Digital Masking and Selection

I have taken 2 images to demonstrate the use of masking and selection:


The image on the left shows where I have taken part of the image on the right (a selection) and painted it onto the image on the left.  By using the healing brush tool and clicking on the daffodil yellow centre, I then painted it onto the other image... by clicking and holding down the mouse while you paint over the area you want.  The more you paint, the more daffodil appears.

These are the 2 images I started with by placing them both in photoshop

This shows the selection of daffodil painted onto the left image.

Then I looked at using the quick mask icon at the bottom of the tool box and when used this paints in red.  You click on the tool and paint over the image in areas where you want to mask, (protecting that part of the image underneath). Painting over areas in red will reveal the image below in these areas, for adjustment, then you click image, adjustments, 'revert' and it places the marching ants around the selections.  As you then use the adjustment sliders ie. brightness/contrast you see how the objects within the selections are adjusted.  You can revert back (or press Q) to change between the screens to adjust the rest of the scene, or none selections. 

You can see the painted out (masked) parts here. Any adjustments will only be applied to the other parts of the scene, once the marching ants are revealed around the selections:

You can then change settings ie. contrast and brightness to effect specific areas of the image:

The above shows all the remaining objects are selected for adjustment.

Then you can click on image, adjustments, revert, so that the selections are the adjustable areas.

Above I used a different image to experiment with masking techniques, as the screen grabs show, where I painted in red and tried some techniques:

This shows how the red paint seems to seep into the backgound.

This shows how the brightness and contrast effects the selections.

You can paint over all the background so that the only selection showing is the part that is affected by any adjustments, and visa versa following the same process as described above.

You can use the 'invert' to apply adjustments to the background and not the selected painted mask area.

By inverting you effectively switching the 'viewed' selections, to either the painted top parts or the non painted underneath parts.

  

          

This shows how you can look 'through' the mask (the red painted area) to see how adjustments now effect the underneath green background selections.