Hi everyone, in this video we're going to look at something called Spillover Masks... it's a word that I made up... but it's these images... that kind of spill over the edges of the rectangles and circles... and it looks really cool, it's really easy, it's just an optical illusion in Figma... more of a layer stack, but it's cool...
so let's jump in, and I'll show you how they're made. All right, to get started bring in two images... I have got, there's two spillover ones, one with a mask, one without a mask... so for this to work you need to have masked something out from the background... but you need both of them to get that kind of cool overlapping thing... now, not a Photoshop course...
but I will at the end show you how I got this masked out... up to you, there's lots of other tools to do masking. What we're going to do is, we need these, I'm going to make duplicates of them... and I'm going to make sure this is over the top of this... because they're the same size, they should overlap nicely... it's a bit confusing, right, but you get the idea.
So what we're going to need, basically this one here, that has a mask... I'm going to turn the Eyeball off, I can't see it... this one here, I'm just going to move up so it's underneath this one... just for confusion sake... because I got these other copies up the top... so one on top, with the Eyeball off, so it's hidden, then this version...
what I'm going to do is I'm going to grab the Ellipse tool, which is the 'O' key... I'm going to hold down 'Option' on my Mac, 'Alt' on a PC, and 'Shift'... just so it starts from the center when I start dragging... and it's a perfect circle... get it how you want, the V tool, Selection tool, kind of line it up... and all we need to do is put this at the back...
so it needs to be behind this image, I'm going to 'Shift' click it... so I got both of these selected... make my mask, and then just turn the Eyeball back on this guy, on the top... look at that, there you go, inside-ey outside stuff... looks trick, but it's just a, I don't know, optical illusion. Another kind of interesting trick with this is-- I'm going to do the same thing, make a duplicate...
I'm going to hit the 'O' on my keyboard to get a circle... 'Option Shift', or 'Alt Shift' on a PC... and we'll do it with a color, like you saw at the beginning there, pick any color... as long as it's some kind of green... I'm looking, actually just, I was going to pick something different... but I want something that contrasts this kind of brown warm ochre color...
"and of course, it's green, Dan"... get it lined up, holding 'Shift', so it doesn't squish my circle... and I don't have to really do anything, just send it to the back... and this one up the top here... I'm going to add-- the cool thing about something that has transparency... if you add the effect of Drop Shadow in here...
I'm going to go '0', '4', it'll depend on your shape, looks fine for me, 0, 4... why 4? So it's poking down the bottom, and 25%, looks quite cool... so let's have a look, no shadow, shadow, no shadow, shadow, cool, huh. So really what happens is, the mask gets done somewhere else... and we just do some nice layering here in Figma...
now that's a super easy one, let's do one that's mildly more complicated. So let's bring in the other two images... remember, 'Command Shift K', 'Ctrl Shift K' on a PC... bring in the two 'Spill 02's, and I'm going to 'Place All'... and they just put them over the top of each other for me, which is great. So I've got one with a mask on top, and the no mask at the bottom...
what we want to do is, let's turn off the Mask one... let's just turn the eyeball off... who remembers what the shortcut is? 'Command Shift H', 'Ctrl Shift H' on a PC, so we've hidden that one... now this one here, so forget that one exists, let's just work on this... so I'm going to mask mine with a rectangle, actually, we'll use a frame...
because it might throw up another problem, that'll be helpful to cover... so I'm going to use a frame, same tricks work... if I hold 'Option Shift', and start in the middle... it'll draw a square from the center... and going to get it so that-- do I want our arms to pop out, "Yeah, let's do that"... wasn't my original plan...
and all we need to do is select both of these and make a mask... nope, that has to be the back... using my square brackets, then make a mask, all right. So let's hide that to try not be too confusing... and we've got Spill 02, let's turn that one back on... actually, let's turn that one on as well...
so I got my mask on, and then I've got this, this plain old Spill 02 mask... just hanging out here, we need to trim it up because I want the bottom to trim up... and what we could do to save time... is I just want to drag this up from the bottom, really, don't I? Who remembers what I hold down on my keyboard just to kind of trim it up? That's right, "Ccommand' on a Mac, 'Ctrl' on a PC, and there we go, cool huh...
it's kind of poking out the edges, nice and subtle, big one at the top... we can trim it up more nicely, I'm holding that same key down... so 'Command' on Mac, 'Ctrl' on PC... I don't know, I really like that kind of spillover effect. Now how do you get the mask, the next one I'll get started with the Pen tool... and we'll mask it out in Figma...
but at the moment there are some plugins, they're okay-ish, not really... and I'm not saying you have to learn Photoshop... but most people who do a lot of UX design work... will also know a bit of Photoshop and Illustrator... don't have to, those of you who do, I'll show you what I did... to get kind of the file started.
So this one was really easy... all I had to do was actually, delete the thing that I made... so open up the image in Photoshop, if you want to follow along you can do... I want The Spill 01 and O2, the No Mask options... so I'm going to drag that into Photoshop, open it up... and we'll start with this one, because this one was super easy...
I just went 'Select', 'Subject', which is magical and awesome... it's even done a pretty good job of... in here, around the glasses... it depends, like we could spend a long time doing masks... but for what we need, probably need to trim that out, maybe. So I'm going to grab my magic wand tool...
and we don't use the magic wand anymore, we use the Quick Selection tool... which is better... and I'm going to hold down the 'Option' key on a Mac, 'Alt' key on a PC... just to get rid of some of this... and let go of that key to add to it... you end up, hopefully, with something that's kind of a bit balanced...
and again decide on how much detail you want to go into... that feels like enough for me... and then I just say 'Add Mask'... and then I say 'Command Option Shift S'... to do this one here... it's under 'File', it is under 'Export', and it's this one here...
'Export As' is great... if you're still using Save for Web, don't... this one here is much better... PNG, some transparency... I gave mine a width, you know, a height of 1500, just so it's not so big... and that's how I mask this one.
This other one here was a bit trickier... so I went 'Select', 'Subject', stand back, and oh... got close, and it's the same key... we can play around... there's two things we need to do, back to the Quick Selection tool... and you just-- let's have a look.
Let's, holding nothing down, because there's missing bits, so I just... by default it's on the plus, adding mode, I just drag around... until it starts getting the bits I want... I'm being very lazy here, but it's doing a pretty good job... all of this, it's still a good image to mask, there's reasonable contrast... again, I'm not doing anything, I'm just kind of dragging it around...
now if I want to remove-- because at the moment that's selected, right... so if I do that, boom, bad... so what I want to do is minus this bit out. So like before, hold down the 'Option' key on a Mac, 'Alt' key on a PC... and just drag in there, just really wants to snap to the edges... and it learns as you go...
don't want this bit, so I'm going to 'Alt' drag... and I went, oh yeah, get all of this, and because it's a really similar tone... gets rid of that bit as well... so I'm going to add that back in by not holding anything down... and now, how long am I going to spend making this awesome? That'll be up to you...
you can just click once, went too far, 'Option' click this bit... you end up with this balance of like, yeah, it's really good, I love it. So that is my mask, and then I went... 'Save as PNG', bring into Figma, actually no, it's not... because I had a look at this, so if I do this mask... it's a little chewed up on the edges, right?
It's like... the edges are okay, but it's a little bit, I don't know, chewed up... what we can do is, once you've added your Layer mask... you can have the mask selected and go to this one that says... click on the 'Layer' mask, go to this one that says, 'Select a Mask'... this is the magic part of Photoshop, it'll stay nice and close...
watch this, if I crank out the radius, too far... it'll smooth out my edges, so I've got it up a few pixels... if you tap P it'll show original, toggle it back and forth... and it's kind of dove into all the weaves here, just looks a little bit nicer. There's a lot more to select a mask... what I might do is, look at smoothing, I'll crank it right up...
kind of smooth the edges, too far, but a little bit of smoothing... or just a couple... I feel like that's fine for what I need... there's any kind of ghosting around the outside... you can shift the edge in a little bit... let's shift it all the way in, can you see, it kind of...
all the way out, all the way in, kind of removes a bit of that ghosting... again a little bit, and just kind of repairs that mask or kind of like... I don't know, fancies it up a little bit. So now I'm going to click on the 'Layer', I'm going to 'Export as PNG'... and that's how I got those images for you, for this video... cross sale, do Dan's Photoshop Essentials or Advanced course...
depending on your level... I reckon everyone does the Essentials one... there's so much in there that you might have missed... even if you are reasonably experienced at Photoshop... if you've already done my course, high five, here you go, bam. All right, that is how to do spillover masks in Figma, there's just two layers.