I wept to a bird who drank bleach from the hands of a psychopath.

I grabbed this photo from Episode 81 of @jessandthesea's poetry project, Skin on Sundays.

It originally looked like this...

I modified it by using an alpha mask. Alpha masks seem to be one of the hardest concepts to grasp in Photoshop... but they're easy, I promise!

Imagine this mask on my face is the color black in a Photoshop mask.

With Photoshop masks, black areas are hidden, and white areas are visible. The mask is the color black, because it is hiding what is beneath it.

Here is one way to make a mask...

First, make a selection.

Make a selection around the areas of the photo you want to keep.

Then, click the mask button.

The little stencil icon on the bottom right of the screen.

That's it!

Photoshop will automatically connect a mask to your layer. This is what my mask looks like. Black areas are hidden, and white areas are visible.

Since the portion of the mask over the wall behind her is black, it is removed (allowing the sky layer beneath it to shine through).

Making changes later...

I think masks are great because they are not permanent. If you have the mask selected (not the layer icon to its immediate left), you can paint on it using the brush tool (painting black = erasing).

Any area you paint black will erase, and any area you paint white will shine through. I usually prefer masks over the eraser tool, because I can revisit them later and modify...

Make sure you check out @jessandthesea's magical poetry if you haven't already. It may change your life, seeing the world through her eyes..
<3