Creating and Modifying an Image Mask

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About this lesson

We’ll walk through how to apply a custom mask to an image.

Quick reference

Topic

We’ll walk through how to apply a custom mask to an image.

When to use

Custom masks can add a creative touch to your slides allowing you to show off your images in creative ways. Adding a custom mask is easy, once you understand how to do it.

Instructions

Standard image masks are great for quick and simple masking, but custom masking can add a new level of interest to an image.

To add a standard mask to an image:

  • select the image
  • click the “Image Mask” button from the formatting pane
  • drag the corner handles inward to adjust the size

To add a custom mask to a shape:

  • insert a shape on our slide
  • locate an image to use and drop it on top of our new shape

Note: we can add an image to a custom shape just like we can a standard shape

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  • 00:04 In the previous lesson entitled, Inserting and Manipulating Images,
  • 00:08 we briefly walked through how to apply a mask to an image.
  • 00:12 This is great for cropping unwanted areas of an image without having to invest a lot
  • 00:16 of time in opening and editing files in Photoshop or Pixelmator or
  • 00:20 other difficult to use, and sometimes expensive, image editing applications.
  • 00:25 In this lesson, we'll go one step further and
  • 00:27 show you how we can apply some really interesting masks to our images.
  • 00:32 As a very quick refresher, let's show you, one more time,
  • 00:34 how to apply a simple mask to an image.
  • 00:37 We select the image, click on the image tab on the formatting pane,
  • 00:42 click Edit Mask and then drag the corner handles inward.
  • 00:46 This will essentially crop our image.
  • 00:49 That's great but what if we wanted to apply a custom mask to an image?
  • 00:53 No problem.
  • 00:55 Let's start by adding a shape to our canvas.
  • 00:58 In this example, we'll use an arrow shape.
  • 01:01 We can adjust it slightly by grabbing the handles, and adjusting where necessary.
  • 01:06 Now that we have our arrow just the way we want it,
  • 01:09 let's find an image to drag onto the shape.
  • 01:13 You'll see that as we do this,
  • 01:14 the image will be applied to the shape as the fill type.
  • 01:17 When we deselect the shape,
  • 01:19 we are left with a custom mask in the shape of an arrow for our image.
  • 01:23 Not too impressed with that?
  • 01:25 That's okay, let's take it to the next level.
  • 01:28 In the lesson entitled Inserting and Manipulating Shapes, we go into great
  • 01:32 detail on how to use the pen tool when creating ultra custom shapes in Keynote.
  • 01:38 We won't go into all the detail in this lesson, but I would recommend that you
  • 01:41 view that lesson, if you haven't already, to become an expert in that tool.
  • 01:45 With that in mind, let's quickly create a custom shape using the Pen tool.
  • 01:55 Now that our shape is complete, we'll apply the same principle as before by
  • 01:59 dragging and dropping an image on top of the custom shape.
  • 02:02 Voilà, there's our very custom mask applied to our image.
  • 02:06 If we need to,
  • 02:07 we can adjust our anchor points to edit the mask, giving us total control.
  • 02:12 Keynote makes working with images simple enough that anyone can make incredible
  • 02:15 looking slides.
  • 02:17 It just takes some knowledge of the tools mixed with your own personal creativity.
  • 02:22 What can you do with masking to make your slides look incredible?

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