If you prefer to customize or even create selections by painting with a brush, no problem. In fact, you can create a selection from scratch using this method. Go to mode and you'll find that all of Photoshop's painting tools (even filters) are ready to help you adjust the selection. This mode allows you to work on a selected area using almost any tool you want.
To go to the mask, click the button at the bottom of the toolbar, which looks like a circle inscribed in a square, or press the Q key. This will check if you have an active selection. If yes, Photoshop will set a red overlay to everything except it (if not, you won't see any changes). This color design makes it easier to visually edit the selection using drawing.
- Deselect part of the selection, in other words, to add an area to the mask, and then paint over the area.
- Expand the selection by coloring what you want to add in white (you may need to press the X key to swap the color indicators).
- Create a soft-edged or translucent selection by coloring it gray. For example, painting with gray at 50 percent (reduce the opacity of the black brush to 50 percent in the Tools panel) will create a half-transparent selection.
A similar effect can be created by painting with a soft bristle brush. All the usual tricks with tools and documents work in quick mask mode: you can zoom in or out by pressing Ctrl++ or Ctrl+-. Press and hold the Spacebar to move around the document once you zoom in and use any of the selection tools. Even tools and work in this mode. You can also fill the entire mask or selection with black or white. To create interesting edges, you can apply filters in this mode, or use the Gradient tool set to a black and white gradient to create a desaturated effect.
When you're done making adjustments, press the Q key to exit mask mode, which will cause "marching ants" to appear so you can see the selection you just edited.
Let's look at an example of using the mode.
1. Open the image that you want to select. On the mask, as you can see, there is a shadow that we don't need. Let's try to get rid of it.
2. Select our silver background using the tool. We see that the shadow has been inseparably highlighted along with our mask.
3. Go to Quick Mask mode. Photoshop will leave the selection in full color (in this case, silver) and place a red overlay on top of everything else. Now you can quickly clear the shadow. Use the brush tool set to paint with black or white.
4. When you are done removing the shadow, exit this mode by clicking on the mask icon in the toolbar or pressing the Q key. You will see the edited selection marked with “marching ants”
Changing the color of the quick mask
Why is the quick mask red? Can I change the color to another? And why, when the mask is activated, does it highlight unselected areas? Can I select highlighted areas instead?
First, a little history: It's red by default, just like its real-world equivalent, red camouflage film, which came in sheets like paper. Long ago, before the invention of computer layout, this red plastic was cut with X-Acto knives and placed over parts of the image that needed to be hidden. Because the printing presses did not react to plastic, the image fragments covered by it did not appear in the printed edition. It was a neat trick back then.
Printing technology has come a long way since then - you don't need X-Acto knives when you have Photoshop.
And since you're working with modern printers rather than old-fashioned printing presses, you don't have to use a red mask, and can change the color to whatever you want (which comes in handy when the area you're trying to highlight contains red). So, if the red overlay doesn't suit you, with the Quick Mask tool activated, double-click on the button with the circle inscribed in the square at the bottom of the toolbar. In the Options dialog box that opens, click on the color indicator and select any color you like from the palette that appears. You can also make the overlay more or less intense by changing the Opacity setting in this dialog box.
And you can use Quick Mask to mark selected areas instead of unselected ones. Open the Options dialog box and set the switch in the Color Indicates group to Selected Areas, and then click OK.
If you notice an error in the text, select it and press Ctrl + Enter. Thank you!
Welcome to Arttime, today I want to talk about such a useful tool as a quick mask. This is another tutorial on how to cut out an object in Photoshop.
A quick mask is a great tool for this purpose and more, I’ll write about other possibilities next time, so don’t miss it 😉
Cutting out an object with a quick mask
First, we need the tool itself to quick mask. It's in the quick toolbar at the very bottom, turn it on or just click “ Q“.
The trick is that for “Clipping” we will use a regular hard black brush. And in order to erase the mask, just select “ Eraser". So, let's look:
Personally, I outline from the middle, but you can also draw from the outside, whichever is more convenient for you. To make the work easier, use a small brush to follow the outline of the object you want to highlight, and then use a larger brush to loosely paint the inside.
Once you have completely painted over the desired area, click on the " Tool" again. Quick mask" or the button " Q" A highlight dotted line will appear.
If you painted from the middle, like me, then the selection line needs to be “Invert”. How to do this is perfectly shown in the screenshot below. Or just press the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+I.
This is necessary so that the clipping is not around the character, but vice versa.
All that remains is to cut or copy the character to a new layer.
Let's move on to the debate
I’ll try not to be too verbose and will start with the fact that the issue with the army has been resolved, for now 🙂 Yes, I also successfully defended my thesis – I got a 4! Wow, it’s not for nothing that I decided to read it the day before the deadline
And, of course, it’s time to do a competition! I have ideas, but I still doubt it... I need to think carefully about all the pros and cons and get down to business. So stay tuned.
Good luck to you!
Greetings, friends. In today's lesson I will talk about masks in photoshop. What is a mask in Photoshop, and how does it work? To answer this question, just imagine what happens when a person puts on a mask? That's right, the mask covers the face. This is roughly how it works mask in photoshop— closes all underlying layers, leaving visible only those areas where it is transparent. This allows you to achieve smooth transitions between different parts of one or several images. Masks are widely used in creating collages and processing photographs.
To get you started, I'll show you a few examples of using masks in Photoshop:
The planet was added using a simple mask.
And here there are only 2 layers - the original and the decolorized image, a mask was applied to the decolorized image, and one of the pomegranate pieces was “wiped” on it.
Everything is the same here - I took 3 images from a Ferrari and used a mask to hide the background.
As you can see, for those who use masks in Photoshop, an uncultivated field of experimentation opens up.
Photoshop allows you to work with 4 types of masks - Layer Mask, Vector Mask, Clipping Mask and Quick Mask, which is not really a mask... but more on that later :)
All masks in photoshop work with shades of gray (including black and white). Black color on the mask is a completely transparent area, white is opaque. Gray is used to impart varying degrees of transparency. The closer the gray is to black, the more transparent the area will be.
Interaction with masks is carried out using the tools, Gradient (Gradient), Paint Bucket Tool (Fill). You can also use the Mixer Brush Tool and Pecil (Pencil), but this is exotic and works on the same principle.
It is worth noting that the mask does not remove part of the image, but hides it. This has its pros and cons. The advantage is that you can always change the color to white and return the hidden part of the image. The downside is that the file size increases, so before saving, do Layer -> Layer Mask -> Apply
Layer masks in Photoshop
Let's start looking at a layer mask in Photoshop using a specific example. I found a photo of a soap bubble on the Internet:
You need to place this bubble on a different background. For example this one:
Copy the photo of a soap bubble onto the photo of the landscape, and use Free Warp (Ctrl+T) to make the bubble a little smaller:
The preparations are complete, now let's deal with the masks.
The section in the Layer menu is responsible for managing masks in Photoshop:
Now I will talk about ways to create a layer mask in Photoshop:
- Reveal All creates an open mask. This means that the mask is filled with white, i.e. the image is completely opaque. In order to hide part of the image, you need to start drawing over it in black. Let's try.
So, click Layer -> Layer Mask -> Reveal All. Notice that a white rectangle has appeared in the Layers panel to the right of the image thumbnail. This is the layer mask:
If you click on the image thumbnail on the left, it will be edited; you can return to editing the mask by clicking on the rectangle with the mask thumbnail. Remember this so that later the question does not arise - why is there a mask, but the brush does not edit it.
Take a soft black brush and begin to paint the background of the photo with a soap bubble:
The result was not very neat, but the main thing is that you understand the principle. If you still want to get a high-quality result, then first select the bubble, then invert the selection (Shift+Ctrl+I) and boldly paint over the background, without being afraid to hide the edges of the soap bubble:
If you still hid something that you didn’t want, it doesn’t matter, change the color to white and restore the hidden part of the image.
Let's now see what happens if we paint the bubble gray (I took #a1a1a1):
The bubble became semi-transparent. Do you already feel the power of masks in Photoshop? This is just the beginning, let's move on.
— The Hide All layer mask method hides the entire image behind a black mask. You will “develop the image” on the layer with the mask using a white brush.
Thus, you can solve the problem with a soap bubble with just one click of a white soft brush:
— Reveal Selection hides everything except the selected area:
— Hide Selection, on the contrary, hides the selected area:
— From Transparency creates a mask without taking into account invisible areas.
There is also a button in the Layers panel for creating a layer mask using the Reveal Selection method:
Filling a mask in Photoshop with a gradient
I have shown this technique many times already in Photoshop tutorials on this site. It consists of applying a gradient to the layer mask. Let's say there is an image on one of the layers, part of which should smoothly disappear:
Create a mask and fill it with a black and white radial gradient. We get the following result:
Vector masks in Photoshop
Next type masks in photoshop is a vector mask. Like any other vector, a vector mask differs from a regular raster mask in the flexibility of adjusting its shape thanks to curves and immunity from loss of quality when scaling.
To make it easier for you to understand the essence of working with vector masks, I recommend reading the lesson ““, in which I examine the main Photoshop tool for working with vector shapes.
Vector masks are created in exactly the same way as raster masks and work on the same principle, with the only difference being that they are controlled with vector tools, for example the Pen Tool:
Here we see a new Current Path item - it creates a mask along an existing vector path. Let's take a closer look at this. I took the tattoo image and outlined it using the Pen Tool:
And applied Layer – Vector Mask -> Current Path:
In principle, that’s all, there are no more differences between vector and raster masks in Photoshop. Use vector masks where precision is needed: creating logos, website layouts and other similar things.
Two masks in Photoshop
Photoshop makes it possible to use two masks at once - raster and vector. This is necessary primarily for user convenience.
Look at the following example:
I created a vector path that outlines the starfish. Then I converted it to a vector mask, and at the same time created a raster mask. As you can see, there are now 2 layer masks in the Layers panel. On the left is raster, and on the right is vector. Now if I want to make the middle and edges of the star a little transparent, I'll switch to the raster mask and paint the desired areas with a gray brush:
And at any time I can return to editing the vector and raster masks. Convenient, isn't it? This feature especially helps when creating a website layout, when there are many layers, and sometimes you need to go back and edit the shape, color or transparency of an element.
Clipping Mask in Photoshop
The next type of mask in Photoshop is Clipping Mask. It crops the image to which it is applied using the underlying path or mask:
In the example presented, a regular vector shape was created on the bottom layer using the Ellipse Tool (Ellipse), and on top of it was an image with a horse, to which a Clipping Mask was applied. Try to do something similar, and move the shape on the bottom layer - the image will “appear” in the place where the shape is located.
Actions with masks in Photoshop
Masks in Photoshop can be moved outside of the image. Now I will show you how to do this. Take any image and apply some kind of mask to it:
Now click on the chain icon between the mask and the layer thumbnail. Now you can move the mask using the regular Move Tool.
Masks in Photoshop can also be copied to another layer. Create a new layer (Shift+Ctrl+N), fill it with some color, hold Alt and drag the mask thumbnail onto the newly created layer:
Quick mask in Photoshop
Let's look at the last type of mask in Photoshop - the quick mask. As I said at the beginning, this is not exactly a mask, it is a selection tool that has a similar type of operation to masks. The quick mask is located in the toolbar:
But I recommend calling it using the Q shortcut key. Also, if you double-click on the quick mask icon, settings will appear that allow you to change the color of the mask. This is necessary solely for convenience, because... By default, the mask has a translucent red color, and if you select a red image, this will not be very convenient.
Now we’ll try to use a quick mask to highlight this gorgeous dog :)
Press Q, grab a hard opaque brush and start painting:
Please note that your main color should be black. If you make a mistake and paint over something unnecessary, select white (press X with the standard color layout) and thus erase the unnecessary area of the mask. When you're done painting, press Q again. That's it, the selection is ready:
This is where we will finish our review. masks in photoshop. I hope you learned a lot from this Photoshop tutorial, and from now on working with masks in Photoshop will not cause you any difficulty.
Ask questions in the comments, share your impressions and share this lesson with your friends. I say goodbye to you until we meet again on our website and wish you creative success 😉
Mask– one of the most versatile tools in Photoshop. They are used for non-destructive image processing, highlighting objects, creating smooth transitions and applying various effects in certain areas of the image.
A mask can be thought of as an invisible layer placed on top of the main one, on which you can only work with white, black and gray colors, now you will understand why.
In fact, everything is simple: a black mask completely hides what is located on the layer to which it is applied, and a white mask completely reveals it. We will use these properties in our work.
If you take a black brush and paint over any area on the white mask, it will disappear from visibility.
If you paint over an area with a white brush on a black mask, then this area will appear.
We have figured out the principles of how masks work, now let’s get to work.
Creating a mask
A white mask is created by clicking on the corresponding icon at the bottom of the layers palette.
A black mask is created by clicking on the same icon while holding down the key ALT.
Filling a mask
The mask is filled in the same way as the main layer, that is, all the filling tools work on the mask. For example, a tool "Fill".
Having a black mask,
We can fill it completely with white.
Hotkeys are also used to fill masks. ALT+DEL And CTRL+DEL. The first combination fills the mask with the main color, and the second - the background color.
Filling the selected area of the mask
While on the mask, you can create a selection of any shape and fill it. You can apply any tools to the selection (smoothing, feathering, etc.).
Copying a mask
The mask is copied as follows:
Inverting a mask
Inversion changes the colors of the mask to the opposite and is performed with a keyboard shortcut CTRL+I.
Original colors:
Inverted colors:
Gray color on the mask
The gray color on the masks works as a transparency tool. The darker the gray, the more transparent what is under the mask. 50% gray will give 50% transparency.
We will devote today's Photoshop lesson to a very important section of Photoshop, which all photographers use to one degree or another when processing photographs - these are selection tools. Unfortunately, as practice shows, from the huge arsenal offered by the program in this area, the majority of amateur photographers use no more than 10 - 20% of the possibilities. Our task is to fill the gaps and open up these opportunities for more fruitful work.
What are the main tools used by the average amateur photographer? These are mainly varieties of Lasso (lasso), Magic Wand (magic wand) and, perhaps, Color Range (color range). But this is approximately 10% of the capabilities of Photoshop. Let's take a closer look at them.
Tools under the M hotkey
Rectangular Marquee Tool (rectangular area) is the most commonly used selection tool. Provides a selection of a rectangular area (holding the SHIFT key selects a square).
Elliptical Marquee Tool (elliptical area) - (holding the SHIFT key selects a circle).
Single Row Marquee Tool (1 pixel horizontal line) is a very rarely used tool. Selects a 1 pixel line in the entire drawing.
Single Column Marquee Tool (vertical column 1 pixel) - similar to the previous one. Switching from one tool to another (for the first two) occurs by pressing the M key while holding the SHIFT key or through the toolbar.
Tools under the L hotkey
Lasso Tool (lasso) is perhaps the most beloved and sought-after selection tool among amateur photographers. Selects an arbitrary area while holding down the left mouse button. When the key is released, closes the selection area.
Polygonal Lasso Tool (polygonal lasso) is also one of my favorite tools. Unlike a simple lasso, it draws a selected area between anchor points placed by clicking the left mouse button (touching with a graphic pen). Closing the contour of a selected area is done in three ways: by bringing the end point to the starting point, by double-clicking on the last point (in this case, the contour is closed along the shortest straight line), or by single-clicking while holding down the CTRL key (also along the shortest straight line). This selection tool is good to use for precise selection of areas with fairly clear boundaries, mainly of a broken nature (architecture, technology, etc.).
Magnetic Lasso Tool (magnetic lasso) is a rather interesting tool, the correct use of which can significantly save time. This tool has some adjustments that allow it to work well if handled correctly. Width is a parameter that determines how close to the intended outline you should move your cursor. The more contrast the image has, the higher this value can be set, the easier it is to move the mouse. This tool parameter can be freely changed on the fly, during the selection process, by pressing the [ or ] keys.
And if you are working with a graphics tablet, then this parameter can be changed by pressing the pen, which is very convenient.
Edge Contrast - a parameter that specifies the FS level of contrast between the background and the selection element.
Frequency - distance between reference points. The more uneven the edge of the required selection, the more often it is advisable to place dots (the lower the value) and vice versa. Remember the main thing is that the success of each tool depends on its proper use. The Magnetic Lasso tool is good to use on contrasting objects with a clearly readable border (the outlines of objects on a light background, the outlines of a person, etc.), but be prepared for some disappointments, since this tool will almost never create a selection that suits you completely. Rather, it will simply do some of the prep work faster to create the Quick Mask, which we'll get to later.
Tool under the W hotkey
Magic Wand (magic wand) is a magic wand, but if you don’t properly understand the settings of this tool, you can get a lot of headaches when working with it, and in the end “throw it away”.
So, what settings of this tool are available to us?
Tolerance - the range of colors that the tool will highlight. The values of this parameter can be set within the range of 0-255. The higher the number, the greater the range of colors that will be highlighted. Tolerance values are applied on either side of the pixel brightness value. If we click on a pixel with a level of 100 at a tolerance of 30, then pixels with levels from 70 to 130 will be selected. Sometimes, to more accurately select an area, you can use a selection in one of the color channels that best suits your purposes.
Anti-aliased (smoothing) - softening the selection outline (similar to other tools).
Contiguous (adjacent pixels) is a very important parameter that allows you to select the selection mode.
When the checkbox is checked, only the area with images with the specified parameters in which you made a selection is highlighted. If the checkbox is unchecked, then all areas of the image with the specified parameters will be selected (similar to the Color Range tool).
Use All Layers - when creating the outline, all visible layers of the image will be taken into account.
The tools under the hotkeys P, U and A are also selection elements, but are designed to create paths and are vector graphics elements.
An outline differs from a selection in that it is automatically created on a new layer above the main image. After this, it can be edited at any time and saved, if necessary, until the very end of the work. To a greater extent, this group of selection tools is used for design work and to a lesser extent for photo processing, so we will not pay special attention to them in this article. Let us dwell in more detail on the possibility of modifying the secretions described above, their interaction and transformation. Then we’ll move on to a description of working with Quick Mask.
So, with great difficulty, you persistently created your selected area, for example, using Polygonal Lasso. We spent more than one minute on this activity and finally returned to the starting point, closing the circuit. Sighing with relief, you lean back in your chair, look around at your work and... oh horror!!! You forgot to highlight a small but very important element. Tragedy! After all, after closing the contour of the selected area, it is no longer possible to return step by step (using the Back Space key while creating the contour). Do we really need to start all over again... Not at all! You just need to know the basic elementary rules for editing selected areas.
Holding down the SHIFT key will add a new area to the selection. By holding down the ALT key, you can subtract the required area from the existing area. When you hold down the ALT and SHIFT keys at the same time, you will get the result of the intersection of these areas.
Feather command - the importance of this element for editing the selected area can hardly be overestimated. The selected area rarely has clear boundaries. This is practically not used in artistic photography. This command creates a feather (blur) of the border of the selected area and its value can be set from 0.2 to 250 pixels. The higher the value of this parameter, the more blurred the boundaries will be, the smoother the transition.
Border - creates an area of the specified width around the perimeter of the current selection outline.
Smooth - smooths out all sharp corners of the selection. This command is very useful in combination with other commands that give a very uneven selection, for example Magic Wand. Expand (stretch) - expands the selection area by a specified number of pixels, while slightly smoothing out the unevenness of the selection.
Contract (compress) - the command is similar to the previous one, but is intended to narrow the selection area.
At this point, we will finish considering options for transforming selection areas, despite the fact that we have not considered all the possibilities. Unfortunately, the format of the article is limited and such simple manipulations with selected areas as inversion, free transformation, fill, stroke, etc. should be familiar to you and do not require detailed explanation. So let's move on to the most interesting and promising selection method - Quick Mask.
Without a doubt, this method is the most interesting and widest in its capabilities; it provides enormous scope for photo processing. This tool can do things that are impossible (or very labor-intensive) to do with the tools described above.
Let's turn it on by pressing the Q key. Strange, for some reason nothing happens.... Of course, in order to turn on the quick mask and see the result, you need to select at least something using any of the above tools. Next, using a specific example, we will consider the capabilities of our selection tools in combination with Quick Mask in photo processing.
Let's make a flower in this photo not against the background of emerald greenery, but against the background of the blue sky. First, let's try selecting the green background using the Magic Wand, since it's easier, and then invert the selection. Set the Tolerance value to 50 and uncheck the Contiguous option to select all pixels in this color range. The result is the following picture.
As you can see from the picture, in addition to the green color, some of the pixels in the core of the flower also stood out in the place we need. It's not scary, we can remove them with one movement of the hand. Let's turn on the Lasso selection element and, holding down the Alt key, circle the core of the flower with a margin. But for a better idea of how Quick Mask works, let's turn it on by pressing the Q key.
The picture took on a rather unusual appearance. Inverse selection zones are covered in red. Let's go into the quick mask menu and look at a number of parameters that we need in further work.
To do this, switch to the Channels palette and double-click on the Quick Mask icon. In the Quick Mask Options menu we see the following settings.
Masked Areas - the area opposite the selected one is covered with color, as in our case.
Selected Areas - the selected area will be filled with color.
Color (fill color) - select the color used when filling. The parameter is very popular. I recommend choosing a fill color that is significantly different in color from the masked area for better contrast. For example, to mask a face, it is better to choose blue or green colors, etc. In our case, we will change the color from red (default) to blue, since our flower is orange.
Opacity - determines the degree of transparency of the mask. The most optimal values are from 30 to 60%.
Now we will adjust our masked area. To do this, you need to select one of the painting tools, say a brush, with the B key. And let's just start painting over the areas to be masked. For large areas the size can be increased and for small areas reduced. At the same time, by adjusting the hardness and transparency of the brush, you can adjust the blurring of the boundaries of the future selected area and the degree of its masking (which is almost impossible when using conventional selection tools).
By selecting the color of the drawing tool (black or white) with the X key, we can both add (if the color is black) and remove masked areas (if the color is white). To do this, I recommend that you always keep your left hand finger on the X key - this is convenient and significantly speeds up your work. With sufficient skill, you can get by with a brush of almost the same diameter (as in our case). To do this, in thin places, wash the mask more than necessary, and then draw it along the desired contour. Very simple and convenient.
Over time, you will become so accustomed to using Quick Mask that you will only use regular tools to create a preliminary selection for the Quick Mask. Let's process the entire outline of the flower in this way with a brush with a diameter of 20 with 100% transparency and 70% border rigidity. Of course, the settings of the drawing tool may be different in each specific case. After finishing processing the contour, turn off the quick mask mode by pressing the Q key and invert the selection. Now we have the flower selected. Now let's take a file of appropriate resolution and size with an image of the sky. You can create a sky using numerous Photoshop plugins. In this case, I created it using the SkyEffects filter of the KPT-6 plugin. Copy our flower to the clipboard (Ctrl + C) and paste it into the sky file (Ctrl + V). The picture is ready!
