Mask In Photoshop
Phyllis Sterlin
I have a picture that has a telephone pole in it that I want to remove. I am using a layer mask to mask it out and reveal another layer to fill in the space. However, after I mask out the pole, I can still see a ghost image of it in the picture. I have check that my black is really black. The mode is Normal. Opacity is 100%. Flow is 100%. Smoothing is 10%, hardness is 91%. I have the most recent version of photoshop, 19.0 version. I have a Nvidia Quadro M4000 graphics card. The driver is up to date. The desktop is running Windows 10, has a Skylake processor and 32 GB of RAM. I never noticed this problem before up dating Photoshop this week.
The problem went away after I increased the brush size. I then went over the same area with the larger brush and realized the the smaller brush size had been putting down dark gray instead of black. I was able to reduce the brush size again and it still worked. I did not make any other changes.
I'm having the same problem. All my settings are correct but I have a faint ghost of the background remaining after I use the layer mask. I'm using Photoshop CC. Using a different size brush does not make a difference. I also made certain it was putting down black with the brush. Any suggestions?
I am having the same problem and its doing my head in!! Have checked all settings and properties and all seem Ok. Black is black opacity flow and smoothing all 100% (smoothing was 20% but increased it to see if it helped but it hasnt) have tried different brushes both hard and soft. Mode is normal but ghosting remains. Am using latest updated CC version. Any help would be gratefully appreciated.
I'm suddenly experiencing mask layer ghosting! I've checked my settings with the information in this discussion and can't find the reason for this issue. I've attached a screenshot of the issue and my settings.
I was having this exact issue and it was driving me mad. See attached screen shot of the brush menu bar - toggle off the icon I've highlighted in red . It's a setting to do with the pressure of the brush - somehow this had been turned on in my settings, finding this and clicking it off solved the issue. Phew! Hope this helps someone elses sanity.
he said there was a message window poping up and he just pressed ok.
so i guess for some reason PS asked him (after month that i worked with it) how it should handle a double click on the mask layer.
Instead of making a shape in a shape, it will mask a hole in it with the same shape. the thing is, that I know how to do it through adding all into one folder, and then using the marquee/selection tool. btu it is always croppy, and it never gives me the fine abilities that the path tool gives me.
So I want to be able to design the shapes inside, and that the final design will have the "holes" in it. so lets say i output a final logo file, and i drag it into a background-colored image, the bg color will reflect through the holes i "inverted" in the masked folder.
< here you can see how I manually have to color the shape, but i want to allow the freedom of just putting an image with its "holes" so it automaticaly does it < here you may see the shapes that I want to be cleared/masked.
If you want to add more shapes to this mask just add them while shape mask is selected, but they must be paths instead of shapes. SO when creating a new shape select Path from top left instead of Shape.
This is just a quick test made from a screen capture of your image done with my track pad. There's too much feathering but for a quick run it seems to be a good starting point compared to the old way of creating masks.
Working on a higher res image with a wacom tablet or event mouse would have yielded a better result... with a not too much more time investment to finesse it. It takes a bit of time and practice with this new feature to master it... don't give up!
It does a reasonable job with that pic.
I selected the main areas with the quick selection tool - then used refine edge with a small brush (10px : Hardness 100% : Spacing 1%) and edge detection set to 0px, Smart Radius unchecked . I worked at 100% and painted only round the hair edges. Flicking the "Show Edges" on and off quickly allows you to see if you are using refine edge where you need it - or if you have included any areas that should not be refined. Holding the Alt key whilst brushing allows you to remove areas from edge refinement.
This was where I painted for the refine edge
I tend not to use Decontaminate colours but prefer to use a layer set to blending mode color later to match the colours to the destination. Just brush the new colours on. Similarly I set a second layer to luminosity and brushed with a dark brush round the sleeves which had a bright edge.
Dave, your instructions like Scott Kelby's seem very clear and easy to follow. I set my settings as you said and this is what I end up with that looks nothing as good as yours. Why is this not working for me?
I try and give the refine tool as little to do as possible. In your result it looks like you may have missed some hair from the refine edge selection, but have included some solid areas that should not have be refined (e.g. the ear at the right of the picture and the hair near but not at the top). These would be better selected with the quick selection or the brush tool and left out of the edge selection.
Did you do the step of checking and unchecking the "Show Edges" box as you worked and ensuring that only real hair edges are included in the "refine"? With it switched on there are usually obvious parts where you can see clearly that there is no edge so you can take them out using the Alt key, you can usually see hairs which are going beyond the edge and you have missed.
A lot of the tutorials where you see the mask refine completed in 5 seconds with a couple of brush strokes are against a good contrast background and with a nice high resolution picture. Indeed if you know that an image is to be cut out you photograph for that. However if you are trying to mask a real world image, like yours, it sometimes takes a little more time to show S&M where the edges are.
Is this better than your first result? If yes then already you are getting better with the tool. As Dave said... it takes time and practice. A couple of other suggestions/questions. Are you using Onion Skin view mode to see the mask? That will help you to see if you have all of the areas you are trying to select in your mask.
Here is my next very careful attempt using Dave's guidance. I put a green layer behind her so the hair issues would show up better. You see how the wispy part of her hair looks "cloudy" I'll call it? I generally use onion skinner the red overlay view. I can do the main part of her without any trouble pretty quickly. But the wispy parts of her hair still look terrible to me.
All I did was add a layer with a blending mode of colour and a second with a blending mode of luminosity. Both of these were clipped to the image layer so that they only affected the masked layer not the background.
Dave, thank you so much for taking the time. Your step by step instructions were very helpful. I wonder if Scott Kelby's example worked so easily because his subject was shot against a gray background. He literally made one or 2 quick passes around the edge of the model's hair, and voila! It looked fabulous. A little misleading on his part I think. Thanks again for taking the time. I'll keep trying to learn to master this thing.
Just remember you mask only needs to be good enough to place the image in it's destination. Although a plain background will show the faults - and take the longest to correct, many of our masks are going to end up against a real world background. These are much easier.
One other question. Can you elaborate a little on the step where you said you create a color and luminosity layer and clip those to the mask layer below. I get that but then you said you painted over them a bit to fix the color left over. Are you just painting around the edge of the mask? In black or white? I could use a little more direction there. Thanks.
By setting the layer to colour blending mode and clipping it to the image , it will change the colour of the image below but not the lightness. I used this around the edge of the hair for example to take out the green edge contamination that was showing along the top - and the orange contamination from the right. All I did was Alt-Clicked on another part of the hair to pick up the colour then brushed that colour onto the edge (on the new layer of course). That way the edges of the hair took on the same colour as the nearby hair.
For the luminosity it was a similar process but this time only affecting the lightness. For hair I only did this for the image against the white background and I used the brush set to white. However on all the images there was a light edge under the sleeves. By Alt-Clicking on the dark part of the sleeve then painting with that colour along the edge in new layer - those sleeve edges darkened to match the rest of the sleeve and blended much better.
Adobe has completely messed up the masking tools. I sincerely wish for you to stop changing things that make the program overly complex and take away the value of using brushes effectively for composites. I will no doubt, like others, have to spend hours relearning something which was virtually unchanged for years, for good reason. A process that took about 4 steps now takes double the number of steps. Please stop trying acting like Microsoft. Just because people don't have the ability to paint and draw doesn't mean that everything in your program should be geared to them.
Select and Mask has been added, but the old tools are still available. Even the old refine edge is still available if you want to use it (with an initial selection made, Shift click on the menu item Select and Mask )
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