Tutorial: Creative Ways to Use Masks

Who this is for:

Beginners or anyone who is interested in using masks creatively for digital mixed media.

What you’ll need:

• Affinity Photo
• Photoshop
• GIMP
•  or any other program that has layers and masks

In this post I will guide you in how to use masks in 4 different ways. We’ll start off with the clipping mask, then move on to using black and white photos and graphic elements/textures and, finally, how to use a mask as a stencil.

One of the easiest masking techniques is the clipping mask, known as “Rasterize To Mask” in Affinity Photo. Starting with your black and white design on one layer and your photo on the layer underneath, you simply click on the design layer, click on “Layer”, then click on “Rasterize to Mask”. To finish the look, select the mask layer and the photo layer underneath, then click on “Layer” followed by “Merge Selected”. Below you can see the difference a black and white mask makes compared to a white and black mask.

Another creative masking technique is to use a black and white photo. You will want a very contrasty photo with white, black and gray. The process is the same as above, make sure your black and white photo is on the layer above your background photo or texture. For an added bonus, you can invert your black and white photo; this will change blacks to whites and whites to blacks.

Similar to the black and white photo as a mask, is using a black and white photo of a graphic element…textures, shadows, close ups of trees, etc. For this next example I took a close up of tree bark and will use it as a mask.

My last example of using a mask creatively is as a stencil. You may need to watch the video to see it in action, but I will try my best to explain it to you. You will need 3 layers, your bottom image, your black and white “mask” layer, and an empty layer. In Affinity Photo you will need to rasterize your black and white layer first. Make sure the layer is selected, then click on Layer, go down to Rasterize and click. You should now see “pixel” to the right of the thumbnail.

Next, you want to select the “Flood Select Tool” (Affinity Photo) or “Magic Wand” tool (Photoshop). Click on either the black or white area, whichever has the most connections. You should now see the “marching ants”. You now want to turn off the mask layer, uncheck the box to the far right. You should see the marching ants around your graphics. Now click on the blank layer, then click on the brush tool. Choose a brush and a color and you are now ready to stencil. You are not limited to just one blank layer, you can create many layers each with a different color. You can also repeat the process, and rotate your stencil, move it, or even invert it. Just remember to Command/Control + D to deselect the marching ants.

I hope this post gave you some ideas as to how to creatively use masks. Have any questions? Ask below. Want to share your creation? Link back to this post.