How to Editing a Quick Mask in Photoshop CS3

Continue the last, you will refine the selection of the statue by adding to or erasing parts of the masked area. You'll continue to use the Brush tool to make changes to your quick mask. The advantage of editing your selection as a mask is that you can use almost any tool or filter to modify the mask.

Adding to a Selection by Erasing Masked Areas

You will continue to work in Quick Mask mode. In Quick Mask mode, you do all of your editing in the image window.

1.  In the tool options bar, select a smaller soft brush of 45 pixels in diameter from the Brushes pop-up menu.

 2.  Click the Switch Foreground And Background Colors button above the foreground and background color-selection boxes. To erase the mask, you paint with white.

3.  Using the keyboard shortcuts, press Spacebar+Ctrl (Windows) or Spacebar+Command (Mac OS), and zoom in on the Buddha's halo.
 
4.  Brush out any tree detail that may appear at the edge of the statue.

5.  If you make a mistake and brush out part of the statue, click the Switch Foreground and Background Colors button above the foreground and background color-selection boxes. Then repaint any needed detail.
 
 6.  Continue brushing along edges that are too soft or missing detail until you are satisfied with the results.

7.  Click the Quick Mask Mode button in the toolbox to switch to Standard mode and see how painting in the mask alters the selected area. Notice that the selection border increases to encompass more of the statue.

Editing mask in Standard mode

Quick Mask selection

If any areas within the statue still appear to be selected, it means that you haven't erased all of the mask. You'll continue to refine the mask in the next steps.

Subtracting from a Selection by Adding Masked Areas

If you have erased the mask beyond the edges of the statue, part of the background will be included in the selection. You'll fix these flaws by returning to Quick Mask mode and restoring the mask to those edge areas by painting with black.

1.  Click the Quick Mask Mode button to return to Quick Mask mode.

2.  Press X to switch the foreground and background colors so that the black color swatch appears on top. Remember that in the image window, painting with black will add to the red overlay.

3.  Choose a small, hard-edged brush, such as 9 or 13 pixels, from the Brushes pop-up palette.

4.  Paint with black to restore the mask (the red overlay) to any of the background area that is still unprotected. Continue working until only the area inside the statue remains unmasked and you are completely satisfied with your mask selection.

Remember that you can zoom in and out as you work. You can also switch back and forth between Standard mode and Quick Mask mode.

Painting with black to restore mask

5.  In the toolbox, click the Quick Mask button to return to Standard mode and view your final statue selection.

6.  Double-click the Hand tool to make the statue image fit in the window.