: Creating a US map of license plates with Photoshop I've recently returned from a vacation in the US, in which I managed to photograph the license plates of 41 out of 50 states, with the intent

@Turnbaugh909

If you reword this "how do I create a mask in Photoshop", then you could type it in into any search engine and find the following Adobe Photoshop Help page: helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/masking-layers.html

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@Ogunnowo857

If you have a decent map this should be fairly easy, how quick will depend largely on the quality of the map.

Say I'm using this one www.teachervision.com/tv/printables/kt_maps/kt_map_usa.pdf
I'll open it up and this one was nicely made with no background. This will be helpful but also hurtful. First off I'm going to get rid of Hawaii and Alaska and the text and such, just to keep this a bit simpler for the quick tutorial.

Then I magic wand the outside, invert selection, and filled it with white on a new layer -- below the map:



Merge those together so its one layer.

Now click a state using the magic wand and press Ctrl+J which makes a copy of the selection onto a new layer. Don't move it or anything. Then drop a photo on top of that layer and make clipping mask.

So for California, I'll marquee california on my map layer and press Ctrl+J. Then put a photo directly above that. Here is where were at so far, I turned off the Map layer but California is in its correct spot thanks to how we duplicated it:



Now I'm going to move the photo on top of its state and make it into a clipping mask. I'd suggest grouping them as well so its more organized



Then just repeat for each state. For some of the tighter packed ones in the Northeast you may need to manually select them using either the Pen or Lasso tool instead of Magic Wand.

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@Bethany839

Were I trying to do what I think you're trying to do, I would simply put each licence plate, with the background scoured out, on a different layer, resizing them if necessary, and then "save for internet", which visually combines all visible layers into one image.

So, as an example, map on layer 1 (0 is the background layer, which you might want to make invisible), then Alabama's plate on layer 2, Arkansas's on 3, etc.

I'd do it that way because Adobe has never made their Bezier tools even averagely easy to use, so I avoid using them.

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@Shelley591

OK, so the answer is in this link (courtesy of @Rad Lexus), under the Add a layer mask that hides part of a layer section.

EDIT:
I'm pasting the relevant solution here as per @Vincent 's request.


In the Layers panel, select the layer or group.
Select the area in the image, and do one of the following:


Click the New Layer Mask button in the Layers panel to create a mask that reveals the selection.
Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click (Mac OS) the Add Layer Mask button in the Layers panel to create a mask that hides the selection.
Choose Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal Selection or Hide Selection.

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