Hi, this is Anne with Graphic Design How To, and today I'm going to go over
how to use the Quick Mask feature in Adobe Photoshop. All right, let's get started.
Ok, so I'm here in Photoshop. I'm just going to Create new.
I'll come up here to Print. And I'm going to choose Letter 8.5 by 11.
And I'll come down here and Create. I'll come over here to my Layers panel. And if
you're not seeing this one, you can just come up here to Window>Layers, and it's right here.
Ok, so first, I'm going to go over how to get into Quick Mask Mode. And there are two ways.
First, by hitting Q on your keyboard, and you can see that it changes your layer. And this is
just an indication that Quick Mask Mode is on. The other way to get into Quick Mask Mode is to
click this little button over here at the bottom left of your screen. Now I'm going to double click
this button to show you the options. I have mine set up to be the Selected Areas, and I think this
is the default that Photoshop comes with. So this basically means that whatever you have selected,
that will become the mask. If you have this other one selected, it will be everything
but the selection. That just kind of seems counterintuitive to me. But anyway, we can change
our color right down here. This is just a color to show what parts of your photo are being selected.
And the opacity, I usually leave at 50%. But I might knock this up to 70% so it'll be a little
bit stronger. We'll say OK. So what the mask tool does is it allows you to paint a selection.
So I'm going to hit Q on my keyboard, and then I'm going to make my brush a little bit bigger.
I'm holding CTRL and OPT and then dragging to the right with my mouse. And I'll just draw,
as you can see, it's red, because the color we chose is red for the mask. I'll hit Q or hit this
button down here to get back out. And as you can see, it's created a selection, where the red was.
I'll hit Q to get back. I don't actually think I've ever used it this way to just draw a
selection like this, but I use it all the time to make a better selection than the one I currently
have. And that's the way I'm going to show you next. So I've got an image that I found out on
Pexels.com. And I'll just open that. I want to select just the apples here so I can put them
on another background maybe, or make some color changes to just the apples and not the background.
So first, I want to just select subject, so I'll hit W to get my Wand tool which is right up here.
And then I'm going to click Select Subject here at the top.
As you can see, it's done a pretty good job of selecting the apples,
but I noticed that it's missed some right here. So I'm going to jump into Quick Mask Mode by hitting
Q on my keyboard. Now we can see the selection really well, because the red is less opaque.
So when we change this to 70, it made the red more opaque. Anyway. Ok, I'll hit Q to get back.
I'm going to just zoom in right up here. I'll hit R to get my Rotate View tool and just rotate that
around. It's a little easier to paint whenever it's at this angle for me. Now I'm going to hit B
to get my Brush tool. I'm going to change the softness to about what I see here. So I'm
holding CTRL and OPT and dragging to the left. On a PC, this is going to be a little bit different.
It might be CTRL and ALT, and then I can just paint this area in. I can also hit E to erase
parts of it. Ok, that's looking pretty good. I'm going to make my brush a little bit smaller here,
and just drag across here and paint that little piece on. And then get this
part...looks like I need to delete a little piece here so I'll make it really small,
and erase. Instead of using your eraser tool, you can hit X to get white as a foreground color
and continue to use your Brush tool to erase that way. Ok, I see a little bit more here.
I'm going to rotate my view around a little bit, and then hit B for my Brush tool,
hit X to get my black in the foreground again. And I'll just paint this part on too.
So basically what I'm doing is just refining the selection that I have by painting a mask on. This
looks pretty good. So I'll hit Escape to get out of the Rotated View. And now I'll hit Q again, and
it's turned back into the selection. So now we can hit CMD J, and we have the apples by themselves.
Now I'm going to make an Adjustment Layer on this and we'll do Hue and Saturation.
Now I want this to only apply to the layer I made. I'm going to hold OPT CMD and G. That's
going to be CTRL ALT G on a PC, and then this will only apply to the layer underneath. You
can tell by that little arrow right there. So let's knock the saturation up a little bit.
I want to knock the lightness up to like that. And maybe we want our apples to be a little more pink
instead. Ok, that looks good. So the Quick Mask tool is really great for modifying any selection
or creating a new selection. Another cool thing that it's good for is creating a fade effect,
maybe to another color or something like that. I'm going to open another Pexels image. And this time,
I'm going to hit Q right off the bat. I'm going to make my brush really big. I'm also going to make
this brush as soft as possible. So to do that, I'm holding CTRL and OPT, and just dragging up.
I'm guessing that's going to be CTRL and ALT on a PC. You can also change the hardness right here.
We'll make our brush a little bigger. And then I'm just going to drag across him like this.
Fill in all these areas. And then I'll hit Q. Now when I do this, it looks like it's a solid line
selection. But that's just what Photoshop does. It's actually a faded selection. So now I'll hit
CMD J. And you can see what we've done here. The new layer has a fade to transparent right up here.
So I'm going to get on that layer. And we'll do another Hue and Saturation Adjustment Layer.
And I also want this one to only be on layer one, so I'll hold OPT CMD and G, that's ALT, CTRL,
and G on a PC. Now I can change the color of the bottom of his jacket and bump the saturation up.
Maybe we want this to be purple. That looks pretty cool. So we've got a fade on his jacket from blue
or black to purple now. He does have a green hand though, so maybe we could come back in and just
erase this part to bring the natural color back. So that's two ways you can use the Quick Mask Mode
feature. I seriously use this all the time. And I think you should really think about adding it
to your workflow because it is super useful. All right, if you liked this video and you want to see
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