Rangefinder Magazine
January 2005

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Photoshop CS by Dave Cross
Layer Clipping Groups

This is one of a series of Adobe® Photoshop® tutorials sponsored by Adobe Systems and the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) to be reprinted in Rangefinder. The article is from Photoshop User magazine, the official publication of NAPP (www.photoshopuser.com).

One very useful command in layer functions is Layer Clipping Groups—so useful, it deserves its own article. (In Photoshop CS, this technique is known as a Layer Clipping Mask—probably a more descriptive name for what the command does.)

For this technique, you place one or more layers above a layer and “clip” those layers so they’re only visible where there are pixels on the bottom layer of the clipping group (CS: Clipping Mask). Probably the most common use is to place a photo inside text (as shown in the last issue; however, there are many other possibilities).

Here’s a text logo, and we want to apply a filter to the text to give it some texture. When we attempt to run the Texturizer filter, we get a warning dialog to rasterize our type, which means the text will no longer be editable. Ideally, we should preserve the ability to edit our type layers, and that’s where clipping groups will help. Here’s how:

Step One: Click on the Create a New Layer icon (at the bottom of the Layers palette) to add a new layer above the Type layer. Now, make sure your foreground color is the same color as your type and press Option-Delete (PC: Alt-Backspace) to fill the layer with the same color as your type.

Step Two: Apply the Texturizer filter (Filter > Texture > Texturizer) to this new layer.

Step Three: From the Layer menu, choose Group with Previous (CS: Make Clipping Mask) or press Cmd-G (Ctrl-G). The Texture layer will be visible only where it’s “clipped” by the Type layer.

Because we didn’t rasterize the Type layer, it can still be edited, and the Texture layer will adjust accordingly. (By filling the entire layer in Step One, we give ourselves flexibility in case we pick a much larger font or size.)

Flexibility
One of the inherent advantages of Clipping Groups is flexibility: For example, if you were creating a simple button for a web site or video project, you might want to use a Clipping Group to help you decide between various options. In this example, we created a button shape using the Rounded Rectangle Shape tool and added a Bevel and Emboss Layer Style. Next, we added three new layers above the shape, each time pressing Cmd-G (Ctrl-G) to add the layers into the Clipping Group (yes, you can clip multiple layers in a Clipping Group).

Now, by hiding layers (click on the Eye icon beside each layer you want to make invisible), we can easily compare different looks. Or, we could keep all layers visible, but play with different Blending Modes or Opacities to make the layers interact with each other.

Controlling the Effects of Adjustment Layers
There’s one other important use for a Clipping Group: controlling the effects of Adjustment Layers. By nature, Adjustment Layers affect all layers below them; so for an Adjustment layer to affect only one layer, you have to create a Clipping Group.

Here we’ve selected and copied onto separate layers portions of the Background layer and added Drop Shadows to each. We added a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer above the Background layer and desaturated the Background to remove the color: Click on the black/white circle at the bottom of the Layers palette and choose Hue/Saturation from the pop-up list.

When we added a Hue/Saturation Adjustment layer to the top of the layer stack, it affected every layer in the document. To make this Adjustment Layer affect only the layer immediately below it, press Cmd-G (Ctrl-G). The resulting Clipping Group forces the Adjustment layer to affect only the layer with which it’s “clipped.” To take this to the next level, we added an Adjustment layer immediately above each layer and created a series of Clipping Groups, creating the effect you see here.

When you start to see the control and flexibility offered by Clipping Groups, you’ll find ways to take advantage of them in many different situations.