Where has this Quick Mask Preview Tip Been My Whole Life?
I always liked the idea of the Quick Mask in Photoshop. For those who may not be familiar, the Quick Mask feature is accessed by pressing the \ key on your keyboard while painting a mask on your image. It shows you in a temporary red veil what you are masking out when toggled on (where you are painting with black). On the surface, it sounds great, but it has a massive flaw, in my opinion.
The Quick Mask is red and a faint red at that, so it can be difficult to see very well when you toggle it on. It was because of the Adobe default that I never really used it. Here I, about 20 years later, think that the Quick Mask feature would be awesome if I could change the color.
After doing some serious digging in the menus of Photoshop, I found out how to change the Quick Mask, and I just had to share it with you. I thought it would be in the normal Photoshop preferences, I was wrong :/
To change the color, follow the tutorial at the bottom of this page or the directions below:
- Open a new document.
- Add an Adjustment Layer
- Start painting in the mask with black
- Go to “Channels”
- Then select the mask you are painting
- Go to the options in the upper right-hand corner of the channels palette
- Click on “Layer Mask Options”
- Change the color and Opacity to your desired preference. I prefer about 65% opacity with a pure magenta color.
I will show you how to do this in the tutorial below and compare it to my other favorite way to see what I am doing on my layers in Photoshop with the Layer Styles dialog. Enjoy!
For Blake, it's all about the art and process synergy. He dives deep into complex topics and makes them easy to understand through his outside-the-box thinking so that you can use these tricks in your workflow today!
Cool, helpful and every time you said forward slash you showed a backward slash on the screen. Just sayin…
yeah, the on-screen key is right, dont listen to me. I ALWAYS get those two confused, haha.
Adobe says the shortcut key for Quick Mask is Q.
“/” = slash
“\” = backslash
Adobe: “Toggle layer mask on/off as rubylith (layer mask must be selected)” for “\” key.
Adobe: “Toggle between Standard mode and Quick Mask mode” for “Q” key.
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/default-keyboard-shortcuts.html
Thanks for the tip. Look forward to trying it.
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good video but you can change your quick mask colour by double-clicking your quick mask and dialogue box comes up and you can change your colour there
I get a dialog box for the layer but don’t see how to change the color of the quick mask.
You can teach old dog new tricks! I never knew this. Thanks as always.
Thanks very much. There seems to be a problem with my PS – the latest version. When I press the \ key the red overlay does not appear. A very mild white/grey fills the screen where the mask is. Is there another setting that that I need to activate beforehand?
Aiëë. – That’s a BACKSLASH!! 😉
Thanks Blake, a great idea to change the color to magenta, but unlike your demo, the magenta color didn’t save. I had to make the change on every new image. I must have must something in your tutorial.
Great video! The extra bonus in there for me was that it looked like I could change the transparency too! Which is something I have pondered more than the color. Huzzah!
A cool tool Blake thank you!
Thank you for this, Blake. I’ve experienced difficulty with some of my red shots this week so it’ll be a great help.
I find the Color Overlay to be very useful for applying Blend-If to a colour grade – it becomes very easy to seeing what Blend-If is actually doing.