Get the IMAGE YOU WANT [Electronic resources] : Essential Photoshop Editing Techniques

Creative Team

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Use Quick Mask mode to make a selection

There are many reasons why you may want to select an area in an image, and Photoshop provides a couple of selection tools that enable you to do so. Which selection tool you use depends on the image, its complexity, and what you intend to do to it. All the selection tools enable you to make fairly accurate selections, but to make the process of selecting a specific area easier and the actual selection more refined, you'll also need to use Quick Mask mode to ensure the best possible results.

The selection process

There are several examples of when Quick Mask mode can be useful, such as when a selection needs to be extremely accurate and when we want to apply a filter to a specific area while preserving the rest of the image. Explaining how Quick Mask mode works is easier done than said, so we'll skip the introduction and get right to work. In this article, we'll use Quick Mask mode to make a refined selection around the children in our original image, shown on the left in Figure A, so that we don't give either child a haircut when we remove the background around them, as shown in the image on the right in Figure A.

Figure A.

Step 1: Choosing an image

We need to select an image on which to perform our technique. Remember that this is just practice, so choose an image that has some varying shapes and a bit of complexity (like the curls in the girl's hair in our image).

Tip

Don't forget that the first real step in any project is to make a duplicate of the image (Image Duplicate), so you aren't working on the original. Thanks to the History palette in Photoshop, there isn't much chance of not being able to undo a mistake, but it's better to be safe than sorry.

Step 2: Making your selection

We need to choose a selection tool that we'll use to make a preliminary selection around the area in the image we want to either alter or preserve. The selection tool you choose depends on the area you want to select and your past experience with the toolsthere are no wrong choices if you get a good selection. If it's a large area that's similarly colored and geometrically shaped, the Marquee tools are good. If the area is an odd shape and similarly colored, the Magic Wand tool will do the job well. For more intricate areas that are dissimilar in color, the Lasso tool will work best.

We selected the Lasso tool from the Toolbox and drew a selection around the two kids in our image. If you need to lift the mouse while drawing your selection with the Lasso tool, press the [Alt] key ([option] key on the Mac) to prevent the selection from closing prematurely. As you can see in Figure B, the selection doesn't need to be perfect at this point.

Figure B.

Step 3: Hiding behind a mask

As shown in Figure C on the next page, the Edit In Quick Mask Mode button resides at the bottom section of the Toolbox. Next to it sits the Edit In Standard Mode button, which takes you out of Quick Mask mode.

Figure C.

Click the Edit In Quick Mask Mode button and you'll see the selection you made more clearly, as shown in Figure D. By default, the semitransparent red overlay indicates the masked areathe area outside the selectionthat's protected. For this example, however, we want to protect the selected area.

Figure D.

Double-click on the Edit In Quick Mask Mode button to open the Quick Mask Options dialog box, as shown in Figure E.

Figure E.

Make sure that the Selected Areas option button is selected so that the mask color indicates the selected area. You'll find that selecting intricate details, such as hair, is easier when the mask is inversed this way. In this dialog box, you can also change the color and opacity of the overlay to offer better contrast between it and the image.

Click on the Color box to open the Color Picker dialog box; pick a color and click OK. You can adjust the opacity of the overlay by entering a value in the Opacity text box from 0 to 100%.

Adjust these settings if you wish and then click OK. With the color indicating the selected areas, the red (or whatever color you may have changed it to) overlay now indicates and protects the selected area, as shown in Figure F.

Figure F.

Adjust the color and opacity depending on the complexity and color of your selection.

Step 4: Editing a mask

While in Quick Mask mode, you can add to, remove from, and refine a mask using the various painting and editing tools. As with the selection tools, which tool you use depends on your image, your experience, and the intended purpose of your selection.

To refine your mask:

Choose the Brush tool from the Toolbox and then choose a brush size from the Brush dropdown list on the tool options bar. We like to use this tool for this technique because we can choose a large brush to paint wide, open areas and a small brush for painting in the nooks and crannies. The Brush tool also provides us with the option of hard- or soft-edge brushes. We chose a soft-edge brush to make our selection less harsh. We also want to be sure the mask completely protects our selection from anything we may do to the non-protected area.

Check the tool options bar to make sure your brush is in Normal mode and the Opacity value is set at 100%. Now we're ready to refine our mask in Quick Mask mode. Because our overlay is inversed, we want to subtract from the mask, rather than add to it.

Make sure white is the foremost color in the Set Foreground Color icon in the Toolbox. (If black is in the Set Foreground Color icon, our tool would add to the mask.)

Paint over the areas of the overlay you want to removechanging brush sizes as neededuntil only the children are covered in the red overlay.

As shown in Figure G, the closer you zoom in with the Zoom tool , the more precise your mask will be, resulting in a more precise selection. If you accidentally paint over an area in your mask, simply click on the Switch Foreground And Background Colors icon in the Toolbox to make black the foreground color, paint over the goof, and then switch back to white as the foreground color.

Figure G.

Once you've finished refining your mask, click the Edit In Standard Mode button. The marching ants indicate our improved selection, as shown in Figure H. If the selection isn't quite right yet, you can return to Quick Mask mode, refine it some more, and then return to Standard mode. It's that easy; flip back and forth between modes as much as you need to.

Figure H.

Tip

To toggle in and out of Quick Mask mode, press Q on the keyboard. To toggle between the Masked Areas and Selected Areas options for quick masks, [Alt]-click ([option]-click on the Mac) on the Edit In Quick Mask Mode button.

Step 5: Making use of the mask

With the selection complete, now we can do with it what we originally intendedremove the background around the children. Currently, though, the children are selected and anything we do to the image will only apply to the selected area. To make any changes to the background, we need to inverse the selection again. To do this:

Choose Select Inverse. Although it looks like nothing happened, the background is now selected and anything we do to the image will only apply to the background. The final step is to remove the background, as shown in Figure A.

Press the [Delete] key. Voilà! No more background.

Tip

This technique removes the background color, but not the actual background. If you placed the image in a page layout application, a white background would remain. To render the background transparent, you'd need to inverse the selection again and then create a clipping path around the children.

Step 6: Saving your work

After completing the selection process but before you close the file, you have the option to save the selection if you think you'll ever need it again. To save your selection, though, you first need to restore the original selectionremember that you inversed the selection in the previous step so you could delete the background.

To save your selection:

Choose Select Inverse to restore the selection around the children.

Choose Select Save Selection.

Name the selection in the Save Selection dialog box, and then click OK to save it in the Channels palette, as shown in Figure I. If you choose not to save your selection, Photoshop considers it a temporary mask, meaning it will delete it from the Channels palette after you close the file.

Figure I.

Last, but certainly not least, you need to save your finished image file. To so do:

Select File Save and then enter a filename and choose a location to save it.

Click Save. Your duplicate image is now saved and the original remains intact.

Note

For more on using masks to perform trick edits, check out "Fix accidental silhouettes" and "Restore lost highlight detail" at the end of this chapter.

Unmask the opportunities

When you create a selection, the optimum result should be a smooth outline of the pixels you want without any surrounding edge pixels. The selection tools in Photoshop do a pretty good job of this but, oftentimes, need some assistance. Quick Mask mode provides the environment necessary to achieve the perfect selection!