Often times, Photoshop’s clipping paths will leave images with edges that are too sharp and too much detail lost (particularly with hair and clothing) and will be unsuitable for studio portrait images. This is where our masking services come into play.
Masks are powerful features of Photoshop® that allow users to select objects and areas in an image for editing and manipulation, composition or for removal and placement into other images.Masks allow users to accurately identify elements of an image that seem impossible to select, such as unevenly focused outlines, hair, clothing strands and chain link fences. Layer masks are a quick way to create a subtle blend between two images, such as a blend between a model and a plain white background.
An Alpha channel stores selected areas of an image as 8-bit grayscale images in the Photoshop channels palette (channels are the way Photoshop stores colour information). Thus, creating an alpha channel is a way of selecting an area of an image based on colour. Alpha channels are most commonly used to store and change selection outlines. They let the user change part of a composition without having to redo all their work. Alpha channels are used extensively in creating graphics for video.
As said before, since masking preserves many more details than clipping paths do and create much smoother edges, masks are much better for portraits, model photography or any other images which involve people.
