Without going into technical detail a vector mask allows you to show through just a small piece of an image by masking out anything around what you choose. In this tutorial I will demonstrate a vector mask using a simple photo image and the elipse drawing shawp tool. Here is how you create a vector mask in Adobe Photoshop CS4.
- Launch Adobe Photoshop CS4, open the photo you are going to work with to follow along in this tutorial and don’t forget to unlock the image layer by double clicking on its thumbnail in the layers panel then selecting ok when the layer window appears.
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Step 2
Select a shape tool from your tools panel…pressing the “SHIFT+U” keys at the same time will cycle through all of your shape options. In this example I am using the ellipse shape tool.
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Step 3
Draw the shape over top of the picture. The fill color is irrelevant as you will see shortly. You will notice the shape now covers the area that will eventually be the only thing displayed. Also notice that a new layer was created called a vector mask.
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Step 4
Drag the image layer above your shape layer as shown in the picture.
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Step 5
With the image layer selected, select “Layer” from the menu at the top, then select “Create Clipping Mask” from the submenu that appears.
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Step 6
You will notice now that the only thing being displayed is the area that you drew the shape on top of.
