What do clipping masks and layer masks do on Photoshop?

P&G2010-02-28T16:50:21Z

Favorite Answer

Layer masks hide or expose the composition beneath them. This enables you to merge images together by masking part of one and exposing that part of the other.

A clipping mask crops an image to the shape of the layer below it.

Aces2010-02-27T15:17:06Z

For example you can lay a layer mask on a text, and then use black and white to chose how much visible they are. If you fill the mast with black, the image will be invisible, with a white / black gradiant it would fade out.

In short its a way to "mask out" a part of the picture / layer / selection