I’ll admit it: I used to be afraid of layer masks. Totally intimidated. I had just begun to use layers, which was a big hurdle for me. I was not about to tackle layer masks, too. No sir. For one thing, I couldn’t see what purpose they served.

You know what I’m going to say next, though, don’t you? (The title of the post gave it away.) Friends and neighbors, I’m here to tell you layer masks are a good thing. You will learn to love layer masks, trust me. They save you time, they give you unlimited flexibility, they allow to edit non-destructively…with layer masks, you are in control. So put down the eraser tool for a second, and let me show you how useful layer masks can be.

We’ll start with something you’ve worked on many times in Photoshop, I’m sure: an eye. Specifically, the white of the eye, known as the sclera. If you’re retouching a portrait, you’ll no doubt spend some time whitening the eyes in some way. For a formal photographic portrait, you may just dodge a few blood vessels, clean things up a bit. But if you’re getting the portrait ready to be brought into Painter, or you’re doing a more painterly retouch job in Photoshop, you’ll probably use some white paint and an airbrush. This is a fantastic time to use a layer mask, as you’ll see.

By the way: this is not the only way to do this task. As in all things with Photoshop, there’s many ways to do most things. But I learned this method from a wonderful training DVD by Jane Conner-Ziser, and I use it all the time. I’ll give you a link to her training materials at the end.

Adding white to the eye above is possibly overkill, but for our tutorial, it will work just fine. First, insert a new, empty layer above the background image of the eye. (Go Layer > New > Layer or click the new layer icon in the layers palette. Rename this layer “Whites”. Click on the brush tool (B on the keyboard) and make sure it is turned to very soft (hardness of 0). This is our airbrush. Hold the cursor/brush tip over the eye, and enlarge the size until it’s bigger than the iris. Set the Opacity and Flow both to 100. You’re going to brush in two big puffs of white, one on each side of they iris at the bottom of the eye. The spray will be bright white at the bottom of the eye, and fade just a bit as it reaches the eyelashes. See below. Make sure you’re doing this on the empty layer you added.

Next we’ll add a layer mask. With the Whites layer active, click on the layer mask icon (see below), or go Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal All.

Now try clicking once on the layer icon on your Whites layer, and then click on the layer mask icon. See that a sort of outline appears around each icon when you click? That’s how you know whether which you’re painting on. It’s really important to keep an eye on this, or you’ll be following along here and it won’t work for you.

You’ve added a layer mask, but, as you noticed, nothing happened to the eye. That’s because, when the layer mask is white, it’s not blocking–masking–anything. If you paint on the layer mask with grey or black, you’ll be blocking part of the layer. You paint on the layer mask just as you would paint on the image. So, if layer mask icon is “turned on”, when you paint on the eye you’ll actually be painting on the layer mask. This was the hardest concept for me to grasp. Once you get that, you’re home free. Let’s try painting on the mask and you’ll see how it works.

Click on the layer mask icon on the whites layer, to make sure its active. With a fairly big brush, at 50% hardness, using solid black at 100 opacity and flow, paint on image to remove the white you painted earlier. Sounds odd, I know, but trust me. This is how it’s done. If you make a mistake and remove too much, just switch your foreground color to white, and paint to restore what you need to restore. (Click X on the keyboard to switch back and forth from white to black.) Here’s how it looks. Notice that it says “Whites/Layer Mask” at the top of my image, which tells me I’m working on a layer mask.

Continue painting on the mask to remove the white paint from the iris and the eyelids–everywhere but the sclera. When you’re done, it will look VERY white. Here’s how it looks at this point. Notice that the layer mask icon shows a small image of my mask painting.

Now slide the opacity of the whites layer all the way to zero, and then gradually slide it back up just until the eyes look natural. For this image, 50% opacity looks pretty good (see top of article for the finished result.)

Thanks to Jane Conner-Ziser for showing me how to use this technique. I heartily recommend any and all of her training DVD’s, available at Software Cinema. She’s a great teacher, and explains everything really well. By the way, I’m not associated with Jane or Software Cinema; I just believe in paying it forward. Enjoy!

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