When it comes to improving the presentation of your stream the OBS effect filter tool, image mask, can be a great effect way to personalize and give your stream layout its own identity by making sources such as images or webcams to have the appearance of other shapes such as a circle. In this guide I’ll be going over what an image mask is, and how to attach an image mask to a source in OBS.
What is an Image Mask?
An image mask is where you take an image and lay it over a source such as a video or image to take on the shape of the image. To understand what an image mask is below is an example.
An image mask will traditionally come in black and white. The white area represents the area of the source that will be visible. The black area represents the area of the source that will be masked.
Making an image mask template can be created using paint or photoshop applications such as Affinity, Adobe Photoshop or GIMP.
Adding an Image Mask
Once you have created or downloaded your image mask follow these simple steps in OBS to add the image mask filter.
Add Your Sources
First add and place your sources where you want them to be on your layout.
Select Filters
Right click on the source that you want to add the image mask to and select Filters.
Select Image Mask/Blend
Click on the + sign in the lower left corner and select Image Mask/Blend. A pop-up window will appear where you can name the image mask filter. Then press OK.
Set Image Mask/Blend Settings
For the basic black/white image masks, set the Type to Alpha Mask (Color Channel). Then click on Browse and select the image mask file. For the Color setting, set the color to white (known as #ffffff in hex code). If you would like to make the image transparent, adjust the opacity to your preference. Then click Close.
And that’s it! You’ve successfully added an image mask filter designing your stream.
Image masks are great to personalize your stream and customize your layout. You can make subtle changes to stream such as using rounded rectangle image masks or circle image masks. Or make your stream stand out by adding a star shaped image mask to your webcam. The limits designing your stream are up to your creativity.