Add A Clipping Mask
What if a template doesn’t fit the number of photos you want to use? No problem. In this video you’ll learn how to add your own photo clipping mask layer and make it work with the overall design.
Video 05-05: Add A Clipping Mask (5:16)
A template can be close to what you want, but not quite right. In this lesson I'll show you how to easily add a clipping mask to your template and alter the design.
Here's a template that has a place for one large photo and two small photos. You'll find this template in your Lesson 5 practice folder if you want to follow along. Let's say you wanted to put one more smaller photo on this document. Here's how to add another photo clipping mask.
Get the Move tool and open Tool Options. Make sure Auto Select Layer is checked. On your document, click on the photo clipping mask you want to duplicate. I'll click on the smaller image on the right. This will make it the selected layer in the Layers panel. In the menu bar, choose Layer, Duplicate Layer. When the dialog box comes up, click OK.
On your document, click on the layer and move it wherever you want. The template may now be out of balance, so you'll have to think through the best way to solve the problem of how to accommodate the new template piece. There's more than one way to go about it, so figure out a layout that's pleasing to you. Here's what I'll do. Click and drag the new photo clipping mask below the image on the right, lining them up and leaving a small amount of space between them. Drag the left smaller photo clipping mask below the other two to make a row of three photo clipping masks. Make sure the space between all three images is the same. I'll use my arrow keys to bump that one up a little bit so that it has the same space. You may need to reposition or resize the photo clipping masks.
Here's what I'll do. In the Layers panel, click on the bottom mask layer and shift click on the top mask layer to select all three of the small photo clipping mask layers. Press Ctrl T in Windows or Command T on a Mac to get a Transform outline. Because you have three layers selected, all three are included in the Transform outline and you can move and resize all three at the same time. Click and drag the set of three photo clipping masks near the larger photo. We're going to line it up with the top and use my arrow keys to move it over a little bit.
In this case, the three photos don't fit well with the larger photo so I'll need to resize them. Normally, you would resize using a corner handle to maintain the original proportion, but these are generic clipping masks so you can distort them without causing any harm. To do that, click and drag the bottom middle transform handle. I'll drag it up to the edge of the larger photo. And this changes the proportion of the smaller photos from square to horizontal. Notice the stroke outline easily adjusts to the new size without distortion. That's one of the cool things about using a stroke layer style as a frame. It keeps the same distance from the edge without distorting.
I'll click on the Cancel button though to undo that and try that again. I'll get the transform outline again and click and drag this over to my larger photo and move it into place. And this time I'll click on a corner handle and drag it up to resize it proportionately. Now, you may want to zoom in close here and make sure that you're getting it right in the right spot like that, lined up nicely, and then click on the checkmark to commit the change. Here is what it looks like lined up next to the larger photo. By the way, anytime you change a template you may also need to adjust the position of the placeholder elements and type to fit the new design.
Here's my family history page after I've added photos, papers and elements. Yes, that's my real family and I'm the baby in these pictures. You'll find everything you need to recreate this page in the Lesson 5 practice folder. By the way, all of these papers and elements except for the flowers are flat items that don't need a drop shadow. Here's my family page with just the background paper. Then I added an edge overlay and another overlay in the upper left corner, some dotted lines called stitching holes, a scribble and some word art about family happiness. And finally, I replaced three placeholder template layers with three flowers which are 3-D elements. So I added a drop shadow to them. Here's how my template started out. And here's how I changed it by adding one more clipping mask to accommodate the number of photos I had.
So that's how to create an additional clipping mask layer and make an adjustment to the design of the template.