Datasheet

12 chapter 1 Tools for Building Your Masterpiece
Dynamic Masking
I’ll begin with a practical example. If you have perused any
medium to large electronics store online, in particular
those that sell mid- to high-end televisions or computers,
you may have noted that many display their products with
an image on the screen. It is difcult to take a photograph
of a television with the screen active and have it turn out
with ad-quality resolution on the display. Rather than leave
the screen blank, many retailers will use Photoshop to
place an image on the screen to make the product shot
more compelling. Layer masks can achieve this goal in
quick order.
For this example, open
monitor.jpg (Figure 1.25)
and
tech.jpg (Figure 1.26).
Figure 1.26 A techno-collage to fill the screen
To see how masks can help when working with these two images, you first need to
place them in the same document. To do this, simply copy the second photo and paste it into
the first. They are different sizes, so choose Edit
Transform Scale and resize the new
layer to match the size of the first. In this instance, you need to be concerned only that the
monitor screen is overlaid with the second image (see Figure 1.27).
When working with a lot of layers, it is smart to give your layers descriptive names.
You’re working with only two layers in this example, but it is still a good habit to establish,
so rename the layers Monitor (the base layer) and Tech. The top layer is where the masking
will take place; you can create that mask now by selecting the Tech layer and clicking the
Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers panel (see Figure 1.28).
Figure 1.25 A standard computer-
monitor product shot
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