Procreate Photo Compositing Masterclass - YouTube

Artifact Archives
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Dec 30, 2025
Hello! If you're new to Procreate, welcome! You are in the right place.
This video will teach you how to use all of the main features of Procreate
while learning to composite a photo like this.
All using nothing but Procreate and a few stock photos.
So, let's dive right into it.
To make this as simple as possible for you to follow along to,
I'm going to share with you my Procreate file right here.
It has all of the images that you're going to need for this tutorial,
so you can follow along with me step by step.
Simply click the link in the description, click the download button,
then open it up in your files app on your iPad.
By default, it should get saved into the downloads folder,
so you can go ahead and find it right here.
Once you've opened up the Procreate file,
you should see all of the images that are listed right here underneath the layers menu.
Now we are ready to start.
The first thing that we're going to do is we're going to create a hole
so that we can see the images behind it.
Because we're going to create our own scene that is going to be happening
on the other side of this airplane window.
But there's one thing to keep in mind.
If we just use the eraser pen and erase from the layer like so,
what we're doing is we're effectively deleting all of this information from the image.
And the issue with that is that if you make a mistake at any point during this process,
you have to undo until the point that you made the mistake.
And if you close the app, well, that mistake is permanent.
So is there a better way?
Is there a way to erase something without deleting it?
Well, that is where masks come in.
Let's talk about how to create a mask using the selection tool.
First, we're going to make sure that we have the airplane window layer selected.
And then we're going to tap on the selection tool and choose the freehand option
to create the area that we want to remove from this layer.
We could also use ellipse, rectangle or the automatic selection tool for this.
But the automatic selection is a little bit of a hit and miss.
For this specific scenario, it doesn't work
because the colors are too similar between the clouds and the window itself right here.
So you can see the selection, it sort of bleeds over to the window.
And that's the reason why we can't use this tool for this specific scenario.
But don't worry, because I'm going to show you another scenario later in the video
where we're going to use the automatic selection tool.
But for now, let's switch over to the freehand option and let's make our selection.
The way the freehand works is you can basically tap or draw.
So we're going to start by tapping where we want the selection to start.
And then we're going to tap to add more points to the selection.
And when we get to this bend right here, we can choose to either continue tapping like so,
or if we have a steady hand, then we can also simply draw it in like so.
And we don't need to worry about making this selection perfect.
The great thing about masks is that we can always change things afterwards.
If we make a mistake, then we can fix it later.
So by tapping on that dot right there, we now have closed our selection.
So now this area is selected.
Now, what we're going to do next is we're going to turn this selection into a mask.
And to do that, we simply tap on the layer like so and then tap on mask.
And now we've turned this selection into a mask.
And if nothing happens, well, just make sure to activate the mask
by tapping on that little button right there.
And now we've activated this mask.
But you see, it's a little bit weird, right?
It's doing the opposite of what we would think.
Instead of removing the glass in the airplane window,
it's actually removing everything except the glass.
To fix that, we simply tap on the mask itself and then we're going to invert.
And you see what happened right there?
The black became white and the white became black.
Let me show you again.
So look at the black there.
Now it's white.
The thing about masks is that white shows, black hides.
So if the black is in the middle right there, then we can see through this layer.
And that's why masks are so awesome.
You can see that this mask belongs to this layer if I just pick it up like so.
So we can see that masks, they adhere to a single layer.
So now that we've masked this out, we don't need the selection anymore.
So what I'm simply going to do is I'm going to tap on the selection tool again, like so.
And now we've deselected.
In the next video, what we're going to do is we're going to focus on the balloons.
And for that, we're going to need to use the transform tool,
the automatic selection, liquefying and a little bit more.
I'll see you in the next one.
Bye-bye.
