Classic Photoshop Effects 12 - Clipping Mask Effect

This is part twelve of a series that chronicles my journey through Scott Kelby’s book, Classic Photoshop Effects.

For this effect, I created a gift card with rounded corners using a clipping mask.  A clipping mask essentially limits the borders of your collage to the bounds of your clipping mask.  A clipping mask can be created using layer that you create.

I have always thought that it would be funny to get a gift card to the dollar store.  For this project, I started by gathering two images of dollars off of Google images:

I then cropped them and gave them a home in my new gift card:

The clipping mask that I used in this collage was a rounded rectangle.  I simply cut and pasted the images and text that I wanted in the gift card, and changed the perspective a little by shearing the image.  I created a drop shadow by duplicating the card layer, filling it with black, and then changing the distortion on it so that it fell behind like a shadow would.  I blurred it and lowered the opacity, giving it a more convincing look.  The final touch was to give the card a 3D look by using the bevel effect.