MACinations June 03 - Club Mac's magazine

Making the Most of Quick Mask in Adobe Photoshop

Tony Healy tonyhealy@optusnet.com.au

Quick Mask offers a number of ways of controlling portions of your image. First of all familiarise yourself with the controls at the bottom of the tools palette (Fig 1)
Open an image and go to the Menu WINDOWS>Show Navigator. Move slider along until it indicates 100%.
Go to menu WINDOWS>Show Layer Palette.
Drag Background layer in Layer Palette onto the icon at the bottom of the Layer Palette that looks like a page with the corner turned over. This will create a background copy. Leave this highlighted.
Go to the bottom of the Tool Palette and click on the Quick Mask icon. (Fig 1) Make sure the foreground and background colours are black and white, with black as the foreground colour (ie on top). If not click on the default setting black and white patches. Use the reverse arrows to toggle the foreground and background colours.
Select the Brush Tool and go to the Brush sizes at the top of the window and select a small soft edged brush probably about 13 -17 pixels.
Make sure Background Copy layer is highlighted in Layer Palette.

Using the scroll bars locate the edge of your object and begin to paint in the INSIDE edge of the object. You will begin to fill in the object with a red colour. Go all around the inside edge and thicken the red line. (Fig 2) Then go to the Brush Size and select a large brush about 45 pixels and fill in the centre. If you make a mistake toggle the foreground colour to white and paint over the mistake. Change back to Black foreground and continue.

Fig 1


Fig 2 - Painting the mask		Fig 3 - Painted mask complete

When the object is fully covered in red (Fig 3) click on the Standard Mode icon. (Fig. 1) The red should disappear and your object will have selection lasso (marching ants) all around it. (Fig. 4) You have now isolated your object from the rest of the image.
Go to the Menu SELECT>Feather and use say 2 pixels. (Fig. 5)


Fig 4 - Marching ants		Fig 5 - Feather menu

At this stage it is best to save all your hard work.
Go to menu SELECT>Save Selection.(Fig 6) Give it a short identifiable name in this case we called it B/G for background. Click OK. Now you can also save some more of your hard work.
Go to menu SELECT>Inverse. (Fig 7)


Fig 6 - Save the selection		Fig 7 - Select inverse

You will now have selected everything except what was previously selected.(Fig 8)
Go to menu SELECT>Save Selection again this time we called it Centre.
With part of the image selected with marching ants Go to menu LAYER>New Adjustment Layer>Levels (Fig.9) Click OK (You can give the layer a special name to it if necessary or leave as is.)

When the Level box appears just click OK. You will notice in the Layer Palette the new adjustment layer has appeared with a graphic icon with a mask attached to it. The white area in the mask is the area that will be affected by the levels controls. Double click the graphic icon and the Level Box will come back. Slide the middle triangle back and forwards to see the changes that occur in your image.


Fig 8 - Your new selection		Fig 9 - Adjustment layer levels

Highlight the Background Copy layer.
Go to menu SELECT>Load Selection.
Pull down menu and select previously named selection. (Fig 10) The marching ants should now return to your image. You have now brought back the previous selection you saved.
Go to menu LAYER>New Adjustment Layer>Levels (Fig 9)


Fig 10 - Making selection		Fig 11 - The mask

Click OK. When the Levels Box appears click OK without doing anything.

Look at Layer Palette and you will see the mask is now the opposite of the previous Adjustment layer that was created.
Double click the graphic icon in the new layer to bring up the Levels Box and run the middle triangle along and watch the changes.
An added benefit to these saved selections is that you can use them for other adjustments. When we go to Load Selection and load the centre one we get a new Adjustment layer exactly the same as the previous one. If I wish to control just the top of the centre piece one can click on the mask then select a brush, with black as the foreground colour and start to paint over on the image the parts I don’t want changed. Immediately you will notice a change in the mask. To see it fully Option click on the mask and it will appear on the screen (Fig 11) One can either paint on this image (if the outlines have been established) or click on the layer palette eye to bring back the colour image. When this step is complete the three masks created can be seen in the Layer Palette (Fig.12).

This is a quick way to select and alter just parts, big or small, of your image. As we saw in the Adjustment layer list (see Fig 9) one can select changes other than just Levels, ...ie contrast, colour balance etc.

Fig 12 - Layers palette

MACinations June 03