Description:
Learn how to use the powerful masking tool in PhotoImpact to create stunning effects and/or extract objects from images. There are a number of tools available to extract objects from images or create effects but the masking tool is my absolute favorite. It allows for almost unlimited control over what you are going to extract from your image.

Even though the title states “Misting an Image”, what we are about to do is to extract a portion of an image and create a new one with that.

Let’s get started!

Start up PhotoImpact, ensure you are in the right workspace mode and open your image or the saved version of my image from above link.

Enter the “Mask” mode by either means shown here: Via the Menu bar, by key board short cut “Ctrl+K” or by clicking on the mask symbol. All three steps have the same result.

When you enter the mask mode, your image will be covered by an overlay. The color and transparency (for viewing the image underneath) can be set in “Preferences”. I have used the default setting here.

The overlay shown below is blocking out the whole image, there is no selection as yet. You make a selection by painting on this overlay. White will erase the overlay, showing the part of the underlying image which has been revealed by erasing the mask overlay. Painting with black will restore the mask overlay.

Thus far, there is nothing special about this. However, setting paint brush properties transparency and soft edge, as well as the brush size, will allow you to have much more control over the effect you will get. Even with the transparency set to as low as 80%, repeatedly brushing over the same area will eventually make the painted area fully transparent. A single stroke, however, will only show/select a faint portion of the underlying image. Painting in Grey will also create a semitransparent selection. Incidentally, while in mask mode, you are temporarily working in greyscale and can only chose shades between black and white for your brush. Once you get out of mask mode, your image is again RGB.
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Step 1:

Select the paint brush, color white, size to suit the effect you want and adjust transparency and soft edge.

I used for this step a size 150 round brush with 80% transparency and a soft edge of 100. You are free to use any settings which will give you your desired effect. As you can see, there is still a lot of haze in what is going to be my selection. Never mind. In this step I only define the outer edge of my “Hole in the Mist”, so to speak. A more defined, clearer selection, I will create in the next step, after I changed my brush settings.

You are free to use any number of steps. For simplicity and speed I chose to use only three for this tutorial.

Step 2:

In this step, I increased the transparency of my brush strokes but left the soft edge settings as they were. I don’t want clearly defined lines for my selection.

By repeatedly painting over areas of my image I want to clearly see in my selection, I gradually remove the mask overlay in those areas also. If you can still see a faint trace of the red, or any other color you chose, inside your painted selection, these areas will not be clearly shown but retain a level of transparency.

This will allow you to have very detailed control of how your selection will look when converted to an object.

Step 3:

Again, I only changed the level of transparency and left the soft edge settings alone. In addition I also reduced the brush size.

Making sure that none of the areas I want to see clearly in my final image have any red tint left on them. To achieve that goal, I have painted over these areas repeatedly.

Your image will now show with the “marching ants” around your just created selection. Never mind if your selection seems smaller than intended. This has to do with the transparency levels. Select “Selection” from the menu bar and click on the menu choice “Convert to object” or use the key board short cut “Ctrl+Shift+O” to convert your selection into an object and you may see what I mean. The object might be surrounded by a greyish shade. That misty looking part of your selection is semi transparent and will show when you transfer the object onto a different background.

To complete my tutorial use the keyboard short cut “Ctrl+C” to copy the selection to the clipboard. Before you continue, select the “Bucket Fill” tool on your tool bar and right click on the color selection. Use the Eye dropper tool and select an area of the sky on the original image or another color you want to use as a back ground in the next step.

You can now close this image since we don’t need it anymore. Instead we are creating a new image.

From the menu bar, select “Edit” >”Paste” >”As new Image”.

This will create a new image of the correct size to accommodate your selection just pasted from the clipboard. Deselect the object just placed on the canvas by hitting the enter key.

Select the bucket fill tool. The color should still be set to what we previously selected from the source image. Click anywhere on the background outside our pasted object or select the base image in the Layer Manager. That will fill the background with your selected color, in this case the color of the sky.

Voila, the castle is just showing through the mist.

Experimenting with the settings of your paint brush, like shape, size, transparency levels and soft edge as well as using different shades of gray instead of white, will show you the unlimited scope of flexibility this powerful masking technique offers the user of PhotoImpact.

Copyright © Heinz Diefenbruch, all rights reserved