Trouble making a clipping mask in Photoshop

I have the following set up:
I would like to make a clipping mask out of all of the objects above the "Text" layer (so that all of the stuff from the above layers is only applied to the letters), however I am struggling. For one, when I go to ungroup "Group 1" it changes the complexion of the graphics and makes it darker for some reason. Also, when I merge the layers above "text" I get the following:
Anyone know how to accomplish this?

NM, I found the answer:
Place all the layers above "Text" into a group (it's okay to nest groups).
Ctl/Cmd-click on the Layers Panel thumbnail of "Text" to load it as a selection.
With your new "master group" targeted, click the "New Layer Mask" icon in the Layers Panel.
This will create a layer mask on the group that applies the group content only to the non-transparent pixel on the Text layer, which I think is what you're trying to do.

Similar Messages

Moving text after making a clipping mask?

After making a clipping mask with text I am able to move the image around that shows through the text, though how do you move the text around?
Thanks.

Each time I try to use the Move tool to move the Text Layer it ends up moving the Clipping Mask Layer instead.
Thanks.

Photoshop elements 6 help with making a clipping mask

I have a button template (for a pinback) I put into elements. What I would like to do is make a country flag button. Right now the flag image is sitting ontop of the template. I would like to make a clipping mask (I think that's what's it's called) so that the image covers the entire part of the button that will be seen when it is printed. Here is a link to a button. This is what I am trying to do, but am not having any luck. I would a appreciate a step by step guide. I am using photoshop elements 6 on a mac OSX (ver. 10.5.8
any help would be great
http://www.petergreenberg.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/canadian_flag.jpg

This is user to user tech support for folks having issues with Intel-based iMacs. This is not any kind of Adobe product support. If you need help with an Adobe product I suggest that you look for that help at the Adobe website.
Dah•veed

Making a clipping mask with a complex, custom shape

Hi,
I have a graphic of a footprint, and I am trying to use it to mask of a photograph below. When I do the usual steps, it is not working and causing everything to go transparent...my photo, completely vanishing. I'm wondering if it is something to do with the complexity of the footprint vector - it has floating elements that are distanced away (for example, the toes are not attached to the foot portion). Could this be what's throwing it off?
How can I get this footprint vector graphic to function as a cohesive mask?
Thank you!

Thanks for responding so quickly...I have just tried that, and here is the response I'm getting:
Can't make a compound path. All objects in a compound path must be paths, and they cannot be brushed or be part of an object.
Not sure what I need to do to modify / tweak the graphic in order to make it work properly?
Thanks!

Is there a tutorial on making a Mask,Or Clipping Mask for CS4?

I have imported a file of a sheet of music,and all I want is the sheet, not the background. Easy to do so in PS. I didn't know I could "print screen" directly into .AI and I've tried making a clipping mask so I could use the sheet as a background to no avail. Really appreciate the help.....thanks...mm

Let's see you can lock the art or image of the sheet music in the layers panel and the freely use the pen tool on top of it.
You can group if you wish the art for sheet music and then center that within the artboard then lock the grup in the layers panel and freely work ove the locked group.
you select that group and drag it into the symbols panel and make it a symbol and that would protect it even further and you also lock that symbol.
You can edit the art of the symbol without undoing the clipping path by editing the symbol.
Might be a good option.
The shape you make for the clipping mask ca be selected along with the and the option to aline to artboard chosen then center the two horizontally and vertical or just one direction.
Does this help?
Oh, yes once you have the masked art you can turn that art into a symbol s well place and position it anyway you want then if it has to be different fro the other sheets break the link to the parent symbol and make that a symbol as well.

Should I use a clipping mask for this? Am I approaching this the wrong way?

Greetings and Salutations!
I am currently creating some cycling jerseys for my friends and I. Im fairly new to Illustrator, so I created my "Proof" in Photoshop.
This is what it is suppose to look like.
Now that the proof got a thumbs up, i need to vectorize this and get it ready for print.
Though I've run into a small issue. Im not sure exactly how I should proceed in correcting this.
I lay the outline of the Lion down
I then created a "fill" layer with an opacity of 50%
Together they form the feline version of Voltron
Now I need to insert the yellow Lion. Thus I duplicate both layers and change the light blue to a yellow, and this happens due to the opacity of the "fill" layer
You can see the yellow lion in behind the blue lion! Expected since i have the fill layer at 50%!
I dont know how to correct this. I was thinking of making a clipping mask for Lion #2
But wasnt sure if thats what i needed to do. Can anyone give me advice?
I feel like I am toying with unknown technology and ive accidentally created a monster! Halp before it gains consciousness!

add a white shape behind black design.

Zebra print - clipping mask help

I'm new to Illustrator and am having trouble getting a clipping mask to work the way I want it to. I have a zebra print pattern over the top of some lettering and I want to keep the shape of the lettering while incorporating the zebra print. See my screen shot. What steps do I need to take? I tried Pathfinder and Shape Modes, but they don't come out right.
All I want is to have the lettering incorporate the zebra print without having points outside the letter shape.
Adrian

There are several ways to do this. Two options are: pattern fill or a clipping mask.
Pattern fill
Create a pattern from your zebra pattern by:
1. Setting the pattern artwork in front of a rectangle that has no stroke or fill.
2. Select the pattern AND the rectangle and drag them into the Swatch panel. A "pattern fill" swatch will be added to the panel.
3. Select your text and assign the pattern fill to the text.
This should ideally be a "seamless" pattern. You can read about that in the online help.
NOTE: If your pattern contains only the black portion of the fill (the white area is blank), you can add a second fill attribute to the text by using the Attributes panel:
1. Select the text.
2. Go to the fly-out menu on the Attributes panel and select "new fill".
3. Drag the new fill below the "Characters" in the Attributes panel.
4. Assign any color to it.
Clipping Mask
1. Set your text above the pattern, in the artboard (no need to convert it to outlines).
2. Select text and pattern and choose Menu item: Object/Clipping Mask/Make (or Cmd-7, mac or Ctl-7 pc)
3. Reselect the text and assign it a new color (objects lose their color when converted to a clipping mask, but it can be reassigned).
Hope this helps.

Making a clipping group with a compound path

So, as of today I'm new to scripting for Illustrator, I'm using the ExtendScript Toolkit. However I'm not new to scripting my own solutions and I do have some experience with JavaScript already.
What I'm trying to do is this: For all selected Items->Duplicate selected item and make a simple clipping group with it
What I end up with visually doesn't change the picture, but gives me a lot of clipped colored areas which I then can edit in the isolated mode, allowing me far faster and better shading. Doing that by hand takes hours on some pictures, it'd take a second with a script.
The script itself already perfectly works for normal PathItems. As obvious in the title, as soon as I have to apply the same to CompundPathItems things stop working. My issue is somewhat similar to this old thread [Problem with compound path clipping], but I couldn't find a solution there because I get different behavior.
When I run the very same script that perfectly works with the normal PathItems with CompoundPathItems I get this: Error 9046: The top item in the group must be a path item to create a mask
Well that's a problem. In the GUI there is absolutely no difference between making a clipping mask with a simple path and a compound path. The reference guide has frankly not helped me with this issue at all, the only thing I learned from that is that the CompoundPathItem object doesn't have a clipping attribute, but those included PathItems do.
Here's what I have so far:
if ( selected[i].typename == "PathItem" ) {
var newGroup = doc.groupItems.add();
copy = selected[i].duplicate(newGroup,ElementPlacement.PLACEATEND);
selected[i].moveToBeginning(newGroup);
newGroup.clipped = true;
As I said, this part perfectly does what it's supposed to do for normal Paths.
For CompoundPaths I use this workaround.
if ( selected[i].typename == "CompoundPathItem" ) {
var newGroup = doc.groupItems.add();
copy = selected[i].duplicate(newGroup,ElementPlacement.PLACEATEND);
selected[i].moveToBeginning(newGroup);
compoundItems = selected[i].pathItems;
compoundIndex = compoundItems.length;
for ( f = 0; f < compoundIndex; f++ ) {compoundItems[f].clipping=true;}
var lineList = new Array(10);
for ( l = 0; l < lineList.length; l++ ) {lineList[l] = new Array( i * 10 + 50, ((i - 5) ^ 2) * 5 +50);}
newPath = app.activeDocument.pathItems.add();
newPath.setEntirePath(lineList);
newPath.moveToBeginning(newGroup);
newGroup.clipped = true;
newPath.remove();
Mind you, this workaround does work in so far that it bypasses that annoying and wrong error, and the Compound Clipping Path also works, with the only problem being that the Compound Clipping Path created like this is still displayed in its original colors in the Layers section, and is still selectable. When I lock the Compound Clipping Path I can work with it but still...
So the question is, what am I missing here? Surely there must be a proper way to do this.

app.executeMenuCommand()? That one eluded me so far, might be just the right thing. I'll definitely take a look, now just to find a ref on that, as unfortunately the official ref documents I have don't mention that command. Any place with a list of possible commands?
Ah, also of course I'm not only doing it for the isolation mode. If you care to hear the background, here is it:
As I said it's for shading the pictures I'm working on. I've iterated and tried through a bunch of techniques. For example gradient meshes on my first few real works. Now those meshes don't do well with complex shapes, which previously I alleviated by using a simple square or rectangle gradient mesh and using the original colored shape as a clipping mask. That did work, but it was a huge lot of work.
After a bunch of attempts at that I went over to using simple gradients as a background for the shape and then I'm doing the shading freehand with the blob brush tool, using a graphic style and filters to make it look right. That's better, but properly making all the clipping masks takes me much longer than anything else.
Now the problem is that the shading is not supposed to go over the lines, which is impossible to do properly without either messing up the order, or using clipping masks, hence the script. Because you know, if you use a blob brush with a strong Gaussian blur close to the lines you'll end up with stuff on both sides. If you don't start close to the line the shading won't look right if the darkest part of the shade needs to be close to the line. And that's where clipping masks do magic.
And finally here's an example how I work with the script and the result:
After I have traced a sketch, adjusted the line widths and everything to look neat I turn the paths to outline strokes and then make them into a live paint group (which would mess up the line widths, unless you turn the paths into outline strokes first).
With that live paint group it takes me just a few minutes to flat color my piece. Then I expand the live paint group, in case of doubt spend some more minutes to make compound paths from all areas I need to shade in one piece, then I select all the areas and use my script to turn them into neat clipping masks. Then I can click any area, enter the isolation mode and go up one level so I'm in the appropriate group, where I can shade freely without the problem of going over the lines.
At the end that allows me to apply a complex and in-depth shading, without wasting any time to get there.
PS: Well, I just found out that Draw Inside is pretty darn close to what I want to do, and oddly enough it produces the same visual discrepancy with compound paths that my script produces. I'll be taking a closer look at that, though my script does a little more than just the clipping mask stuff, so maybe I'll go for a hybrid solution. Whatever makes for a better workflow.

Need Help with Tutorial! Hachures/Clipping Mask?

Hi All, I am really struggling with this step of this awesome tutorial. I am not quite understanding how the end result of the below steps is achieved. Here are the instructions for each step (paraphrased):
1) Create a triangle, make it slim, duplicate it many times and group it.
2) Shows end result of step 1
3) Place the object over the area that you want hachures. Make a trace on the area you want to be filled using the pen tool.
4) Make a clipping mask on it
5) (end result) Repeat the same procedure.
I have no problem making the triangles, but I got stuck after that step. I made a trace over the area, but I get stuck after making a clipping mask.
I know the pictures below are small, please go to the original link and scroll down to see the referenced steps in bigger form (sorry, numbers are not referenced in tutorial, but it is somewhere towards the middle of the page):
http://abduzeedo.com/create-badass-gas-mask-illustrator
Thanks in advance!

Mylenium, after reading your post I went back, you were right (duh) my clipping mask wasn't closed and I did not have it as the top most layer.
Monika Gause, I will try and be a bit more clear with my questions in the future. I am sure it is pretty obvious, but I am a noob in a lot of ways!
I love this forum, thanks to both of you!

Clipping masks in ai CS5 deletes strokes and other crazy things

When creating a clipping mask, Illustrator CS5 deletes the stroke on the mask itself and when I add the stroke back in, it adds the same stroke to objects within the clipping mask.
In the file below, Figure 1 shows a rectangle with a black stroke and an orange circle with no stroke. Figure 2 shows the result of creating a clipping mask - the black stroke on the rectangle has been deleted. Figure 3 shows the result of adding the black stroke to the mask - it adds the stroke to the orange circle as well.
This is one of the many things about Illustrator that lead me to believe that the people at Adobe have never tried to work with their own programs. Why on earth would I want the stroke to be eliminated in the first place and why would I want it to be added to the items inside the mask when I go to replace it?
Is there something I should do differently or is this yet another oversight I'll have to work around forever?

Thank you to Larry and Scott! That's exactly right. I wasn't aware that by making a clipping mask you also make a group (and I'm not entirely sure that it logically should) but using the direct selection tool does the trick.
Thanks again,
Dave

Layer clipping mask help

having trouble with layer clipping masks - I guess I've never really used them before. I want to make a clipping mask from a layer but that layer has more than one path on it. It doesn't seem to be working. Does it need to be a single one? Can I use a compound or a group(i've tried both but they didn't work for me...) help?
also - Is there a way to invert the mask?
thanks!

Hi Oompal
Simple, let´s see if I´ve understood your problem
Create any shape and position where you like. Now go to layers pallete and click create clipping layer button (bottom of the layer, the first left buttom). That´s it
Now that shape will be used as clipping layer, and everithing you create inside this layers will be clipped.
Am I right?
Guidelines: Path intended to be a clipping shape must be the topmost of the layers, be selected on the artboard and its layer must be highlighted on the layers pallete to enable the action.

Clipping mask question 2.

Hello, so about a week ago I was having some trouble with my clipping mask I had posted a question Here about it. Over the week I believe i see what the problem maybe but i do not know how to fix it (once again) This is what I mean:
As you can see in the image above, there are little pixels around the image after i finished coloring and erasing my mess. (i used a wacom tablet to do this by the way.)
In this image I created a clipping mask over the image above and i began "shading." But the color went over once again. I Believe it has something to do with those little pixels.
May someone please help me by telling me why those little pixels are There and how i can get rid of them. Also If you have an idea at why the mask is not working also let me know as well

I suspect you are flat out going about things in the wrong way. I can't see reason you'd need or want to clip layers to achieve what you are doing. The spill is probably anti-aliasing from the brush or erasor. Niether tend to achieve 100% coverage with one pass.
Rather an use the erasor, much better to make a selection and add a layer mask. This will produce a hard edged editable layer.
Try drawing your lines on a roughing out layer, and then colouring on an underlying layer using different layers for each colour. When done, Ctrl (Cmd) click the colour fill layer which will load its outline as a selection. You can then go Edit > Stroke with black on a new layer higher up the stack.

Clipping mask VS. Selection for restricting area?

What is the advantage of making a clipping mask vs. selection for painting a selected area and making sure not to go out of it?
Thanks.

Painting on a layer clipping masked to another layer ascertains that the transparency of the underlying layer is maintained.
For example if a region/pixel of that layer has 50% transparency painting on a clipped layer will result in that region/pixel having the new color but the same transparency.
If on the other hand one were to paint on a separate layer with a Selection of the first layer’s transparency
• multiple Brush strokes in the 50% transparency region could push it much higher
• a single 100% Stroke (or Fill) would cause the resulting pixels to be a mixture of background, first layer and second layer (see attachment, middle clipped, right masked)

Moving the part of an image that shows through a clipping mask?

In CS5, after making a clipping mask using text to mask an image, is there a way to move the image to a new location so a different part of the image shows through the text?
Thanks.

web.boards,
You may select the image with the Direct Selection Tool, or through the Layers palette/panel, and move it (with the Arrow keys, by ClickDragging, with Object>Tramsform>Move, or whatever); or just ClickDrag it from the beginning.

Trouble with clipping paths in Photoshop CS5

Hello everyone, I am having trouble with clipping paths in Photoshop CS5. When I start a new path both path and anchor points are not visible. working on a Layer not background 0 and a Path Layer was created.I've also noticed that Photoshop started running pretty slow. All other programs are fine. Any Ideas or suggestions? Thank You

edtGrfx wrote:
Hello everyone, I am having trouble with clipping paths in Photoshop CS5. When I start a new path both path and anchor points are not visible. working on a Layer not background 0 and a Path Layer was created.
What do you mean by "a Path Layer was created"? Path are in the path palette, there is a path in shape layers and they is a path in a vector layer mask. I have never seen a reference to a path layer before this. When a path in the path palette is selected activate it wall also be shown in the image window. Does not matter if there is a targeted layer or not. Control points may or may not be displayed. Using Path tool you can select and select segments and show some or all control points, Path are editable.
View the following image in a new tab and scale to actual pixels for a clear image this site scales image poorly.

Trouble making a clipping mask in Photoshop

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for