Learn how to create a Photoshop Layer Mask from a Path so as to change the color of part of the image. Watch the tutorial and download the exercise file to practice
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Welcome to PEN TOOL Photoshop. In this tutorial, I’ll be pathing around the orange part of this
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car, and then converting it into a selection, and then applying that selection to a layer mask. The
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purpose of this is so we can change the color of this orange to some other color. Often what
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happens is you get briefed to change the color of something. And you can do it by using things
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like color range, or making a mask, or using just wanding and selections. But sometimes, it’s
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easier to give it to a junior staff member or just to have it pathed, and then you can work from
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that path. So, if you try to do a selection, you might pick up things like these little indicators, or
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you might pick up some of the orange, or it just might not work that well. So, sometimes it’s
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better to start with a good base, which will be the path, and then you can work from there. So, I’ll
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path around this object, the orange parts, just so you can see the process. And I’ll speed this
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footage up so it’s a bit quicker. And then, I’ll go through the next steps. I won’t go into the
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details of how to fix it up, because it won’t be perfect. The edge has a bit of a feather on it.
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That’s a more advanced area of Photoshop. But, you get the gist of the starting point, just doing
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the pathing and then you build on pathing to do more advanced things in Photoshop later.
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It’s a good habit. Just create a new path. Start pathing from there.
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So we’re pathing selected areas, actually right on the line.
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With areas like this where it bleeds up, try to cut it off and you have to fix that up later on.
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So this won’t be able to get the job done in one go with using a path, it’s just one part of the process.
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The better job you do pathing, the less you have to fix it up, the easier it will be when you make a selection.
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If you put a point in the wrong spot just undo it straight away
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The same logic as before. I can cut out these bits as I go.
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You can see they have a slight feather around them. So you know that color’s going to bleed and
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it’s not going to work well with the path. You’re going to have to feather this area separate to
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maybe some other areas. But it still is a good starting point.
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So, that was pathing the image. Now, I’ll check the path. Hold down command, click on the
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path, convert it to a selection, press Q Quick Mask. You can see where I’ve cut out all the
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orange parts, command I. So, looking for bits that I’ve missed.
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Once we’re done with that, I can press Q to release it again. Go up into Select, modify feather.
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Set my feather 1 pixel. Different feathers for different areas. I don’t want to apply this as a mask.
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I don’t want to cut the image out like this. What I want to do is create a layer folder (group), put the mask in
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the folder.
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What that means is whatever is inside this folder will affect images below. They’re masked by
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this overall mask that’s on the folder. Within that, there’s a number of things I could do. Make a
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solid color. You can see some of the areas there where it hasn’t quite worked. Go ahead
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and change that to color. There’s all sorts of ways you can do this. It really depends on the
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image. Another option I could do is Hue & saturation.
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You can change the color that way. Really depends on what color you’re coming from and to.
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Or it might be a combination.
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We might do this one. It looks a little bit flat, a little bit sepia tone. You might want to bring up
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the curve adjustment layer.
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Brighten the highlights, darken the three quarter tones
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These here, you see, have to be fixed up. And this is where you would use other options, for
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example.
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Select color range, click on the orange, and change this here to greyscale. It starts to show me the
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look of the selection.
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I was trying to select the orange parts, so hit okay.
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Press control or command, H. That will hide the selection. That’s under view, extras.
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Then with a brush, with a white brush, I’ve got a brush here, white, and it’s just a soft brush.
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Start to brush those areas back in. I’m just clicking.
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You can see the base starting point was pretty good.
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This is where I can do the fine tuning.
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You can see in this one here, it started to pick up some of the orange, some of the black.
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So I’d try a different process for that.
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So you see I’ve crossed over that and painted the light blue
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Over here it’s not too bad
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Even the color of the cast, that’s where you want to fix up for realism.
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There, you can see that started with a path. The path give you a really good base to start from,
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then you can do something like this to fill it in.
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Hold down option and click on the mask. You can see that’s what the mask looks like.
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So that was creating a path around a selective part of an image, converting that path into a
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selection, applying the selection to a folder as a mask, then inside that folder, placing in any
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variety of methods you would like to change the color of the object beneath. I used color range,
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but there’s other methods you could use outside of this tutorial to make selections to add to this mask.
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That was the original.
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That’s what we changed it to.
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I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and I’ll see you in the next tutorial.