Social Media Graphics: Clipping Masks with Adobe Photoshop

1. Introduction Video: Do you want to learn how to create social media graphics using Adobe Photoshop? Then this class is for you. My name is Kate and I'm an Adobe instructor working at the UK's leading Adobe Training Center in London. I'm also a shoe designer who's worked with Jimmy Choo, Nicholas Kirkwood, and Sophia Webster. This class is aimed at beginners who do not need any previous Adobe Photoshop skills to participate in this class. We will be working with the famous clipping mask tool, which is one of my favorite features in Adobe Photoshop. We will be using clipping mask with shapes, custom shapes, special effects brushes, and texts. I will be guiding you with clever shortcuts to make the whole process go much smoother. We will be working with special effects brushes and we will learn how to install these in out Photoshop interface. We will start with all Photoshop essentials to get all our juices flowing, and we will learn the necessary tools for images, for color, for texts, for shapes and much more. We will learn a thing or two about layers and artboards and learn how to export these into separate files or JPEGs. There are lots of files and exercises that you can download that are available with this class. By the end of this class, you will have learned all the necessary skills to create and design your own amazing social media graphics. So let's get started. 2. Photoshop Essentials: Guys, are you ready to start learning how to create social media graphics using Photoshop's clipping mask tool, very exciting. You should have received a ZIP file which is available with the class. Now, if you double-click on the ZIP file, it will take its time, but it will expand into a folder and you can access the files inside. What we'll be working with today is we're going to recreate something like this. All these individual graphics, and then I'll get you to create your own graphic with your own images and colors and text. You can get really creative with this. What we'll learn here is the famous clipping mask, which is essentially placing an image inside a shape, any shape, really, as you can see here. We'll learn how to create these very cool brushes that are available inside Photoshop. We'll learn how to work with text and color, and so much more. You'll be able to apply these skills to really any type of social media graphic that you like. Let's close this and let's open up the clipping mask WF, working file. Now, I'm currently using a Mac, so this is what my icon looks like. But if you are using APC, you will see APS, which is the Photoshop icon. It will be blue. Just pay attention to the name, and you can go ahead and double-click on it and open it up and it will open up automatically, Photoshop. First things first. We need to make sure that our Photoshop interfaces look more or less the same, and we do this by changing something called the workspace, which is a preference of how you look at Photoshop. So you can choose which panels, these are panels. You would like to see which tools. If we can go to Window Workspace, and for today, we're going to use Essentials default. Our photoshop should look more or less the same. A very quick overview of the Photoshop essentials. Very importantly, we have the Layers panel at the bottom. Now, you will see a list of artboards. Now, each artboard represent the artboards over here. Here, we can see Artboard 2 copy 5, lots of copies which will be available here. This artboard is that artboard, and inside each artboard, so if you click on the arrow so it faces downwards over here, you will see the layers inside that artboards. Every time you play something in Photoshop, a layer will be automatically created and added in its artboards. All these layers are all these graphics that we see in these artboards. Now what's important is that you always go to the Move tool. This is a Move tool and you always want to go to that tool as a default setting. Now, the key is to select the art board that you'll be working on and you'll see that it will be highlighted over here, but there's nothing inside. This might look a little bit overwhelming, so what I'd like us to do is to close every artboard by clicking on the little arrows that faces to the right. None None these are expanded. They're all closed, so they're all facing to the right. We're just going to expand Artboard 4, which is this one. This is the one we'll be working with. What we'll do is we're going to recreate each of these graphics. We'll start with this one and we're going to recreate it over here. Then later, I'll get you to recreate your own exercise and your own artboards and create your own from there. 3. Shapes Explained: Let's start with this one. Let me zoom in for a moment. The shortcut for zooming in is for Macs, Command+ and for PCs, Control+. Make sure that artboard 4 is selected and that you've clicked on artboard 4. Let's start adding these graphics. First of all, we'll start with this rectangle over here. We're going to look at the swatches panel over here. Swatches are essentially saved colors, and you should be able to see these colors saved. These will be the colors that we'll be working with. Now, if you don't have these colors, that's absolutely fine. I will show you how to copy these colors. Let's start with this rectangle. I would like us to go to the Rectangle tool over here. I would like us to look at the fill and the stroke at the top. The fill is the color that the shape will be filled with, and the stroke is a border. So a shape like this will have no fill, and we'll just have this border quite a thicker one, so we'll have to change it over here. What we can start with, one of my tricks is I'm going to create a rectangle, click and drag from one corner to the other so it covers the whole page. Now what we're going to do is remove the fill and add a stroke. Now, these options are available as well here in the properties panel. You'll see the same options, fill, and stroke, and the border size. I want us to click on the fill and click on this little strikethrough which will remove the fill, and I would like us to click on stroke this time and pick this color. If you don't see this color, absolutely fine. What you can do alternatively, is click on the color picker. If you hover and click over the color you want, you'll see a color picker array, eyedropper. You can click on that color and it will give you that color that you need. Then you can click on "OK". Now, we don't see the border just yet because the width of the border is zero pixels. So let's change that. If we click on this arrow here and you increase, you will start to see the border. That's actually quite nice to have a border like that, but we're going to have to resize our border so it's similar to this one. To do this, we have to go to the Move tool. I'm going to show you a little trick and a shortcut to resize this rectangle. First, check that you're on the correct layer, the rectangle that you've just created. Second, you need to go to Edit, Free Transform or Command+T or Control+T for PCs. When you do this, you'll be able to resize it. If you want to resize it from the center so there's equal width all around, you need to hold down the ALT or Option key, and it will do a nice job. Voila, like we say in French, very good. Moving on to this. Probably the most exciting part is a clipping mask. This is called a clipping mask. 4. Clipping Masks Explained: For a clipping mask, you always have to create a shape first, which will be the clipping, and then you place the image inside the shape. We need to create a circle. Now if you right-click, you will see the Ellipse Tool, and to draw a circle, I mean you can draw ellipses as well, although that's not what we need. If you wanted to undo, you can Edit, Undo, or Command or Control Z. Again, but to draw a circle with equal width and height, with equal radius, you hold down the Shift key and you let go. Now don't worry about having it exactly the same proportions. We're just trying to do it by eye. It doesn't have to be copy-paste, the same as this one. Anyway, I would like us to give it a nice fill and don't worry about the stroke, that is fine. We could also actually remove the stroke, no border. Now, if you look at the layers, you will see an ellipse, which is this one, and you'll see a rectangle, which is that one. We're going to place an image, and it's important that we have the layer of the ellipse selected, because our layer of our image will come directly above the shape. To place images in Photoshop, you need to go to File, Place Embedded. Now if you go back to this folder and you double-click on "Exercise 1". You go to images. You'll see a couple of images here. Let's select the lovely lady with her tattoo and click on "Place". Now we need to resize our image. All we need to do is click and drag, pretty easy and resize our image. That's important for clipping mask, that our image is directly above or in front of our circle, of our shape, and in the layers panel that the layer of the image sits directly above the layer of the shape. Now for clipping mask. I would like you to hover in-between your layers. Make sure you are on the Move tool now. Hover in-between your layers, and I want you to hold down the Alt or Option key. I want you to hover, don't click anything just yet until you see the white square with the black arrow. As soon as you see this, you can click and your image will go nicely in your frame. Beautiful. If you look at your layers here, you'll see a little arrow. This is telling us that our image, this image is inside this shape. Great. Let's do the second one now. I believe in repetition. That's how you learn. Let's go back to our Ellipse Tool. Let's again hold down the Shift key, so it's a circle, more or less, it doesn't have to be the same size. Again, we have our ellipse here, and we're going to place an image on top of this ellipse. If we go to File, Place Embedded, we can select this guy with the glasses, and again, we need to resize this image. Again, we hover in-between the layers. We do not click yet, we just hover. Then we hold on the Alt or Option key and we move our mouse around until we see the white square and the black arrow and then you click, and then your image is nicely inside your shape and in the layers as well. 5. The Custom Shape Tool: Now let's do the third one. This one is pretty exciting because it's a special shape, it's a custom shape and if you go to your Shape Tool over here, you'll see Photoshops Customs Shape Tool. I loved this. If you look at the top here, click on this ''arrow'', you might see a list of loads of interesting shapes, very cute, and lots of folders and categories. Now feel free to choose any shape you like, it doesn't have to be this flower, but I'm going to go ahead and choose this flower, by going to the Flowers' folder. I'm going to select this flower, it's this one and I'm going to click and drag. Now do not get it super distorted, you can hold down the Shift key again just like for the circle and it will be a nice undistorted flower and you can let go. Again you will see the layer, this time it's Shape 42, let's place an image. Now we can go back to File Place Embedded and select "Winter cabin" and Place and keynote to draw, resize. Now we're going to do our little clipping mass trick. We have in between the layers, we hold down the Alt key until we see the square and the arrow, and then we click. Brilliant. What if you want it to move this cabin, the image just a little bit higher, but you want the flower to stay put. Absolutely fine, you just have to go to the Move Tool, you have to make sure that what is selected is your image. Then you can either click and drag and move it around or I love using arrows on my keyboard, to put it up and down. Reminds me of like Play stations and video games. What if I wanted to re-size this cabin, make it bigger or smaller, then I would have to make sure again, always make sure it's selected. Then you go to Edit Free Transform again, Free Transform is how you resize any shape, any image in Photoshop. Then you see the bounding box and you can just click and drag and resize it. Great. When you're done, you can just go back to the Move Tool and it will place it. Let's resize the others just for practice. If you wanted to resize this image, just click on it. You will see it will be selected over here. You can go up and down or click and drag, and for resizing it, Edit, Free Transform and click and drag. When you're done, the Move tool. This is great, but what if you wanted to resize the whole shape as well as the image together, or move it. Then what you would have to do is instead of just selecting the image, you would have to select the image and the shape. Let's click on this image again, you'll see it's highlighted here. Now the shape here Ellipse 5 is this shape. If we wanted to select both, we just have to hold down the Shift key, click on this one, hold down the Shift key, click on the shape it is in and now they're both selected, which means that you can move both altogether. Great. Now let's add this little shape here. Let's go back to our Custom Shape Tool and our flower should be selected, but it needs to be black. If you wanted to make it black, you can either click here in your Swatches, will become black or in your Fill. Either way, absolutely fine and again, you hold down the Shift key and you have your little flower. Remember, you always go back to the Move Tool as a default and you can move it. Now we're going to learn how to add the text in. You might learn a thing or two about layers as well, because what we'll start with is the text layer. In terms of layers, when a layer is at the top, it means that it's in front or it's closest to you. When a layer is at the bottom, it means that it's further away from you and it's at the back. We'll look at that a little bit more in a bit. 6. Working with Text: Now let's start with a text. So I'm using a font called raleway here. Sorry, a little bit hard to pronounce the r for me. If you do not have this font, do not worry because I have placed it in a folder. So if we can minimize Photoshop for a minute, go back to our folder, you'll see a folder called Fonts. Double-click and you'll see all the different versions of raleway. Now if you wanted to download it, what you would have to do is double-click on it and click on "Install Font". Now if you could do that for each of these, then you will have the font needed for this exercise. Let's go back to Photoshop now. Let's start adding the text. I would like us to go to the Type tool. When you start creating text, you always go to the Type tool. Now what you need to do is make sure that your top layer is selected so that our text layer will go above all our other layers. Then you can click and drag. I think that was a little bit too big, but that's fine, we can change that later and you can start typing winter. Now, that font might automatically already be correct and if it's not, let me show you how to make it correct, how to make it consistent with this one. When working with texts, if you want to select your text, you can click and drag, or you can go to Select, Select All or Command or Control A and this will select all the content in your frame. Now to change the font settings, you can change them over here, but you can also change them here in the properties panel. Here you'll see different types of fonts that you can choose, whether you want it in bold, regular, italic. This is for the font size, so you can increase the font size this way or decrease it. I have a little trick that I want you to use. So if you highlight this little value box, you can press the up or down key on your keyboard and this will increase the value in a very quick way. Now if you scroll down, you can change the other settings like the color and obviously we need to make this color white. It does look white currently, but that's not the preview. So if you look at the color here, we need to make it white. You can either click on white here, and it will be white, the most corner and okay. You can also change things like the alignment and stuff like that. We just need to align it to the center. To make it all caps, it's displayed here. Scroll down and you'll see all caps and always hover over icons, they will tell you what they are. Okay. Super. Now we have this text but we can't see it, which is absolutely fine because we know it's there. Actually, why don't we make this another color for now? So if you click on the color here, we have another color for now, it will be easier to differentiate. Super, and now we need to create a second text frame. So we need to go back to the Move tool to de-select it, go back to the Type tool and click and drag a text frame. Now it should be the same format as the previous one. So we're not going to have to format the whole text again, which is nice and if not, just go back and you know what to do. Now type in clipping mask, and whoopsie, there's not enough space for my whole text. So what we need to do is click and drag and you can actually elongate your text frame so that there is enough space. Now I do think that my font might be a little bit too big here. So if I highlight my text, go back to the font settings, I might be able to resize it, make it a little bit smaller. Go back to the Move tool, and then go back to the Type tool to make this one just a little bit smaller and back to the Move tool, always. Super. Now we need to create those little rectangles. If we go back to our shape tool, we can go to the rectangle tool and we'll see that our fill is that same color. So we can either click on the fill here, the color will change, or just click on this one, up to you. We can start drawing our rectangle. Click and drag. Let's do another one and I will explain in a minute why our text is disappearing. I mentioned layers before, and I mentioned that when a layer is at the top, it's in front. Currently my rectangles are above the layers of my text. You can see T clipping mask, that's my text. What we'll have to do is always go back to the move tool, is just moves our rectangles below our text. Again, so that the rectangle appears below the text. Now the final touch is making our text white again. So what you can do is go to the Type tool, you click in between, highlight your text, and click on white. Let's do the same. Back to the Move tool, back to the Type tool. Select your text and make it white. Back to the Move tool and there we go. We've completed our first one. Congratulations. 7. Using Brushes: What we'll do next is we're going to do the second one, and we're going to learn something new, and that's this famous brush. Let's start with our background. Now if I wanted to work on art board 5 as it says here, I can just click on it with the move tool and it will automatically be highlighted here. Now what I'm going to do is close art board 4 just so it's less messy for now, and I'm just going to expand art board 5 so the arrow faces downwards. I'll be able to view the layers that I'm going to place in. We'll start with the background. When I start creating graphics in Photoshop, I always start with the bottom layer or the back layer, and I work my layers up. The back layer here is a background, and I need to go to the rectangle tool. Again, you either go to the fill or that color is here, you can just click on it. If it's not there, you can click on the fill. Click on the color picker, and just use the eye to click and okay. Now we can start drawing our rectangle. Click and drag, super. We always go back to the move tool. Just get in the habit of doing that and everything will be a lot smoother for you. Let's do the second rectangle now. We're going to the rectangle tool and we're going to draw another rectangle. Click and drag. If you look at your layers right now, you'll have two of the same layers. Now we need to make this rectangle white. As you can see this is white. But it doesn't have a fill, so we need to make the fill, no fill and the border white, just like in this one. We go to the fill and we remove the fill. We go to the stroke and we make this white, and of course we have to re-size, make it wider so we can actually see it. There we go, it's starting to show, super. Now, obviously we need to resize this. We go back to the move tool and edit, free transform, very important. Then you can use Alt or Option and drag it inwards. Voila. Always go back to the move tool whenever you're done with something. Now, are you ready to learn something new. This brush, I love using brushes there are so much you can do, you can paint in Photoshop, which I do as well. Now, in terms of layers for brushes, you need to create a new layer for a brush. If you don't, it will destroy your other layers. You need to create a new layer. The way to do this is to look at the layers panel at the bottom. Next to the trash or in the UK we say bin. You'll see an icon. If you're using the latest version of Photoshop, it we'll say plus, an older version will be a little square with a folded corner. If you click on that, you will see a new layer, an empty layer. Now we are going to go to the brush tool, and the brush tool is over here. The shortcut is B, B for brush. Very easy. We're also going to bring up the brushes panel. If you are ever looking for a panel, and this is an all Adobe software, you always need to go to window because window is where all the panels leave. If you select brushes, you can look at a whole bunch of brushes over here. You'll probably see something like this, and you'll probably see general brushes. Now, let me show you a couple of these. If you look at soft rounds let's say, and you look at the size, you can change the brush size. If I make this bigger, my brush size will be bigger which is very cool. But let me give you a shortcut which will make everything go much faster. To increase the brush size, it's the right square bracket. If you do that, your brush size will get bigger, and the left square bracket making it smaller. Now we're just going to play with it and you can just go click and drag, and that's one type of brush. Although it's not the one we need. You can just edit, undo. Let's try hard round, and then edit, undo. Now let's look at some really cool, really fun ones. If you look at dry media brushes and wet media brushes, you have things like ink and gouache and special effects. Now if do not see these brushes, what you could do is you can either go to the Adobe website and type in Kyle Webster brushes. It's a guy who created these free little brushes that allows you to paint, or you can just google download Kyle Webster brushes for free, which is what I did, and you have loads of them, you have gouache. Now the one we'll be using is Kyle ultimate charcoal, which is here under dry media brushes. But obviously you can use any type of brush you like. Again, we can use the shortcut to resize this brush. The right square bracket or left square bracket. Now before you go for it, just make sure that your color is white. The fill is white and you can go for it, and click and drag. Sometimes it's a little bit slow. But how fun is this? Now I'm going to do the rest of the image very quickly. Go back to the shape tool, select the custom shape tool. Look at the top and choose this flower, this time, shape 47, and maybe give it another color so it's easier to differentiate. Hold down the Shift key and draw it in. Now this displays the image file, place embedded. Which image was it? The tattoo girl again. Click on place and resize. Now make sure that your image isn't smaller than your shape. You want your image to be a bit bigger, so you don't have these gaps, and now you hold down the Alt key until you see the square and the arrow and you click. There it is. Always go back to the move tool, and then you would be able to move it if you wanted to. Now, I trust that you can do the rest. I would like you to recreate this one on your own. 8. Clipping Image to Brush: We're going to go ahead and go to the final one one here and that's what we'll be recreating, which is really exciting because it has both a brush and a clipping mask and looks really cool, I think. Let's make sure we close the previous artboard so we don't see it. Let's make sure that we click with the move tool on Artboard 8, there it is. We're going to expand this so it faces downwards. Let's do our rectangle here. We're going to go to our rectangle tool. Again, we can click and drag. Let's change the fill, remove the fill. Let's make the border this color. Again, if you don't have it, click on the color picker and you can select the color here. Okay. Again, we need to make the border bigger, bigger border. Something like that, yes. Then, always go back to the move tool. Then, make sure that your layer is selected. Always make sure. Then, you go to edit, free transform. Hold down the alter option key and resize your frame. Now, for the fun part. Let's go back to the move tool as usual and we're going to do this brush again. Now remember, for brushes, you always need to create a new layer. So we go back to the new layer icon. Layer 7 for a brush and we go back to our brush tool. If we go back to our brush panel, which is a here, or window brushes is where panels live. The last setting will still be selected. If you want, you can make your brush a bit bigger using the square bracket. Now, go for it. Click and drag and start creating this gorgeous little brush setting. Obviously, you're not going to get it exactly the same. But you can do your best or you can do it completely different and be super creative. Now, we're going to place an image inside this brush. So we can really use any object as a clipping mask. We can use brushes, we can use shapes, and even texts which we'll look at later. So now we're going to go file, place embedded and choose our winter cabin. Click on place, and let's make this much bigger. The same drill, you hold down the alter option key and you click until you see the square and the arrow, and beautiful isn't it? You can go back to the move tool and resize it. Let's do the text now. So for the text, same drill, you go to the type tool. You create a text frame, and luckily the text formatting will be the same as before. So all we have to do is type our text in "winter", and make it white, highlight it, click on white, and let's go back to the move tool to deselect it. Now, let's go back to the type tool and click and drag a text frame. Again, create a new text frame and type "cabin holiday". Then, we go back to the move tool. If you wanted to move your text, you can just click and drag but make sure you're on the move tool. For the final touch, it's the rectangles. So we go to the rectangle tool. We select the black color and make sure when you do this, you you deselect everything. Click on the artboard. Then, you can click and drag and create your rectangle, which I think it's a bit off but that's fine. This might be a little bit hard to tell, but that's fine because we can resize it later. No problem. Something like this. Now, let's go back to the move tool, always. Obviously, we need to move our shapes so that they're underneath our text. So I would like us to click and drag, move it down, click and drag, move it down. That's interesting, my text disappeared. So let's have a look, what went wrong for me here. If I go to the type tool and I click here, oh, so my text frame wasn't big enough. I can click and drag, make it big enough. I can go back to the move tool to move it. Now, if I'm not happy with my rectangle, if this one needs to be smaller and this one needs to be wider, what I can do is select the rectangle. My trick to looking at which rectangle is selected is this eye here. The eye is for visibility. So if this is on, I can see the rectangle, if this is off, I can't see it. So I know that this layer is this rectangle. That's my little trick. Now, remember our free transform resizing tool. Same here, edit, free transform, and same thing. If you hold down the shift key whilst you do it, you can manipulate it better. Great. Let's do the same for the other rectangle. So again, you can click on the eye oh, yes, that is the correct rectangle I want, and then go back to edit, free transform, and hold down the shift key and you can resize it. Go back to the move tool. Great. 9. Exporting to Jpegs: Now well done for creating this. What I'm going to show you now, which isn't in these existing graphics, is how to create a clipping mask with texts. To do this, we're going to create a new artboards. I would like you to zoom out, command or control minus. So far this is what we've created. Very nice. I would like you to finish off these two, recreate these and practice your newly acquired skills. What we'll do together now is we're going to create a new artboard. I'll show you how to do that. First, let's close all our artboards. So the arrow faces to the right. Let's go to the "Move Tool" and select this artboard, because we're going to add an artboard over here. Now to add an additional artboard, you can right-click over here and go to the "Artboard Tool". Under top, you'll see the sizes. Now this is the size we're currently using. But if you wanted to maybe post it for social media, like maybe Instagram, you would have to have a square proportion. Just make sure that these two are equal. The width would be 3,000 and the height will be 3,000, and then you would have a square. You can type what ever formats you want here. Then you can click on the "Plus". If you click and drag, it will create another artboard. If you wanted to create another one, you can click on the red "Plus", and another one can click again. Let's undo a couple of times. If you wanted to create another artboard, but resize it, you couldn't. But anyway, let's undo that because we don't need that for today. We can just have those two. Let's zoom in. To to create a clipping mask for texts, you need to go to the "Type Tool" and create a text frame. Now make sure Artboard 9 selected because that's the one we'll be working on now. Click and drag. For text as a clipping mask, just make sure that your text is pretty big. You want to go here and make it pretty big. Otherwise you won't be able to see it. Can call it winter. You can type what ever you want. Clearly my font is white here. So I can highlight it and make it black, let's say, and I can make it even bigger if I wanted to. Now let's go back to the "Move Tool". If I wanted to place an image in this, I would have to go "File", "Place Embedded" just like before. Select, let's say winter cabin, place it, move it and again, the same drill, alt and click. How beautiful is that? Very nice. What I'll show you now is how to save individual artboards as JPEGs or PDFs or any format that you want. Sam, we're really happy with this one. I want to save this as a separate JPEG. What I can do is select Artboard 8, click on "Artboard 8". Then I can go to "File", "Export" "Artboards to Files" and make sure you tick "Export Selected Artboards". That means that it will only select and export Artboard 8, which is what we want. Then click on "Browse" and you save it wherever you want. I'll save it here in that folder. Then you can choose do you want to save it as a JPEG, as a Photoshop file, as a PDF, totally up to you. I'm going to choose JPEG and click on "Run" and let Photoshop do its thing. Minimize Photoshop, and that's how it look. There is my gorgeous JPEG graphic. Great. Now that you've learned all the skills, what I would like you to do is use one of the artboards we've just created and I want you to get super creative. I want you to use all the tools you've learned, create shapes and clipping mask and loads of brushes and texts, and create a beautiful graphic and I would like you to post it in the projects section. I'm really excited to see what you guys come up with and the beautiful graphics you will create, which you can then use for social media. It was a pleasure to teach you and I'll see you soon.