Stuff About Masking in Photoshop

There are many ways to use the Masking tool in Photoshop.

Here is a fairly easy and very useful one.

Let's say I've created a character, who is wearing jeans and I want put some denim texture into his jeans.

In Photoshop I open a New Layer

I use the Pen Tool to draw the shape of his jeans.

Then I select the Path Selection Tool (A).

I set the Foreground Colour to the one I want.

I right click on the jeans shape and select Fill Path.

Foreground Colour.

I have found a denim texture online.

I open the denim in a new Photoshop document.

I go to Image > Adjustments > Desaturate to take the colour out of it.

I use the Rectangular marquee Tool to select it.

I go to Edit > Copy, and then I Edit > Paste it into the document with my trousers in it.

The Layers menu should now look like this:

With the Denim layer highlighted I press Command T and resize the denim image to the required dimensions, and the hit RETURN.

With the denim layer highlighted, I hold down the Command key and click in the ICON of the trousers in the Trousers layer.

It should look like this:

I then click on the Add Layer Mask icon.

And my Image should look like this:

I have created a mask in the shape of the jeans, which is filled with the denim pattern.