background layer. Open a new layer and squirt some fish tubes onto that empty new layer. The items aren't important, just get three different items in the image that can be masked. (Why the layers and hide one? Because I'm used to drawing images above a background. I find it most natural to do a background, then hide it and do the foreground. You're welcome to do all of your work on the background layer if you desire.) Turn off the visibility on the background layer. (Not required, but it helps to only see the layer that is being controlled by the mask)

1 Menu >Masks >New >Show All  (Have your layer palette open and visible)
PSP 5 the layer name now shows an asterisk designating it has a active mask.
PSP 6 shows a mask icon (also a thumbnail of mask edits when you mouse over it)

2 Mask > Edit  (Let's edit this mask to make it do what we want)
a. make some areas semi transparent (see through)
b. some fully transparent (invisible)
c. one with gradient transparency (fading off in a direction)

Wait a minute, if I start with SHOW ALL, I don't see anything changed in my image and if I started with HIDE ALL I still don't see anything. How can I edit a mask if I can't even see it?

3 Menu >Mask >View Mask

Checking View Mask is an insurance policy for confirming that you actually changed the image transparency.  All image transparency changes must appear somewhere between ruby to pink as a see through indicator.  If it looks transparent but isn't some shade of red to pink, that's layer transparency (a completely different animal) and you've gotten detoured down the wrong road with the wrong kind of transparency.

Go ahead, paint some black on your image to confirm a red checkerboard is really there. (and then undo it) The more you see of the red color over your transparency checkerboard the less you see of your image and visa versa.

3 Select paintbrush Click the foreground color to see your palette has become 256 levels of gray.  This means we're now working with 256 levels of transparency.
Each of those 256 shades from black to white colors represents a specific level (or degree) of transparency.

Black blackens out the image to full transparency (invisible) so you will be painting black on images whenever you want something invisible.  All the normal paintbrush tools will work.

I made a selection over the goldfish and painted with black over half of the selection. I like to use selections so I need not be careful painting. If you have a steady hand, you may want to do it freehand with no selection.

Hey, when I paint black, it goes to a red checkerboard and no image!
The checkerboard is my see-though image indicating that I'm getting some degree of transparency.  Go ahead and paint the area you want fully transparent (invisible) with black.

Now select a medium gray (index 127) and paint an area to be semi-transparent. (I made a freehand selection around the fish to keep the semi transparency inside that specific area. This is also a good place to note that any of the PSP tools that operate with gray scale will work on the mask. This includes filters.)

Notice the red of the mask is subdued and we can see the original image although it's become semi-transparent.

Make a freehand selection over another area and then use the Fill tool to fill it with a normal white to black gradient.

Click the View Mask and Mask Edit to off, and turn the Background view on.
Our fish are now done.  We now have the choice to leave the mask open so new information added to the layer would also get it's transparency controlled too ... or we can Menu > Mask >Delete

We can choose to merge the current edited mask with the layer, or to discard the mask totally (A-bomb the mess I made, so I can start over.)  So if you like your results say merge it, if not say delete it and start over again.

There are other things that can be done, such as saving the mask while it's open to either the hard drive or the Alpha Channel, edit the mask as a selection, etc. Once you are comfortable with masks those concepts easily fall into place.

What can we do with masks?


Well, I've seen ships with a mask applied so that they appear to be coming out of a fog bank. Picture frames that can be loaded, simple colors painted into an open mask to create flowers around the frame. People faded in a picture to make them look like phantoms.  Two or images overlapped and blended like magic.