Channels & Masks Video Lesson 2: "The Anatomy of a Mask"

Beloved attendees of the dekeFestival, here is your second-helping of video goodness, "The Anatomy of a Mask," which I stole from Deke's new book, Photoshop CS4 Channels and Masks One-on-One. As Deke notes (and I'm completely plagiarizing him here), masks tend to intimidate a lot of people. But they’re really just the digital equivalent of the traditional stencil. You paint inside the areas that the stencil (or mask) doesn’t cover; everything else is protected. The big difference is that the holes in the stencil are white, the protected areas are black, and the stencil in general is a heck of a lot more accurate. To watch a real-time comparison of stencils and masks—not to mention, learn why masks are so much better—watch the second video lesson.

Look for more videos soon, we'll be posting them throughout the month in celebration of the release of the book (and our survival of that process). Once again, a disclaimer: that they are downsampled, so the legibility is lower than we would like. Which is why we will shortly provide, as a special opportunity for registered users of this site, the option to download all 12 full, hi-res QuickTime movies for a limited time (!). Keep an eye out for that. And lest you forget, every one of these videos is unique to Photoshop CS4 Channels and Masks One-on-One from O'Reilly Media and produced by industry leader lynda.com.