Help with Marc's Quick Mask

kudbegud

has anybody tried the quick mask curves adjustment that marc demonstrated at yosemite? he made it look so easy but i cant for the life of me duplicate it. i cant seem to do the curves adjustment. any help, please?

jwear

kudbegud wrote:

has anybody tried the quick mask curves adjustment that marc demonstrated at yosemite? he made it look so easy but i cant for the life of me duplicate it. i cant seem to do the curves adjustment. any help, please?

lets hope Andy was awake after the day of shooting and the 3 meals I ate my brain was on hold -- his pic work of art in pixel form andy can you help of maybe Mark would do a couple tuts in a thread

wxwax

Open yer pic.

Select paintbrush tool.

Make sure colors are black and white in the toolbar. Put black on top.

Click on Quick Mask button in toolbar (on the right directly below the subordinate of the two color boxes.)

Paint with your paintbrush. What you paint turns orange (if the settings are Default.) Everything that's orange is a mask and therefore inactive. To erase part of the Quick Mask, change your color to white.

Go to Image/Adjustments. Play with the Curves tool. You'll see that the portion of your pic not covered by the mask is the only part that changes. To reverse the selection, hit Shift+Control+i.

Nikolai

Quick Mask

kudbegud wrote:

has anybody tried the quick mask curves adjustment that marc demonstrated at yosemite? he made it look so easy but i cant for the life of me duplicate it. i cant seem to do the curves adjustment. any help, please?

While I just LOVE the quick mask, there is nothing magic about it. It's simply another way of making a selection. You enter the mode, you paint, you leave the mode - you have your selection (usually you have to invert it).

However, the beauty of it lies in its visibility and "persistence". It basically acts as a temporary monochrome (alpha) layer. You can use more than a paintbrush. You can apply section tools (kinda use selections to make a selection:-), gradients and lots of other things. Also, unlike regular selective tools, you shall not to be afraid of loosing the prior selection just because you have forgotten to press SHIFT.

You only have to keep in mind that you do not operate on a color or even the actual transparency - your final result is a SELECTION with some intricate feathering.

Originally I was reluctant to use it, but after I learned its pros it became of my most favorite tools.

HTH

wxwax

Good reply, Nikolai. I didn't appreciate that you could do a selection within the selection. And the the feathering is indeed very smooth.

DavidTO

It is so powerful. You can toss out the burn/dodge tool completely.

Make sure you use a large, soft brush, meaning that you've got the gradient on the brush turned way up. Occasionally you'll need a smaller brush, but be careful, they get a hard edge quickly. And you can also sometimes take advantage of lowering the opacity of the brush.

It helps to name your layers after you've made them. Then you don't have to guess which one's the rocks, the trees, etc. by looking at the shape of the mask.

And don't forget the color selection too, as well. That's a great way to select sky, for example.

kudbegud

thanks a lot guys! i copied everything youve said and am going to try it. it looked so powerful i just had to try and master the technique. i'll post a before and after once i get it down.

wxwax

DavidTO wrote:

And don't forget the color selection too, as well. That's a great way to select sky, for example.

Good tips. But I've had trouble using the color selection. Keeps selecting stuff I don't want, even when I change the sensitivity. I guess it works best when there are no similar colors around.

DavidTO

wxwax wrote:

Good tips. But I've had trouble using the color selection. Keeps selecting stuff I don't want, even when I change the sensitivity. I guess it works best when there are no similar colors around.

You can always edit the mask once you've seleted.

Say you've got a shot of the sky, trees and a lake. The sky and the lake's reflection get selected, and you can't get rid of the lake in the selection. The good news is that you've got a good treeline, though. Make the selection, and then use your paintbrush to get rid of the lake reflection selection.

wxwax

DavidTO wrote:

You can always edit the mask once you've seleted.

Say you've got a shot of the sky, trees and a lake. The sky and the lake's reflection get selected, and you can't get rid of the lake in the selection. The good news is that you've got a good treeline, though. Make the selection, and then use your paintbrush to get rid of the lake reflection selection.

That's another good tip. My trouble was with the GG Bridge on a misty day. I wanted to select the bridge, but the dark and distant parts were too similar to sky and ground, wouldn't work. And very finicky to make a manual mask.

kudbegud

i got it! will still have to practice some more but it worked thanks to your hints. i actually did it twice on this shot: once for the chappel and lower trees, then once more for the sky. i also did some perspective correction to make the steeple straighter, then croped a little.

before:


after Quick Mask adjustments:

Nikolai

Actually...
In this particualr case you don't even need the quick mask.
This is a typical case for the "gradient masking".

This is a situation when you have a high dynamic range with a nice bright sky and a dark shaded canyon floor. The rule of thumbs is "shoot for the sky", because you can almost always pull out shades, but it's not possible to restore scorchered skies if you shoot for the bottom (although you can easily borrow nice fresh sky from some other shot, but I usually consider that "cheating":-)

Once you got your shots exposed for the skies (which you luckily did) here's what you do:
1) Copy layer (Ctrl+J), adjust is so the bottom is nice (ignore the blown skies)
2) Add mask to this new layer
3) Click or Ctrl+click on the mask (or select Add mask to the selection) - it differs by PS version from 7 to CS to CS2
4) Select linear gradient
5) Draw a vertical line between 1/3 and 2/3 of the image. You may draw in different direction or check inverse box in tool's options.

Play with step 5 trying different strokes - lower/higher, longer/shorter

HTH

Nikolai

Here is the my attempt:

kudbegud wrote:

i got it! will still have to practice some more but it worked thanks to your hints. i actually did it twice on this shot: once for the chappel and lower trees, then once more for the sky. i also did some perspective correction to make the steeple straighter, then croped a little.

before:


after Quick Mask adjustments:

As you can see, I preserved the skies.
What I did was:

1. Copy Layer
2. Change blending mode to Screen
3. It was not enough - copied new layer again - now bottom was ok
4. Merge two new layers
5. Add mask
6. Select gradient tool
7. Ran it between the top of the peak abd the middle of the tree at an angle approximately perpendicular the the cliff's edge
8. Open My Pictures, right-mouse, Send to Smugmug (via S*E):D

HTH

Nikolai

Thanks, Sid!

wxwax wrote:

Good reply, Nikolai. I didn't appreciate that you could do a selection within the selection. And the the feathering is indeed very smooth.

Yehs, it's great when the selection is not "hairy".

But if you deal with fine edges (women's hair, fine bushes/branches) you got to use the color range selection/magic wand, extract or the combination of everything you have..

Nikolai

Exactly my thoughts

DavidTO wrote:

You can always edit the mask once you've seleted.

Say you've got a shot of the sky, trees and a lake. The sky and the lake's reflection get selected, and you can't get rid of the lake in the selection. The good news is that you've got a good treeline, though. Make the selection, and then use your paintbrush to get rid of the lake reflection selection.

When dealing with fine selection you can temporarily ignore if some other parts of the image got affected. Once you done with the tought part, simple tools as marquee or lasso will do the rest in a matter of seconds (shift to add, alt to subtract).

Again, QM is great due to its persistence and visibility.

kudbegud

thanks Nic...thats a super fix. i just grabed a shot to try the q-mask on without looking for the best example. your instructions/tips are great and i'm gonna try it on another shot(s).

your the bomb!

Nikolai

U r 2 kind:-)

kudbegud wrote:

thanks Nic...thats a super fix. i just grabed a shot to try the q-mask on without looking for the best example. your instructions/tips are great and i'm gonna try it on another shot(s).

your the bomb!

It was a lousy fix, I blew up the middle while trying to respond faster:-)
In this case it should've been two separate gadients, one for each screened layer.
But I'm glad you got the idea.

QM is mostly helpful when you have an irregular (but not too fine) area to deal with.

Dee

Never used the quick mask
So I'm glad to read all the other ways to adjust, many similar to what I do. I usually find my photos are too complicated to fix easily with anything like quick mask.

Selective color -- ugh, I've never had anything work where I didn't have to go back and fix the mask, or I've given up and done it the "hard" way. I've watched some online tuts/movies, etc., but I never have a photo that's "easy" to select what I need. I always have to go back and refine the selection or the mask.

And sometimes I have to use the pen tool to get what I want.

While Mark's technique was interesting and eye-opening, I couldn't follow everything he did (way too sleepy after a long day), so I'm glad to read all this in this thread.

Like, reality check, OK?

Thank you everyone for the input!