What are quick-masks?

I have already spoken about these in Lesson 12 of this course, but what are quick masks really?

Quick Mask is actually a misnomer. First and foremost there is nothing “fast” in the Quick Mask and second, it’s not really a mask but a temporary selection.

 

Quick Mask is actually nothing more than another tool to select. The benefit of a quick mask is that you use both drawing tool and selection tool, to make a selection.

 

Quick Mask Mode:

As I mentioned earlier, a quick mask is not a mask but a selection.
As an example I click in the left image with the “Ellipse Select” selection tool.
To switch to the “Quick Mask” mode click the button at the bottom left corner of the image (1).
In Quick Mask mode, the part that is colored red is not selected, and the part that is not colored, is selected.
To switch back to normal mode, click the “Quick Mask” button again(2).

 

To edit the selection in quick mask mode, we use the colors black, white and gray. This is why I think the word quick appears in the name of the mask. A mask can also be only in grayscale.

So in order to remove areas from the selection, draw with the “Paintbrush” tool for example, (1) and use the color black (2) in the quick mask.
However, if you wish to add areas to the selection, then the color you use in the quick mask should be the white (3).

 

If you have a gray color value (1), then the selected area is semi-transparent.
This becomes clear when we switch back to normal view, and press the Delete key on our keyboard.
The selection which was colored in black disappears completely (2), and the selection which was colored in gray, is now semi-transparent (3).

 

If you remember this, the black / white / gray stuff in quick masks, you can perform all sorts of selections.

In the next lesson I will give you another example, showing you how we can use quick masks.

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