This tutorial assumes you have a basic grasp of Photoshop.

The importance of a good selection tool is understated, especially when working with photographs and images with you need to blend together. Photoshop has a wide array of such tools, shown in the image.

A brief run-through the tools: The Marquee tool allows you to make square, rectangular or circular selections; the Lasso is capable of freehand, ‘magnetic’ and polygonal selections while the Magic Wand works with colour-based selections.

Then there is also the Pen tool, with which you can make smooth geometrical shapes (and selections too, with the ‘Make Selection’ command). You could also use the Filter>Extract command to isolate certain objects in an image, but none of these give you as much control over your selection as the Quick Mask.

Entering Quick Mask Mode

Pressing ‘Q’ on your keyboard will automatically switch between Standard and Quick Mask mode. They are also accessible through the buttons on the Tool menu.

Customizing Quick Mask Mode

When you enter QM mode without having made any selections beforehand, no overlay colour is displayed, but you will notice that the foreground and background colours are automatically converted to black and white (or greyscale versions of whatever colour they were). This is because Photoshop uses them to define the intensity of the selection/mask; thus, it is possible to make a selection that only affects an area partially.

In the default settings, pure black would give you a full mask and white a full selection. Different shades of grey would give you masks of varying intensities; you can also think of them in terms of opacity. Remember, you can use Photoshop’s full arsenal of brushes, filters, and other tools like Blur and Sharpen to customise your mask.

Using Quick Mask

2. It is often easier to define a selection with the other tools first, and then refine it in QM mode than to paint the entire selection by hand. Using the Polygonal Lasso, roughly select the area that you want.

3. Press ‘Q’ to enter Quick Mask mode. This is indicated in the file title at the top of the screen, e.g. Pict.jpg @ 100% (Layer 1, Quick Mask/8). Notice the overlay colour (sometimes referred to as rubylith). Your active layer’s band in the Layers palette switches to a grey background as opposed to the normal blue.

4. Pick a brush, zoom in and start refining your selection. Remember, black is to mask, white is to select; the greys are to partially define areas. This is soon evident when you paint.

5. When you’re done, press ‘Q’ again to switch back to Standard Mode. Note that the marching ants selection does not give you an accurate idea of your real selection.

6. One of the ways to save your selection so that you can alter it later is to make it a Layer Mask. Select the layer you want, drag it to the ‘New Layer’ icon (second from right in the Layers palette) and you will have a duplicate. Now click the ‘Layer Mask’ icon (second from left) and the selection will be made into a layer mask – to edit it, merely click on the mask thumbnail and you can work on it. The same principle of black, white and greys applies here too.

7. Now that you have your selection, you can edit it any way you wish. I have played with the hue and brightness a little, as well as made another quick mask on the original layer to alter the colour of the lips.

More Quick Mask

Using a blend of sharp-edged and soft-edged brushes in QM.

After changing the Hue.

You also have the option to save your selection as an Alpha Channel. With the selection active, go to Select>Save Selection. Ensure that the document’s name is the current one and give your new channel a name.

In your Channels palette, when you select your new channel, you can see a B&W version displayed (shown below).

Other Ways to use Quick Mask

Using the ‘Intersect with selection’ command (located in any selection tool’s control bar; at the top, underneath the File… row) to play with the intensity – at the collar and shirt – gives you corresponding results. Refer to the above and below picture.

Here the ‘Clouds’ filter is utilised – enter QM mode without any selection, use pure black and white as the foreground and background colours, and apply Filter>Render>Clouds.

The same selection in Standard mode.

After tweaking the Brightness settings.

Here are some ideas on Quick Mask, QM:

• Use it to give colour to one part of the picture only while leaving the rest in greyscale; this look is often used in fashion photography.
• Isolate/cut out complex buildings from the background so you can use them elsewhere.
• Create a selection from a layer and delete it for a ‘fade out’ effect to the background.