Quick mask

[Bruce Gove]

Hi - can somebody help me? I've been reading the APTATS PDF. I opened a couple of images and worked with quick masking to get rid of bg problems. It was working just great, but something must have changed the last time I used it. Now, when I open an image in PS, enter quick mode and try to paint, nothing happens!! please help :D

Thanks,
Bruce Gove

[Robert O'Toole]

Hi Bruce,

Would be glad to help. Open any image. Press D. Press B (for brush) then paint a line. What do you see?

If you see a black line, everything is good and you can now press Q to enter quick mask and all should be good.

You might have been on the wrong tool.



Robert

[Charles Glatzer]

Make sure the layer blending mode is set to normal, and your brush opacity is not set too low to see easily. Layer mask thumbnail is selected?

Chas

[David Wilson]

I'm hoping some techno wiz (or someone with more of a clue than my limited knowledge) can help out here - I'd posted this on NatureScapes.Net and someone helpfully suggested I posted my issue on this forum. Seems like Bruce's issue may be similar to mine so I thought I'd half hijack his thread!

I'm using Robert's APTATS solutions and trying to remove unwanted objects (ie bits of birds / other wildlife in the shot that I want to eliminate). I'm using CS3 with the Quick Mask Mode, brush tool, new layer via copy etc etc technique. The brush (when used) was a 100% opacity and normal mode.

Here's the problem. I've tried this on two different machines. On my laptop it works perfectly. On my desktop, however, when I move the selection over the piece to be hiddne, the underlying / original piece still shows through. Anything I try to adjust either makes it distinctly funky (sorry non-technical terms) (ie different blending modes) or merely less effective (ie reducing opacity).

Why is this working on one machine but not the other? What can I do to correct this? It is a pain to get each such image transferred over to a drive that my laptop can access, do the quick mask, re-save and transfer back to the main machine to do other work!

Thanks in advance.

[Robert O'Toole]

This is usually a brush tool setting. Press D before you enter QM mode, this resets the foreground and background colors to the default black and white. Also make sure the brush is on 100 opacity.

This usually clears it up, if not reset the brush tool in the brush tool menu.

Robert

[David Wilson]

Robert - thanks for the response - from what I've been able to figure out elsewhere since my question, and your response seems to confirm it, I'm pretty sure that resetting to default colors for the brush should get me there - I'll try it out tonight and keep my fingers crossed!

[David Wilson]

Forgot to post an update - the defualt colors was the problem - thanks

[Robert O'Toole]

Thanks for the update, good to hear :)

Robert