Freelance Photographer
Seeing things differently
A taker of Photographs - A creator of images

Quick Mask... (Shortcut Q key)

One of the quickest and easiest ways of masking off a subject is to use the Quick Mask tool...

1... The first thing you need to do is set the default swatch colours to black and white by pressing the 'D' key, or clicking on the little swatch icon ...

2... You then select the brush tool and using a soft edged paint brush set the opacity to 100%... You can adjust the brushes size as required by pressing the square bracket keys, '[' to make the brush smaller and ']' to make the brush larger...

3... Then click on the right hand icon of the quick mask tool and paint over the area you want to mask... This will paint a red mask on the image over the selected area... Don't worry if you over run, all you need to do is change the brush colour to white by pressing the 'x' key, or click on the exchange swatch icon and paint over the excess...

4... When you have completed the mask, click on the left hand icon of the quick mask tool to reveal the marching ants around your selection... Any action you now perform will be applied to all the image except where the mask is...