May 12, 2008
Filling layers with mask
Lets say you want to simply change the fill color of a layer in Photoshop from white to black. The typical process is not very effective:
- Load the selection for the layer you want to change (option click on the layer)
- Make sure you have the correct color in the foreground
- Hit Option-Delete to fill it with the foreground
Not only is this a slow process, but it also does not respect the transparency mask, leaving pixels that used to be 25% transparent to be 50% transparent now.
Fortunately there is a quick and easy method that does respect the transparency of your layer, and it’s also a lot quicker:
Simply select the layer you want to change colors for, make sure you’ve got the new color in the foreground and hit: Option-Shift-Delete. This tip also works for shape layers and text layers as well!
Thanks to Brian Zeitler for teaching me this trick a while back!
Nice tip. I’ve also fallen in love with using Color Overlay in the effects pallette. Much greater control over the color of a layer, though at the expense of rendering time if you have many of them with a slow machine.
Just in case anyone was wondering, this applies to more than just black and white. That was simply an example. You can change orange to red, or purple to green using this method as well.
@Mike: Yeah I use Color Overlay sometimes, but it’s less efficient. It’s non-destructive which is great if you just want to easily experiment with many different colors.
I wouldn’t say it’s less efficient. Just more processor intensive if you have 500 of them. I would actually argue that it is more efficient due to the ease of editing and previewing changes.
@Mike: I find it less efficient because you have to open the effects palette to change the color, where in this case you can change it with a single keystroke.