Today I've been practicing my Photoshop masking techniques. I find that if I don't use certain aspects of Photoshop every day, I forget how to do them and have to relearn. That's OK. Every time I go through the process I discover something new! That's the wonderful thing about Photoshop; the program is so deep that there's always hidden treasure to be found.
Here's a layered file of a liftplan for a 40-shaft dobby loom, with weaves applied as Layer Styles. The image file is on the left and the Layers Palette on the right (actually, in version CS4 the Layers Palette is called the Layers Panel, but it's the same thing)…
…and here's the same file with a mask applied to Layer 1 (you can see a little icon of the layer mask in the Layers Palette; the mask has horizontal black and white stripes). The mask hides the parts of Layer 1 that fall under the black pixels of the mask and allows Layer 2 to show through.
Here's a new file with the top half woven with the original design as a liftplan, and the bottom half woven with the masked design as a liftplan. Click to enlarge in order to see individual pixels. This is what the fabric would look like if woven with a black warp and white weft, on a straight threading.
More information about using Photoshop for jacquard and dobby weaving design can be found in
The Woven Pixel.