Photoshop quick mask online. Quick mask in Photoshop Filling the selected area of the mask
Quick mask in Photoshop
Hello dear readers, today I will tell you about how to use the mode to make a beautiful cut of an object of any geometric shape from any photo.
With the help of the knowledge gained, you can not only quickly place yourself next to any celebrity, but also cut out beautiful flowers, butterflies or images of wild animals, for some of your creative ideas in photo processing.
After you have selected the photo you need, which would depict the object you need, open it in Photoshop by simply dragging the shortcut with the picture into the program workspace.
Now select the Magic Lasso Tool from the selection tool button and carefully go around the perimeter of the object you want. Naturally, the selection will not be exactly what you need, it will not go strictly along the contour in all places of the selected object, and in some places it will cut off parts of the selected image. There is nothing to worry about, all these defects will be corrected using the mode.
Now click on the “Quick Mask” mode button or just press the letter “ Q”.
After this manipulation, the entire space around the selected object should acquire a red translucent tint.
Double-click on the button to call the quick mask mode and select the "Selected Areas" item in the dialog box that opens.
As a result, the object you select should become reddish, and the rest of the picture will be painted in the previous colors.
When the mode is activated, you have only two colors at your disposal - black and white. If you select black, the brush will paint with a reddish tint, if white, the reddish tint will be removed. To change the color, press the button on the keyboard D” (black) or “ X" (white).
Choose the size of the brush so that it is convenient for you to work with the picture, and paint over the area of the mask where it is missing, and delete it where it is superfluous.
After a kind of “drawing”, when the mask will lie exclusively on the picture you need, exit the “Quick Mask” mode by pressing the “ Q” or the corresponding icon on the toolbar. As a result, the image will be selected strictly along the contour.
To remove the background, you will have to invert the selection - press the keyboard shortcut Shift +ctrl +I.
Visually, nothing will change on the image, just now when you press the Delete button, not the flower or person you selected will disappear, but the surrounding background.
Now you have the desired image at your disposal, which you can insert into various collages of your own making.
If you prefer to customize or even create highlights by painting with a brush, no problem. In fact, you can create a selection from scratch using this method. Switch to Mode and you'll find that all of Photoshop's drawing tools (even filters) are ready to help you fine-tune your selection. This mode allows you to work on the selected area with 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 the red overlay to everything but her (if not, you won't see any change). This coloring makes it easier to visually edit the selection by drawing.
- Deselect part of the selection, in other words, to add the area to the mask, and then paint over the area.
- Extend the selection by painting what you want to add with white (you may need to press the X key to swap the color indicators).
- Create a soft-edged or translucent selection by painting with gray. For example, painting with gray at 50 percent (reduce the opacity of the black brush to 50 percent in the toolbar) will create a half-transparent selection.
A similar effect can be created by painting with a soft-bristled brush. All usual tricks work with tools and documents 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've zoomed in and use any of the selection tools. Even the and tools work in this mode. You can also fill the entire mask or selected area 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 desaturation effect.
When you're done adjusting, press the Q key to exit the mask mode, and "marching ants" will appear, so you can see the selection you just edited.
Let's consider an example of using the mode.
1. Open the image you want to select. On the mask, as you can see, there is a shadow that we do not need. Let's try to get rid of it.
2. Select our silver background with the tool. We can see that the shadow is inseparably highlighted along with our mask.
3. Switch to the Quick Mask mode. Photoshop will leave the selection in full color (silver in this case) and place a red overlay on top of everything else. Now you can quickly clean up 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 Q. You will see an edited selection marked "marching ants"
Changing the Quick Mask Color
Why is the quick mask red? Can I change the color to another one? And why, when the mask is activated, does it highlight unselected areas? Can I select highlighted areas instead?
First a bit of history: it is red by default, just like its real-world equivalent, red masking tape, which came out in sheets like paper. Long ago, even before the invention of computer-aided layout, this red plastic was cut with X-Acto knives and placed on the parts of the image that needed to be hidden. Since the printing presses did not react to plastic, the fragments of the image covered by it did not appear in the printed edition. Then it was a clever trick.
Printing technology has come a long way since then - X-Acto knives are not needed when you have Photoshop.
And since you're working with modern printers and not old-fashioned printing presses, you don't have to use a red mask, and you can change the color to whatever you want (which comes in handy when the area you're trying to select contains red). So, if the red overlay doesn't work for you, with the Quick Mask tool activated, double-click the circle-in-square button 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 mark with a quick mask selected areas instead of unselected ones. Open the Options dialog box, and set the radio button in the Color Indicates group to Selected Areas, and then click OK.
Noticed an error in the text - select it and press Ctrl + Enter . Thank you!
Mode Quick Mask(Quick Mask) is one of the best selection tools in Photoshop. I use it all the time when creating and modifying selections, and when evaluating the quality and accuracy of selections created with the standard selection tools discussed earlier in this chapter. In short, the quick mask mode allows you to see which areas of the image are active (selected) and which are inactive (unselected) thanks to transparent overlay. The quick mask mode is very flexible and functional; it allows you to apply many selection tools and filters; in addition, the quick mask can be saved as an alpha channel for future use. Unfortunately, many people consider Quick Mask Mode a tool for beginners and hobbyists, but this is not the case: Quick Mask Mode has many uses.
Owlt Before you begin to explore the Quick Mask mode in the following exercises, make sure that the default settings for this mode are set. To do this, you can double-click on the left icon Quick Mask(Quick Mask) in the tool palette. Make Sure
that the parameter values specified on the
rice. 2.52.
Rice. 2.52.
Default Quick Mask Mode Options
Let's start with a selection
After creating the initial selection using the standard selection tool, click on the icon Quick Mask(Quick Mask) under the color picker icon in the tool palette; in addition, you can simply press the key
. Photoshop will render the image using a red transparent overlay (which can be compared to a protective transparent film) over inactive areas of the image. As a result, only selected areas will be available for editing. Note that the "marching ants" disappear when doing this. In mode
quick mask, you can change and adjust selected areas without fear of accidentally deselecting. Best of all, though, you get to see which areas are selected and which are not, and you can use black and white to create very precise selections.
Separation of picture elements
In the following example, we have to separate a small leaf from the background.
1. Select a sheet with the tool Magnetic Lasso(Magnetic Lasso) or create an initial selection with the tool magic wand(Magic wand) (rice, 2,53).
2. Press the key to go
to quick mask mode (Fig. 2.54). All areas that are hidden under the red overlay are inactive, which means that
not highlighted. All other areas are active, which means they are highlighted.
Rice, 2,53.
Start by creating an initial selection
3. To further separate the sheet from the pavement, work on the selected sections of the pavement with a black brush. In this case, a hard brush is used to simulate the sharp edges of the sheet. By processing areas of the image with a black brush, you subtract them from the selected area.
4. If you need to add new areas to the selected area, process them with a white brush. For example, enlarge the lower part of the leaf petiole. Paint it with a hard white brush at 100% opacity. (rice, 2.55).
Rice, 2,54.
Switch to quick mask mode
Rice. 2,55.
Modify the quick mask by painting with black and white brushes
5. Having received the selected area of the proper view, press the key again . Photoshop converts quick mask to active selection (Fig. 2.56), after which the sheet image can be inserted into another image.
Owlt After switching to Quick Mask mode, Photoshop sets the default colors (white foreground and black
background). During operation, you can press the key<Х>to set the foreground color to black and the background color to white. To reduce the size of the brush, use the key<[>, and to increase<]>.
Rice. 256.
Keystroke allows you to exit the quick mask mode and activate the selected area
Any image, and . Then go to the background layer and desaturate it using the menu Image - Adjustment - Desaturate . This command has no parameters, but simply makes the image black and white. To see this, you can turn off the display of the top layer, and look at the background layer.
Now select the top layer and select the selection tool Rectangular area . Make a selection of some significant part of the image. Then click on the icon in the layers palette. Add layer mask . This icon is at the bottom of the palette, and looks like a white circle in a gray box. Click the icon, and another icon appears in front of the layer name. In this icon, the selected area is marked in white. To view the image of the mask, press the key alt, and while holding it, click on this icon. You will see that the mask is black and white. In the white area you will see the top layer, in the black area you will see the bottom layer.
The mask image itself is hidden in the additional channel. You can see it if you open the channels palette. The channel is called the mask channel, or alpha channel. With this channel, you can perform some actions, for example, blur the edges of the white area. Highlight a channel and select from the menu Filter - Blur - Gaussian Blur
. The edges of the colored area in the image will no longer be as sharp. And if you look at the mask again by clicking on its mask icon in the layers palette, and at the same time clicking alt, you will see that gray has appeared around the edges of the white color. The gray color in the mask makes the top layer translucent. The darker this color, the more transparent the layer.
Now cancel the Gaussian blur, through the menu Editing - Undo to sharpen the edges of the colored area in the image again. Let's make a frame now.
Double click to the right of the layer name to open the window Layer Style. Choose an item Stroke and start editing it. Set the stroke color to white. Make the borders thicker, and make the position Inside so that the corners are sharp. Also select Shadow, and adjust its settings, such as lighting 135 degrees, size 20, and offset 40.
Select the background layer now, go to Image - Adjustment - Brightness/Contrast , and turn up the brightness.
You will get quite an interesting picture. All that remains is to merge all the layers into one by right-clicking on the layer name and selecting the Run Flatten command. And save the image as a JPG.
Quick mask in Photoshop
This is an operating mode that can be switched to by clicking on the corresponding icon at the bottom of the toolbar. The icon looks like a white circle on a gray rectangle. You can also press the key Q, which is a toggle between normal mode and quick mask mode.
Select any area of the image in the normal mode, and go to the quick mask mode. What is not included in the selected area is filled with a translucent red color. This is Photoshop's default quick mask mode. To change the mode, double-click on the quick mask icon, and in the dialog box that appears, change the settings to some other, for example, make the parameter Show highlighted areas in color .
By the quick mask icon on the toolbar, you can determine what the mask will hide - the current layer in the selected areas, or unselected ones. If the circle is gray on a white background, the mask will hide the selected areas, if it is white on a gray background, the unselected areas. Depending on your needs, you will use the mode you need.
Just like with the mask, when you switch to Quick Mask mode, an alpha channel will appear on the Channels palette.
Now cancel quick mask mode, deselect, select tool Brush, and make the colors in the layers palette black and white. After that, double-click on the quick mask icon, and select Show Color Selected Areas in the dialog box. Enable quick mask mode. Now try painting with a black brush. Instead of black, you will see red - the color of the mask. With a white eraser, you can remove unnecessary things from what you have drawn.
After drawing, turn off the quick mask mode, and you will see the selected area where the red color was. Thus, by drawing in the quick mask mode, you can select what you need, and very accurately. In addition, you can draw not in black, but in gray, and then the selection will be partial.
Video on how to apply a mask in Photoshop to create an image with a border
You can get more detailed information in the sections "All courses" and "Utility", which can be accessed through the top menu of the site. In these sections, the articles are grouped by subject into blocks containing the most detailed (as far as possible) information on various topics.
You can also subscribe to the blog, and learn about all the new articles.
It does not take a lot of time. Just click on the link below:
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, it is enough to imagine what happens when a person puts on a mask? That's right, the mask covers the face. Approximately according to this principle, 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 more images. Masks are widely used in collage making and photo editing.
For starters, I'll show you some examples of using masks in Photoshop:
The planet is added using a simple mask.
And here there are only 2 layers - the original and the discolored image, a mask is applied to the discolored image, and one of the pomegranate pieces is “wiped off” on it.
Everything is the same here - I took 3 images from the ferrari and masked the background with the help of a mask.
As you can see, for using masks in Photoshop, an unplowed field of experiments opens up.
Photoshop allows you to work with 4 types of masks - layer masks (Layer Mask), vector masks (Vector Mask), Clipping Mask (Clipping Mask) and quick mask (Quick Mask), which is not exactly a mask ... but more on that later 🙂
All masks in photoshop work with grayscale (including black and white). The black color on the mask is a completely transparent area, white is an opaque one. Gray is used to give varying degrees of transparency. The closer the gray is to black, the more transparent the area will be.
Interaction with masks is done through 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 good thing is that you can always change the color to white and bring back the hidden part of the image. And minus - the file size increases, so before saving, do Layer (Layer) -> Layer Mask (Layer mask) -> Apply (Apply)
Layer masks in Photoshop
Let's start the consideration of the layer mask in Photoshop on a specific example. I found a picture of a soap bubble on the Internet:
You need to place this bubble on a different background. For example on this one:
Copy the soap bubble photo onto the landscape photo, and with the help of free deformation (Ctrl + T) make the bubble a little smaller:
The preparations are over, 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 how 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 painting over it with black. Let's try.
So, click on 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, then 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 there is a mask, but the brush does not edit it.
Take a soft black brush and start painting the background of the photo with a soap bubble:
The result is not very neat, but the main thing is that you understand the principle. If you still want to get a high-quality result, then select the bubble first, then invert the selection (Shift + Ctrl + I) and boldly paint over the background, not being afraid to hide the edges of the soap bubble:
If you still didn’t hide what you wanted, 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 with gray (I took #a1a1a1):
The bubble became translucent. 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 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 regard to invisible areas.
There is also a button in the layers panel to create a layer mask using the Reveal Selection method:
Filling a Mask with a Gradient in Photoshop
I have already shown this technique many times in the photoshop tutorials on this site. It consists in applying a gradient to the layer mask. Let's say there is an image on one of the layers, part of which should fade smoothly:
Create a mask and fill it with black and white radial gradient. We get this 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 shape adjustment due 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 analyze 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 by vector tools, such as the Pen Tool:
Here we see a new Current Path item - it creates a mask along an already existing vector path. Let's dwell on this in more detail. I took the image of the tattoo and stroked it with the Pen Tool:
And applied Layer - Vector Mask -> Current Path:
In principle, that's all, there are no more differences between vector and bitmap masks in Photoshop. Apply 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 primarily for the convenience of the user.
Look at the following example:
i created a vector path that outlines starfish. Then I converted it to a vector mask, and at the same time created a bitmap mask. As you can see, there are now 2 layer masks in the layers panel. Raster on the left and vector on the right. Now if I want to make the middle and edges of the star a bit transparent, I'll switch to the bitmap mask and paint on the areas I want with a gray brush:
And at any time I can return to editing the vector and bitmap masks. Convenient, isn't it? Especially this feature helps when creating a site layout, when there are a lot of 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 the Clipping Mask. It crops the image to which it is applied along the path or mask of the underlying:
In the presented example, on the bottom layer, a regular vector shape was created using the Ellipse Tool (Ellipse), on top of it is an image with a horse, to which a Clipping Mask is 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 the reference to the image. Now I will show you how to do it. 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 normal 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 down 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 work to masks. There is a quick mask in the toolbar:
But I advise you to call it using the quick key Q. 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, tk. By default, the mask has a translucent red color, and if you select a red image, this will not be very convenient.
Now we will try to select using a quick mask to select this gorgeous dog 🙂
Press Q, take 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 superfluous, select white (press X for the standard color layout) and erase the unnecessary part of the mask in this way. When you're done painting, press Q again. That's it, the selection is ready:
This concludes 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 😉