How to use a clipping mask

This post is especially for cindyj at 2Peas who asked about how to use a particular mask, Wonky Photomask II by Erica Hernandez @ 2Peas, however, since I wasn't able to describe it well in words, I took screenshots to hopefully help her & anyone else who might be wondering how to use these types of products. They are some of my favorite types of products and so very versatile. One mask can produce many different looks.

I find it easiest to split these types of photomasks into individual pieces if I want to clip different things to different portions of it. So that is what I am going to start by showing. To hopefully help keep this process clear, I am going to work with the photomask on a blank transparent canvas and not on top of anything else to confuse you as to what layers belong to what part of a layout.

1. Open the photomask (my screenshots are from CS4 but PSE should look very similar)

You should see that when you have the original photomask, there is only 1 layer in the layers palette on the far right, bottom section of the screen.

2. We are going to now cut the top, left portion of the photomask out of the group and put it on its own layer to make clipping to it easier.

To do this, we are going to use the square marquee tool as there are definite straight spaces between each portion of the photomask.

Use the square marquee tool and draw a rectangle around the top, right portion. Once finished, you should see marching ants around it like shown in the above screenshot.

3. Now that you have that one block isolated with marching ants, the actual cutting it to its own layer is needed.

To do this, go to Layer -> New Layer -> Layer via Cut as shown below.

This is going to take that portion of the photomask and cut it from the original grouping and put it onto its own layer. Be sure not to move it unless you are wanting to change how the overall photomask placement is going to look.



4. Next, we are going to go back to our original layer which still has the other 3 blocks on it and repeat the above process for each block.

So next would be to isolate the top, right block using the rectangular marquee tool to draw marching ants around it.

You will notice that after you put each block on a new layer, you are increasing your total number of layers for each of those blocks.

When finished, you will end up with 4 layers each with a different block on it as shown below.

Now that you have all of the block separated, it is a good idea to select them all and link them together. (I forgot to do this in my example so don't have a screenshot for it). By linking them all together, you know that if you move one layer, you will end up moving all of the layers and not change how the overall photomask looks. Subsequently, if you want to rotate one block or move a block, just don't link them and they will all move independently of one another.

5. Next step is to decide what you want to put in each block. Bring in photos or papers. To "clip" to the individual blocks, put whatever you want to clip to a particular block on a layer above that particular block. Then you will Control-G/Command-G on a Mac for PSE to Group with Previous, also known as "clipping to". Or if you are using CS, Control-Alt-G/Command-Option-G on a Mac to create a clipping mask.

For my example, I clipped photos to 2 blocks and paper to the other 2 blocks. Look at the layers palette to see that the order of layers goes, a) what is clipped to b) which block you want it in & repeats down through the different blocks.

If you want to clip a single photo to all of the blocks, you could do that without the splitting apart steps. You would just Control-G/Command-G on a Mac for PSE or Control-Alt-G/Command-Option-G on a Mac for CS to the original photomask.

However, you could also clip a single photo to multiple blocks once you have them separated out. For my example, I have clipped the same photo to all 4 blocks but I could have easily only clipped it to 3 blocks and left the other one with a paper clipped to it.

To achieve this, you will put a copy of your photo above each block you want it to show in & clip it to the individual layer. Be sure not to move your photos otherwise they will not look seamlessly clipped into the different blocks. So I find it easiest to copy & paste the photo the number of blocks I want to fill and then link the photos together and then move them above the particular layers I want to clip to & clip them. That way, if I move one, I move them all & they will keep that seamlessly broken up look.

Hopefully you can see how that is working from my last screenshot.

So those are the basics as to how to use these types of photomasks and hopefully I was clear enough & provided helpful screenshots to help you achieve this look yourself.

If you have any questions, please ask.