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MikeFromMesa
Known Participant
June 11, 2023
Answered

Adjusting a mask

  • June 11, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 324 views

I am returning to Photoshop after some years, so I find I have forgotten some of what I used to know about using Photoshop itself, and apparently one of those things is how to  view a mask when painting over part of it.

 

I was working on a photo of a flower and I used the object select tool to select the flower itself and created a mask from that. I then used that mask in several adjustment layers and then found I wanted to remove part of the mask to adjust only some of the flower in another adjustment layer. I selected the paint brush with black color to remove some of the mask and that worked fine, but I thought I remembered that it was possible to view the mask itself rather than the image when painting over part of a mask, but I could not find any way to do that.  That is, I wanted to view the mask rather than the image when painting over the mask, but could find no way to display the mask itself rather than the image. How do I do that?

 

I work on a (Silicon) Mac running Ventura. Thank you for any help.

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer AxelMatt

    In the Layers panel do an Option-click the layer mask thumbnail to view only the grayscale mask. To redisplay the layers, Alt-click or Option-click the layer mask thumbnail.

     

    1 reply

    AxelMatt
    Community Expert
    AxelMattCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
    Community Expert
    June 11, 2023

    In the Layers panel do an Option-click the layer mask thumbnail to view only the grayscale mask. To redisplay the layers, Alt-click or Option-click the layer mask thumbnail.

     

    My System: Intel i7-8700K - 64GB RAM - NVidia Geforce RTX 3060 - Windows 11 Pro 25H2 -- LR-Classic 15 - Photoshop 27 - Nik Collection 8 - PureRAW 6 - Topaz Photo AI
    M
    MikeFromMesaAuthor
    Known Participant
    June 11, 2023

    Thank you. That worked. I thought I had tried that, but apparently I did not.

     

    I just wanted to comment that I have been very surprised at how much more functionality I have found after returning to CC Photoshop that I don't remember from from before. Slections are much, much easier than I remember and so creatng and using masks has been a pleasure. Perhaps it is just that CC Photoshop has improved that much, or perhaps it is because I have also become more knowledgeable about what is possible over the years and more willing and able to experiment, but I have been amazed. 

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