Using Clipping Masks in Photoshop

If you have never heard of clipping masks before or have not gotten around to learning about them, you are going to LOVE this! I spent many months awkwardly cropping images and trying to place them exactly in the right spot in storyboards, which is both annoying and slow. Clipping masks make that unnecessary.

Let's open a new document in Photoshop. Mine is 800x800pixels and 72pixels/inch resolution, but it honestly doesn't matter for our purpose right now. Click on LAYER-NEW-LAYER and name it "Shape". Your layers palette now looks like this:

Why did I create a new layer for the shape we are about to draw? Because the background is white while the new layer is transparent. Placing a shape on a white background merges the shape and the background. They become one layer, which makes altering them separately much more difficult. By placing the shape on a transparent layer we have it completely separate and will be able to use clipping masks.

Now click on the Custom Shape Tool from your tool palette on the left. Then select a shape from the options on the top. Since it's almost Valentine's Day and I like to be cheesy sometimes I picked a heart, but anything will work.

Now open the image you would like to use for this. I picked one of my sister - again - because I know she won't mind. Drag and drop the image on top of your shape. Make sure the image covers the shape completely. If it's too small. pick a different image or go through all the steps all over again with a bigger document. If it's too big, go to EDIT-TRANSFORM-SCALE and with the chain symbol on the top selected, make your image smaller until it just about covers the shape. 

Now we get to the fun part. Go to LAYER-CREATE CLIPPING MASK with the image selected. It is important that the layer of the image is immediately on top of the shape in your layers palette. Here is what happens:

How cool is that??? Now as you can see in your layers palette, the image is completely intact; we did not crop it. In fact, you can move it around until it's in the perfect spot. You can even scale the image again while the clipping mask is applied.

Now if you have purchased one of my templates from my shop at http://phoenixdesigns.bigcartel.com/ (see how subtly I advertise?), knowing about clipping masks will help you use the storyboards.

See how the image is placed right on top of the rectangular shape I creatively named "2"? The clipping mask was already applied to the "Place image here" layer, so it snapped right into place. 

The best thing is, clipping masks are not limited to photography and shapes. In the following case I spelled the word LOVE, right clicked on the layer and the RASTERIZED THE TYPE. Then I added a plaid digital paper right on top of the LOVE layer, applied a clipping mask and here is what I got:

Cool, isn't it?