The user interface

Before we start with the mask, I want to first talk about the user interface of Mask Pro.

When Mask Pro opens, we see that this plug-in consists of several windows.

You can change the position of these windows by clicking and dragging on the title.

And you can change the size of the windows by moving your mouse pointer over the edge of the window and clicking and dragging it when it changes into a two-arrow.

In the middle window of the plug-in, we see an example of the photo (A). Or rather the photo in the layer that we had selected in Photoshop.

On the left side of the middle window we see the tool bar (B).

Depending on the tool selected in the tool bar, we have the options in the “Tool options” panel (C).

Under the “Tool options” panel, we find the “Keep” (D) and “Drop” (E) windows.

In the “Keep”, we give the colors we want to preserve.

In the “Drop”, we give the colors we want to delete.

This becomes clear when we start working with Mask Pro.

Below the preview window, we find a number of buttons (1).

All these buttons are related to the appearance of your photo in the preview window.

The same buttons are also among the “View” – “Mode” dropdown in the menu bar.

Ok, let me first look at the different display options.

The first, “Original view” shows the original image.

The second, “solid view” shows the image with a white background. Double clicking on this button opens a dialog where you can change this color. This color does not add any extra layer to your image. This only serves to preview your image with a certain background color.
The third “Single layer view” displays the image with a transparent background.

The fourth and fifth “Mask view” and “Clean up view” buttons give you the mask view or alpha channel view. That is in black / white. But more on that later.

And the last button “composite view” will not only display the target layer, but also the underlying layer.
I call the layer with the girl as the target layer (F) because we are going to work on this layer and the underlying layer as the “Background Layer” (G) as in Photoshop. Beside, we can make no changes in this layer in Mask Pro too.

Of course, all these display capabilities have no effect on the image. These serve only to help you perfect the mask or the selection.

With the buttons on the right side of the preview window, we can see the image in different Channels (1).

The number of channel buttons displayed will depend on the type of image.

For example, a JPG file has “Red”, “Green” and “Blue”channels and a CMYK file has the “Cyan”, “Magenta”, “Yellow” and “Black” channels.

Channel Views relate only to the display of the image, but do not the effect the mask.

Back to the display capabilities.

You can open each of these display options in a separate window.

We call them Navigation Panels.

Just click the “Window” in the menu bar, select “Navigator Window” in the drop-down menu, and click the navigation window that you want to open (A).

If you change something in the preview window (B), it will be automatically adjusted in other open navigation windows.

If you zoom into your image in the preview window (1), then you can navigate to different parts of your photo by clicking and dragging the block (2) in the open navigation window.

If you placed all your windows where you want them, you can save it as workspace.

Then you do not have to set the workspace again when you open Mask Pro next time.

Just click the “File” button in the menu bar and choose “Save Workspace” in the drop-down menu.

Give a name to the workspace and click “Save” (1).

The next time you return to Mask Pro, you only need to open the “File” in the menu bar, and choose “Load Workspace” from the drop-down menu.

In the window that appears, choose the workspace that you have saved (2), click the “Open” button, and all windows are properly positioned.

Mask Pro Tool Tips palette

In Mask Pro, we have various ways to assist us.

One is the tooltips palette.

The tooltips palette gives you information about the selected tool (1) in the toolbar.
By default, this is open when you Mask Pro opens, but if it is closed for some reason, you can open it by clicking on the “Window” in the menu bar and selecting “Tool Tips and Shortcuts” from the drop-down menu.
The tooltips palette has two tabs “Overview” and “Shortcut” (2).

The “Overview” tab gives a description of the selected tool, and how you can use this tool.

Some of these tabs, depending on the selected tool, even have a sample video (3) with information on the use of the respective tool.

The “Shortcut” tab gives you a list of keyboard shortcuts for the selected tool.

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