Making your own Masks

This tutorial is going to show you how to make your own mask totally from scratch... if you aren't sure how to use a mask, follow this tutorial.  I'm just going to show you how to make a really simple mask with this tutorial but when you know how to do the basics, the only limit is your imagination!  :o)

You will need:

A copy of PaintShop Pro - you can download a 30 day trial version from here

Fire up PSP and wait until it's done whatever it needs to do.

When it's opened up, you need to create a new image with the following settings:

Width:  500
Height:  500
Resolution:  72.000
Background:  Transparent
Image type:  16.7 Million Colours

Floodfill your image with black

Now you need to decide what shape you want your mask to be - I'm going to make mine into a star shape.  

Use your Preset Shapes tool and the Tool Options window to choose your shape and use the following settings:

Retain style:  unchecked
Antialias:  checked
Create as vector:  checked
Line width:  1
Line style:  straight line

Go over to your Colour Palette and set both the Foreground and Background Colour to white:

Draw your shape on your black image - when you apply the mask, anything that is where the black bits of your shape are, will disappear and anything inside the shape will be what is left.

You'll notice that there is a square box around the outside of your shape that's got lots of little squares around the outside of it.  That tells us that the shape we've just drawn is a Vector shape.  You can click and drag on the little squares to change the look of your shape if you want to... just click and drag on them.  

When you're happy with what your shape looks like, you need to change the layer to a Raster layer so go to "Layers" and down to "Convert to Raster layer":

Now we need to select our shape, so use your Magic Wand tool to click *inside* the outline of your shape - you'll get lots of marching ants all the way around the inside:

I don't know about you, but personally I like my masks to be a bit softer around the edges.  To get the softer look we need to "feather" the edges.  To do this, we need to go to the "Selections" menu, down to "Modify" and across to "Feather":

A little pop-up box will appear asking you how much you want to feather it by.  I don't usually go any higher than 7 on mine when it's anything more complicated than a circle/oval or a square/rectangle, but feel free to adjust it to whatever you prefer - experiment until you find something that you like (the marching ants will show you where the feather will go up to).

Using your floodfil tool still set to white, click inside your image until you've got the edges to look like you want them to look, then deselect (Ctrl + D or "Selections", "Select None").  I clicked 5 times to get this effect:

Now we need to glue the 2 layers together, so go to "Layers" then down to "Merge" and across to "Merge Visible"

Nearly there!  :o)

Now we need to tell PSP that we want to make this image into a mask, so go to "Masks" then down to "New" and across to "From Image"

A pop-up box will come up with various options in it... use these settings:

Source window:  This Window
Create mask from:  Source luminance
Invert mask data:  unchecked

The black in your image will have disappeared now - that's cool... it's PSP's way of showing you a preview of what your mask will look like.  The white bit is the part of your image that you'll be able to see when you've applied the mask to it.  If you're happy with it, carry on with the next step, if not, keep hitting the "undo" button and redoing the steps until you've got it looking the way you want it to look.

So, you're happy with what your mask is going to look like... now we need to let PSP know that we want to save what we've done so that we can use it later on.  Go back to the "Masks" menu then down to "Save To Disk"

A dialogue box has now popped up asking you about where you want to save your mask and what you want to call it.  If it's not already pointing to it, use the drop-down box at the top to navigate to the Masks folder within your PSP directory - this is usually in c:/Programme Files/Jasc Software/PaintShop Pro/Masks.  

When you've got it pointing to the right directory, give your mask a name - I'm going to call mine SoftStar.

In the drop-down box underneath where you name your mask, make sure that it's got the extension of .msk - PSP should have automatically put it in for you, but it's always better to be safe than sorry :o)

When you've got all that sorted, hit "Save"

Woohoo!!  You've just made your first mask from scratch!  You might want to test it out to make sure of what it looks like... if you're not sure how to use a mask, follow this tutorial.