Working with Quick Masks and Channels

Masks and channels part2- This tutorial follows along as supporting activities for Chapter 6 of Classroom in a Book. Get it! Learn It! Live it!

Quick Mask | Editing Quick Mask | Masking | Editing| Loading Selection

You will need to download this file for this set of lessons.

Creating a Quick mask

1. Open pelican.psd from the download.

2. Select the Magnetic Lasso tool and set the options to

• feather = 0
• antialias
• width = 4
• edge contrast =1
• frequency =20

3. Click on the edge of the head and work your way around the pelican. Do not fret if you miss an area or include too much of the image. This will be fixed shortly.

4. Click the quick mask button on the bottom of the toolbox. This button toggles to standard mode so you can get back to regular editing.

In quick mask mode a semi transparent area appears over the unselected areas. This is why something must be selected in order to use quick mask.

Editing a Quick Mask

1. Set your default colors (D) to black in foreground and white behind. Click on the foreground to background switch arrow to reverse them so WHITE is the foreground color and BLACK is the background color.

2. Zoom in on the image to 200 or 300%, or just larger then fit to screen mode.

3. Select your brush tool. Set the following:

• Brush 13 hard
• Mode = Normal

In quick mask mode, painting in black added to the mask and decreases the selection. Painting in white deletes from the red mask and adds to the selection. Use paint brushes to increase the mask in some areas and adjust it in other areas.

4. Using the brush tool and paint white over the red areas of the pelican's body to reveal the rest of the body. Change your brush to a narrower brush for the thin beak and the legs.

5. Click the toggle button to go back to standard mode.

6. Inspect your selection. Switch back to quick mask mode be clicking the toggle button on the toolbox.  Use the brush with black paint. to restore the mask where you may have gone too far off the pelican.

7. Toggle back and forth with the white and black paint until you are satisfied with the mask and selection. Leave the selection in normal mode

8. Double click the hand tool to set the image to fit to screen.

Saving a Selection as a Mask

1. Click Window=> channels to open the channels palette. It should be docked with the layers palette.

2.Click the icon on the bottom of the channels palette to save selection as channel. This will create a chnnel called Alpha 1.

3. Double click the alpha 1 channel we just made and rename the channel pelican.

4. Choose select=> deselect.

Editing a Mask

1.Turn off the eyes in all the channels but the Egret channel we just made.

2. Make sure the Pelican channel is the active or selected channel by clicking on the channel.

3. With a paintbrush, use white to add to selection and black to delete from the selection here. Clean up the white area so there is no black or gray within it. Reverse colors and clean up the black areas if there are white or gray specks within.

4. Click File=> save.
 

Loading A Mask as selection

1. Turn on the eye for the RGB Cahnnel view. Turn the eye off on the Egret channel. click back on the channels palette.

2. Click Select=> Load Selection. The channel should be the pelican. Click OK.

3. Choose Image=>Adjustments=> Auto Levels. This will adjust the tonal balance of the colors.

4. Choose edit=> Undo and compare with the adjustment you just undid. Select Edit=> Redo to reapply the Auto Levels.

5. Click Select=> Deselect.

6. Click file=> save. Your are ready to use your pelican in a project. Continue here.