hello I'm Robin Whalley welcome to Lensraft recently I've
noticed an increase in the number of people experiencing problems when
creating masks in Photoshop I started to notice it when I recently launched a new
luminosity masking course I had a few people contact me to say their masks
didn't look like mine and appeared to be the opposite initially I thought they
were missing one of the steps but they weren't no the number of people with
this problem is increasing and it's not confined to luminosity masks if every
mask they create let me show you an example of what's happening with this
image I've recorded an action to create three luminosity masks and saved them as
channels in the image when I run the action you can see the new channels
created as lights one two and three notice how the channels or masks become
progressively darker
no I'm going to manually repeat the steps in the macro first I hold down the
command key or control key if you're using a PC and click the RGB channel
this loads the image as a selection and I can save it as a new channel using the
icon at the bottom of the channels window now I can hold down the shift
option and command keys whilst clicking the new channel I saved if you're using
a PC that's shift hold ctrl and click this loads a selection as it did before
and I'll save it as a new channel now rather than carrying on let's look at
the results the alpha-1 channel we created should be the same as the lights
one created by the macro but when you look at it it's the inverse now if we
look at alpha 2 we see that it's lighter than alpha 1 the Photoshop action
produced the correct mask but when we perform the steps manually we get a
different result now let's look at a simpler example of the problem
this time I'll select the blue channel in the image and I'll load it as a
selection using this icon alternatively you can hold down your command or
control key and click the blue channel I'll save the selection as a new channel
the new channel should be the same as the blue channel but it's actually the
inverse even though I haven't made any changes now the selection is still
active so let's try saving it using the save option in the Photoshop select menu
this time the new channel is correct so if you're thinking that somehow inverted
the selection I hadn't the same selection produces different results
depending on how you choose to save it in a moment I'll show you how to fix
this but if you know anyone who may be struggling with this problem please pass
on this video because it might really help them to fix the problem is really
simple just double-click the quick mask mode icon at the bottom of the tools
palette you should then see the quick mask options dialog displayed in the
dialog you should find that the select areas option is selected rather than the
masked areas make the change and click OK after this you might find that you
still have the quick mask mode active if you have just click the quick mask icon
again at the bottom of the tools palette and that toggles it off now let's try
loading and saving the blue channel again
this time it works correctly I'm not sure why this seems to be affecting more
and more people but it can be hugely frustrating I'm sure that it's causing
lots of people to give up on masking techniques far too quickly if you know
anyone who could be affected please be sure to share the video I'm Robin Whalley
you've been watching Lenscraft I'll see you soon for another video