Text Masking

Masks are one of the most useful tools in Photoshop. They are a non destructive way of altering an image—you can hide parts of an image, for example, without actually erasing any of it if you use a mask. In this tutorial, we will use two different masking techniques, clipping and layer masks, to show part of an image in the shape of some text. This tutorial was written for Photoshop CS3, but should work in lower versions.

Using the clipping mask

1. Open up your image and make sure it’s an editable raster layer (if it’s locked, right click and select Layer from Background, or just duplicate it and delete the original). In this case, I just filled a layer with one of Photoshop’s preset patterns.
   
2. Type in whatever text you’d like, and move the text layer below the image layer.
   
3. While holding down the alt key, hover over the border between the two layers. An overlapping circle icon should show up; click. The image is now clipped to the text layer, and is shown in the shape of the text.
   
   You should note that clipped layers are displayed slightly indented in the layers menu, with an arrow pointing to the layer they are clipped to.
   
4. You can change what portion of the image is showing by either moving the text or moving the image around. If you want to move the clipped image without changing what portion shows through, link it to the layer beneath by holding the shift key and selecting both layers in the Layers menu, and then clicking the chain link icon at the bottom of the menu.
   
5. To unclip a layer, just alt-click again on the border between the two layers. This clipping technique is also applicable to other shapes besides text.

Using a layer mask

1. Open up your image and make sure it’s an editable raster layer (if it’s locked, right click and select Layer from Background, or just duplicate it and delete the original). In this case, I just filled a layer with one of Photoshop’s preset patterns.
   
2. Type in whatever text you’d like.
3. Ctrl + click on the text symbol for the text layer in the layers menu to make a selection from the text. Alternately, go to Select » Load Selection and click OK.
   
4. Select the image layer, and click on the layer mask icon (a white circle in a filled rectangle) at the bottom of the layers menu. Voila! We have masked text.
   
   
   5. If you want to change what part of the image shows, unlink the mask and the image by clicking on the chain link icon between the two, and move either around. To relink them, click between them again.
   

Posted 03/16/2009 - Photoshop Tutorials | 4 comments