Monkey Masking Tutorial Page 3

Step 7

While still in your 'Layers Palette', click on the 'Mask' which is the rectangle directly beside the Monkey that you just created when you clicked on the 'Mask' button at the bottom of the Layers palette.  

Now go to your main 'Tool Box' and choose the 'Brush' tool.   Then press the letter 'D' to select your 'Default colors' of black and white foreground and background colors.  Begin painting directly on the Mask.  Be sure you have the Mask selected.  When you've clicked on the Mask, you will see a little 'circle' icon appear to the left of your Monkey layer in the 'Layers Palette'.

Begin painting on the Mask with black color.  Black makes the image disappear and alternating back to White again, makes the image 'reappear'.   The shortcut command to alternate between Black and White is 'X'.  

You may also soften the edges of your paintbrush by pressing the shortcut keys 'Shift [' (Shift Left Bracket) and if you need a harder edged brush for straight edges, you press 'Shift ]' (Shift Right Bracket).  The shortcut for quickly increasing or decreasing your brush size is [ or ] used alternately to quickly change from one brush size to another, (left bracket will decrease brush size, right bracket will increase brush size).

Step 8

I haven't done so in this Tutorial example, but if you wish to tweak the angle of the face to be more in alignnment with the hat, you may go to your Main Menu and choose, 'Edit', 'Transform', 'Distort' (or 'Skew') and tweak, tweak, tweak until you are satisfied.

Alternately, it may be easier to tweak the angle of the hat instead of the Monkey face. To change the hat's angle, you may use your 'Liquify' Filter to nudge the cap into a more convincing angle.

Voila !  Your masterpiece is complete !  Now wasn't that a piece of cake?