Photoshop 101

Quick Mask
Narrative by Marty Kesselman

The “Quick Mask” is only available in full Photoshop. Unfortunately it is not available
in Elements. The masking capability and the channels palette are missing from Elements.
Although there are many work-a-rounds for things that Elements does not support, the
Quick Mask is a tool and is not included in Elements.

The “Quick mask” tool has been around from early versions of Photoshop and is
discussed in books that go back at least to Photoshop 4.0. It is a very useful tool to
visually see what you have selected, or to help you paint a selection. This tool can be
very useful and is a good one to use after you have made a selection using one of the
selection tools to see how good the tool was in selecting the area of interest. After
carefully examining the selection, one can make corrections to the selected area using
paint brush strokes.

Activate the “Quick Mask” by double clicking the Quick Mask icon
below the foreground/background color picker icon.

The Quick Mask Options window will open where you can change certain aspects of the
mask options. This mask presents a transparent overlay to your image to indicate the
selected area or the masked area. Checking the appropriate box will allow you to choose
which part of the image appears with the color overlay. You can also change the color of
the overlay (default is red) so that it contrasts the image colors to make it easier to see.
This is done by double clicking the color box to call the color picker. The opacity is also
adjustable and is set to a default of 50%. Pressing “OK” will accept the parameters. You
can change them at any time by double clicking the Quick mask icon to open this window
again.

The “Quick Mask” can also be activated (toggled on and off) by pressing the key “q”.
Entering “Quick mask” using the keyboard shortcut will not open the “Quick Mask
Options” window.

If you have an active selection, activating the quick mask will overlay the appropriate
part of the image with the mask overlay color. If you have not yet made a selection, after
activating the “Quick mask” you can draw with black to paint the mask, and draw with
white to remove the mask (Note: the colored area will reflect what the selected option is
in the option window. When the quick mask is activated, the default colors (black and
white) will be placed into the foreground and background color picker. Use “x” to switch
the colors for painting. When you toggle out of “quick mask”, the selected area will be
shown as a selection with marching ants.

It is best to use a “hard edged” brush with 100% opacity to permit carefully painting the
edges of the mask with the edge of the brush. The brush size can be adjusted to suit the
image by using the hard-bracket keys ([]).

The beauty of the “Quick Mask” is that it allows you to see the actual mask affect,
including the feathering. When you paint with a hard edged brush the feathering is 0.
You can use the Gaussian blur filter to blur the quick mask (while it is active) to adjust
the edge blurriness and actually see the amount of feathering you will get.

When using some of the selection tools you may not really be able to know how the
feathering will appear until the selection is complete. Then it is too late and it may have
to be repeated. Also, some selection tools can leave areas unselected and the Quick Mask
can be used to take a close look at the image to review the selected area carefully.

It is a good idea to review a selection using the “Quick Mask” before you save the
selection to assure you have done a good job and make appropriate corrections with the
hard edged brush.

To review the selection you might prefer to choose the check box “color indicates
masked areas”. This will place the red overlay over everything that is not selected,
revealing to you the selection without the red overlay. Paint with a hard edged brush set
to 100% opacity. Painting with black will provide the red overlay which is the masked
area.

To mask an area by painting the selection, you might like to choose the check box “color
indicates selected areas”. In this case painting on the part of the image you want to select
with black will place the red overlay on the selection.

In either case when you exit the quick mask you will see the marching ants around the
selection.