I'm just trying to get to know layer masks and their benefits and just testing it out on some pictures but I was watching this video (go to 5 min 40 sec) and he is painting in red to show where he has painted on the layer mask, but on mine no colour is painted onto the image as I paint, only the layer mask thumbnail changes. Does anyone know how to paint colour so I can see what I have painted? I'm in PS Cs5
Double click on the "Edit in Quickmask" button and make sure opacity is 50% and set it to whatever color you want. Default is the red he was using, at "ff0000."
edit: Also, if you are painting on a "layer mask" that is different than painting with quickmask. Paint on the image in quickmask to make a selection like he is doing, or paint on a layer mask to hide part of that layer. Either way, make sure you are painting with black.
Double click on the "Edit in Quickmask" button and make sure opacity is 50% and set it to whatever color you want. Default is the red he was using, at "ff0000."
Does that fix it?
That won't do it. You need to go from layers palette to channels palette (two tabs in the same place) and click on the mask in channels. That'll make it visible. By default it's not visible.
Thanks guys, I didn't realise that quick mask mode was different to normal layer mask. I did it in the end by going to select > edit in quick mask mode and that solved it.
Why would you use normal layer masks instead of quick mask?
The short answer is something like, layer masks are for hiding parts of a layer (the parts you paint) and Quick mask is an editing mode where you can paint a selection.
Let's say you have two layers and want to hide a piece of the top one (i.e. make it transparent), you paint on a layer mask, voila. The pixels underneath what you paint on your layer mask are hidden.
Let's say you want to select a piece of your image, you can either use the marquee, lasso tool, etc or you can paint on it in quick mask mode, go to regular mode and viola, it's selected (in actuality, what you *don't* paint on ends up being selected)
It's more complicated than this, but I'm trying to simplify it.
The short answer is something like, layer masks are for hiding parts of a layer (the parts you paint) and Quick mask is an editing mode where you can paint a selection.
Let's say you have two layers and want to hide a piece of the top one (i.e. make it transparent), you paint on a layer mask, voila. The pixels underneath what you paint on your layer mask are hidden.
Let's say you want to select a piece of your image, you can either use the marquee, lasso tool, etc or you can paint on it in quick mask mode, go to regular mode and viola, it's selected (in actuality, what you *don't* paint on ends up being selected)
It's more complicated than this, but I'm trying to simplify it.
Ahhh I get it now. Thanks a lot, I'm just playing around with it in some photos and am sure it will be quite useful. Thanks again, both of you.
Quick-masks are temporary selections, the mask on an adjustment layer is "permanent" -- both are methods of defining a selection. The mask itself is a grayscale Channel, but will show as red (or whatever color you pick) when the actual pixel-containing channels (RGB) are visible.
