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Masking, Selections, and Background Eraser

today, we're going to start off talking about masking in with masking. That means removing the backgrounds were isolating complex objects. We're gonna talk about furry, fuzzy Harry and just complex stuff. How do we isolate it? So if we want to brighten it, darken it, make it less colorful. Whatever it is, you want to do an adjustment or if you would rather copy it and put it in another document. So it sits on top of something else, like, let's say, a new sky in a photo because your sky was kind of boring, and you put it on top of amore. Interesting sky. And so any time I mentioned masking, it is synonymous with also selections. A selection in a mask are, in general, identical concepts. The only difference is a selection looks like little dashed line on your screen when it's active in a mask is attached to something, and it looks like a black and white representation of what would otherwise be a selection. It's like a selection is a temporary thing that you're going to use and then get ...

rid of in a moment and mask is something attached to a layer or attached to an adjustment or attached to something else where I could make more changes later. So whatever I say masking it means either making selections or attaching a mask to something. So let's take a look at some concepts. I'm gonna just open a picture, and I've chosen some images that I hope would be somewhat challenging to make selections. We will progress through different ideas in with this particular technique. What I want to show you is how do I isolate something if it's background is quite different than the subject? Doesn't matter how complex the subject is. The subject could be a tree that has literally 10,000 little bitty leafs on it on branches and things, as long as the background is different. So if you have a blue sky and the tree is not colored blue, then this would be fine or if this case you have an overcast sky. And the thing that I'm trying to ice late does not contain white or medium grace, because that would look just like the sky. And in this case, I was in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and found this tower, and if you look at it, we got what yellow and kind of black is the colors that we need to isolate from the sky. So here's the technique that I'm gonna use. I'm actually going to use the eraser. The eraser tool is not really designed for creating a selection or for even creating a mask. It just throws things away. But we can cheat. And after we're done using the eraser tool to actually throw material away, we can convert that into a selection or a mask. And I'll show you that. So just know that if I delete things, it's not gonna be permanent. It's just temporary. So what I'm gonna do to start with is, since I know I don't truly want to delete this guy permanently, because if I mess up, I want to easily be able to bring things back in general. When I work in photo shop, I rarely do things that are permanent. So if I ever screw up on something, I noticed later on a month later that the edge doesn't look quite right. I want to be able to bring back things that I'm currently have hidden or anything like that, because I might decide that I screwed up So what I'm gonna do here is, since the tool we're going to use truly deletes things I'm going to start by duplicating this layer that contains the picture. There are many different ways of duplicating. You can go up to the layer menu, this choice called duplicate, but there is one that has a keyboard shortcut, and I have to duplicate layers so often that I get used to the keyboard shortcut. The keyboard shortcut is command J. That's control Jan windows. Just think if it is jumping something to a new layer instead of duplicating that way, you can remember it. So if you watch my layers panel, I'll just type Command J, and you'll see that I have a duplicate layer. If you hate keyboard shortcuts, head up to the layer menu. You'll find a choice called duplicate. The only problem with that keeper or that menu is there is no keyboard shortcut attached to it. All right, so we got a duplicate. I'm gonna hide the original. It's underneath. Otherwise, if we delete parts of this layer, you're just going to see what's under it, and you won't notice that you've deleted anything. So in the layers panel. I'm gonna turn off the eyeball on the layer that's underneath, and then I'm gonna use the eraser tool to remove the background. Now, if you've used the eraser tool before, you think that's gonna take me a year and 1/2 because it's usually manual painting that you have to dio. But there's actually three different eraser tools. If I zoom up on it here and I click on the eraser and hold down, you'll see that there's actually three choices in that same slot, and I'm gonna use the one called the Background Eraser. Now I use the background eraser tool anytime. The background contrasts with the subject and the subject doesn't in general contain the colors there in the background. So in this case, I don't really see the whites and grays and slight blues that are in the sky. I don't see it in the subject, and so this is gonna work. Fine. Now, before I get into using this, I'm gonna reset this tool because I used it last night and I changed the settings on it. I just want to make sure I'm starting with the default settings that you're probably going to get when you grab the tool with any tool that you ever using Photo shop usually have the options for that tool across the top of your screen and what's known as the Options Bar and right here will be just the icon for the tool your using and a lot of people aren't aware of it. But if you move your mouse right there and you press the right mouse button, you have the choice of resetting this tool or resetting all the tools and photo shop. And therefore, if you find that something weird is happening with this tool, you can do that or, in my case of your teaching, and you just want to make sure that the tools gonna act the way it should for everybody else, I reset the tool to make sure the Zahra defaults. You won't need to do that in general for this technique, cause you'll learn what the settings mean, and you'll be able to start with whatever you need. All right, so the background eraser tool. Here's the concept. It presents you with a brush, and you can change that brush the same way you can change any brush you could change the size and how soft the edges. It's no different than using, like the paint brush tool or the normal racer when it comes to choosing your brush. But then there's across here in the middle. If you look closely on it, you see a little cross here in what photo shop is going to do is look at the color that's underneath that cross there and when I click is gonna delete Onley that color from within the circle. So if I move my mouse over here and I click, it's gonna look at the color that's underneath across here. In the moment I click it deletes that color from within the circle. Right? Then I start moving over and it's not too late. Anything because what's under the circle? I mean, what's under the cross here? Nothing. But the moment that that touches something, it will know it did lead again. Does that make sense now? The problem, though, is if I choose undo. If I move my mouse in here, I assume up a little bit. Make it easier for you to see. But if I click right here, watch what happens. Do you see how it didn't jump over his arm and get the outer part of the sky, and that's because of a setting that's at the top of my screens. The first study we're gonna change. Then it's called limits. The default setting for limits is continuous, not continuous, but contiguous in continuous. Just in case you're not used to, the term in general means one unbroken chunk. It's like if you think about the contiguous United States, that means the United States, minus Alaska and Hawaii, because Alaska and Hawaii are not part of the one continuous chunk that is the main part of the United States. If you wanted to think about Alaska and Hawaii as well, that would be discontinuous. It's not terms that I like, but what they used so now, with it set to discontinuous. Let's see if it's any different when I click here what I click here now it can delete through the entire circle not just one unbroken chunk where the cross areas. So when I click, do you see how it could delete out in the other areas? And that's essential when you're working on things like trees or in this case, this, um, this oil tower. Otherwise I'd have to click in between every single opening that's here. But in this case, I could get a really big brush, huge brush in. Just click, and you see how it could go through all those little pieces that makes sense. So far, I hope so. Then there is one other thing, and that is when I click in a delete something. It's constantly keeping an eye on what's underneath across here, and if it hits something different, it's gonna start leading it. So if I get over this way and I hit the tower, which is what just happened, it's going to start to leading that. So if that's the case, I'm gonna have to be overly careful to not get the cross hair on anything other than the sky. Unless I change one setting up here, These icons air not very obvious. If you want to know what they mean, just hover over them without clicking all of them. Determine how often it looks at what colors underneath that cross hair, and so the default setting. If I hover over it, it'll give me a tool. Tip means continuous. It's having a constant. I'd changing what colors Underneath that cross hairs, it goes, We want to use the setting. That's to the right of that, and it's called once. What once means is only pay attention to the color that's underneath that cross hair. At the moment you click, then think about the same color the entire time you drag. And so you're ignoring what's underneath across there except for at the moment you click, and the only time it changes is when you let go of the mouse and you click again. Second time you click, it will take a new look at what's underneath that cross hair. So if I come over here and put my mouse on top of, let's say, a bright part of the sky like right here, I can click. And now, since it's set toe once, I can paint across the whole document like this, and it's thinking about the same color of the whole time I let go, and I know if you can tell or not. But over here on the left side, the checkerboard just looks a little. I don't know what you call modeled or something where it doesn't look like a pure checkerboard That tells me there's probably still a hint of the sky there. So I'm gonna click here and just see if the checkerboard looks to clean up. And if so, it means I deleted something. Do you see it kind of clean up a little bit and then I'll use that as well to go across this, and I would simply continue to do that until the checkerboard looks nice and clean. Where I don't see any. Any part looks interrupted. Now I'm gonna choose undo a few times to do this over again because there are ways we can refine this and really be able to tell if that checkerboard is clean or not. I'm gonna choose undo a few times. I don't if you remember or not. But there is the normal undo keyboard shortcut, which is Command Z. And if you add one additional key to it, which was the option key on a Mac, you could get multiple undoes multiple induced on windows would be all control Z. But I'll type that a few times to get back. So here's what I might Dio if I knew I was gonna put another background behind this, I would go get that background right now. I would copy it and I'd put it in here by choosing paste and it would show up is a layer. I could then move that layer. So it's underneath this one, and therefore, when I delete the background on this, I'm simply revealing what's underneath it. In this case, I don't really have a designated background. I want to put this on, so I'm just gonna put a solid color underneath it. To do that, I'm going to go here in my layers panel and at the bottom, there's 1/2 black and half white circle. That's usually where you create adjustment layer. But it also has three special choices at the very top that just fill later with either a solid color, a Grady int or a pattern. I'll use solid color for now to keep it simple. When I choose that it wants to know what colored like to use, and I'll just throw in some sort of blue color that should work, and if you look now, my layers panel, I have that layer on top of my image. So it's covering it up. I wanted underneath, so I just click on the name of this layer and I'll drag it underneath. So now if I work in the layer that's on top. If I delete any portion of this layer, it's just gonna make a hole in it where I can look through it down to what's under it and I'll reveal the blue. So now let's see what happens if I click here and I started leading. Do you see how it's easier to tell if the sky has completely disappeared or not? Because I can see if the blue is being obstructed by anything. So let's see there. And if it's still obstructed, I think I can see a teeny bit of modelling over here. I'm gonna click, so it picks up whatever color was left over and deletes it. What happens is this tool is only looking at one layer. It can only see what's in the layer that's currently active, which is later that contains the tower, and so it's looking at what used to be in those areas, and if there's anything left over, it picks up the color of it, and that's what we're starting to delete. So we can get up here a little closer on the tower if you'd like and see if there any areas that we missed. But in general, looks like we got that relatively clean now, often times when I'm done removing the background like this. What I want to do if I used the background Eraser is I hate the fact that it's permanent. If I save and close my image right now, it doesn't know where that sky win. It's just gone. So I would like to transform this into it using a mask instead, because a mask is something where it would simply hide what's in a layer without deleting what's in that layer. I could always bring it back again, and that's why if you look in our layers panel, we have the layer we've been working on, and then remember before we got started, we made a copy of it, and it's waiting for us down here hidden. So now let's take this and somehow convert what we have into a mask that could be applied to this layer down here that still has the original sky contained within it. All they need to dio is if I move my mouse on top of the thumbnail. For this layer, I can hold down the command key, which is controlling windows and click on it. If you command click on the thumbnail for any layer, you're going to get a selection of whatever's in that layer where all it does is it selects it, and it leaves any areas that are empty, unsolicited and by empty. What I mean is, if I turn off all the other layers, you'd have to see a checkerboard in that area. The checkerboard indicates an area that contains nothing. Then what I can do is come down to the layer that contains the original picture, the one that I had never deleted anything on. And that's the background layer. I'll turn on its little eyeball, and I'm gonna add a mask to it. If I'm in an older version of photo shop, I'd have to double click on the word background because the background layer is locked and there are a lot of things you can't do to it. But in the newest version of photo shop, you no longer have to double click on the word background to change its name. changed its name would usually unlock it. Instead, I can just click the layer mask icon, which is the circle inside of ah, rectangle icon. Watch what happens to that layer of my layers panel as the selection gets converted into a mask just to make it easier for you guys to see what's happening in my layers panel. I'm gonna make these thumbnails that are in the layers larger. It's not something that is necessary for this technique. I just think it'll be better for you guys because it looks so small on screen. One way of changing how big the thumbnails is is to move your mouse down here below the layers in, press the right mouse button. That will cause a menu to show up where you can choose how large those thumbnails are. If I choose large, hopefully that makes it a little easier for you guys to see if you're on a mouse that only has one mouse button. That means usually on a Mac, which just one button control clicking. Holding down the control key and clicking the mouse is usually the equivalent to the right mouse button, so I would control click down here. All right. Now I can get rid of the layer. We were actually using the background eraser on. I only used that layer temporarily because the tool I was using has to delete things. And so I needed something for it to work on. But now that we're done and we've converted into a mask, I can throw that layer away by dragging it down to the trash and I'll take our layer That's got the mask on it and move it above. Now there's a few things about this. First off, there's some things that might be a little bit less than ideal. When I turned off the eyeball on one of these layers and I saw the end result, I thought I saw a checkerboard partially showing through parts of the tower. Watch over here. You see this general area and look what happens when I turn off layer. That's underneath. Can you see a hint of a checkerboard showing through? That means that we partially deleted part of that. It's partially see through, and to me, that's less than ideal. So we need to learn a little bit more about using the background eraser tool so we can refine what it's doing. And also if I zoom up on this really close, I'm usually pretty picky. And if I look really close, can you see just a hint of kind of a white ish edge? That's the old background just clinging on there can't give up that subject, and it still wants to be in our picture. Well, I don't want that hint of white on the edge to show up at all, so we need to learn a few more things. So I'm gonna be in my layers panel, making sure that the mask is active whenever you have a mask attached to a layer. And if you grab the paint brush tool or use anything else, you can either paint on the picture itself or you can paint on the mask in the way Photoshopped figures out which one you're painting on is by highlighting the corners of it with little brackets. So if I click over here, the image itself would be active, and if I paint on it, I'd literally see the paint with as part of my picture. If I click over here with the mask is active, then that's where my pain is going to go in any changes I make, so I make sure the mask is active. Then one thing that I can do is go to the select menu. And that's where I'm gonna find a choice called Refine Mask. This menu command will change names between refine edge and refine mask, depending on what you're working on. If what you have is a selection that's active, what looks like little marching ants, little dotted line, it will save refined edge. If what you're working on instead is a mask where you can physically see it is a black and white of thing attached to a layer or something else. Then it will say refine mask. But it's the same command just saying no, if you notice it being relabeled, I'm gonna choose Refine mask and all I'm gonna do is in here. There is a choice called edge detection, and there's a slider called radius underneath it. What this means is, how much will I allow Photoshopped to deviate from where the edge of this object is right now? And all I need to do is bring this up a little bit. I can either move the slider or if the number is highlighted, I can use the up and down arrow keys to change the number. And I'm just gonna bring this up in what it's gonna dio is refine the edge. I'm gonna bring it up, maybe up to about a pixel, and that means it can deviate that edge by one pixel. And what that's going to do is have it analyzed the edge of this and see if it needs to move it to more precisely match the edge where the actual object is. It doesn't always make a dramatic change, but I'm gonna bring that up because sometimes that alone would fix this. If it doesn't fix it, then what I'm gonna do instead is come down here to a different area called decontaminate colors. What decontaminate colors will do is it will look at the edge that I have, and it's going to take the colors from the area that's inside this object in push them out in towards the edge so that if there's a little bit of white, that's the old background in there, and if it takes some of the color from inside here and pushes it out there. It will replace the white with a different color, the color of the tower. So I'm gonna turn on decontaminate colors and then I need to move up this slaughter. Just tell it how much and I'm gonna just move it up a bit and let's see, they're starting How much I might need to push that up there to get the colors that are in the edge to be replaced to the color of the tower. So I'm gonna turn the decontaminate colors check box off so you can see what it used to look like, and then I'll turn it back on and you see what it did. But it takes the colors that are in the object itself and pushes it out into the edge to replace whatever color was sitting there. And so I think that's going to improve what this looks like. And if I look at any part of it now, I shouldn't see the white clinging to the edge anymore. I found this called refine mask under the select menu right there, and I usually deal with two things. One is a little radius slider, which will sometimes make the edge a little bit better. The other is a check box called decontaminate colors. If I ever used the check box called decontaminate colors, the end result will be a copy of the original layer because it's trying not to change the original in whenever you choose decontaminate colors, it has to shift the colors in the picture, and it doesn't want to shift the original case. It screws up and you decide later you need it back. So it does duplicate the layer. Yeah, can you, at that point, can you unsee decontaminate colors is like, Is it an undue or you just know? That's why it duplicated so you would simply throw away this layer and go to the layer underneath it. Great, Perfect. And that's why it did it. And one from the audience as well. Okay, what's up? Going back to the cross hairs on on the eraser? Yeah. Is there a way to adjust the sampling area of that process? I believe, and I would have to test this, But on most tools that have a little cross hair and where you click and it analyzes something, it's gonna use, whatever setting your eyedropper tool is set to. So if you click on the eyedropper tool, this is currently set to point sample. Which point sample means one pixel, the tiniest little speck you could get. And if you change this to three by three average, it means look at a little square area and average the color in. So what I would do is make sure this isn't too high. If you said it way up here and you're clicking very close to the edge of a branch or something, it might incorporate the branch in tow. What it's averaging. But as long as you're on point sample up to about five by five average, you should be pretty good. You'll find the higher this is usually the more I would think the more aggressive it might be because it will get more of the idea of that area as a whole is opposed to. You might have clicked on a speck of noise, and then it wouldn't be as effective eso you have. Usually you go to the eyedropper tool to change that. I wish the individual tools would have separate sample size settings, but they don't usually usually go to the eyedropper to change it. Awesome. Thanks, Ben. And that's that's going out to Tracy and Oklahoma cause she had that same question. So there you go. All right, I'm gonna throw away the original layer because I don't mind that it shifted the colors a little bit. All right, so now let's take a look at something else related to this mask and some of these air universal concepts. I'm not showing you these just because we have a tower in this image. I'm talking about any image I ever have that has a mask attached to it. If I can see a white edge around it, I go to refine mask, I play with radius, and I play with decontaminate colors as a solution, not just for this, but for anything. Now let's take a look at the mask itself. If you look in the layers panel, here's my mask in the way masks work just in case you work with him. Much is any area mask that is, black hides whatever it's attached to in this case, this layer, whatever is white in the mask, allows it later to show up and do what it normally would do. If you have any shades of gray in the mask. It makes whatever that mask is attached to partially show up. And so let's take a look at the mask. You know how this is a thumbnail or small version of your full size picture? Will this over here? The mask is also a little small thumbnail over four full size mask. If you want to see the full size mask, you can hold down the option key, which is Alton Windows in Click on the Mask. So I'm holding down option right now, and I'm clicking on the mask. There it is. Now I can see a few problems with this mask. If you look at it, do you see some shades of gray in it that's causing certain areas to be partially transparent, weaken partially see through them in the background shows through a little bit There. I noticed that when I turned off the layer that was underneath, and I could see a hint of checkerboard coming through here, and so he might need to modify this. And so I want to give you a few tips. Now. You could always grab your paint brush tool and just come over here and manually pain. So if I came over here and painted with white, I could just clean this up. The problem with that is when you get near the edges, if I need to clean it up, let's say in his arm over here, I need to be very precise than And if I need to get right up to the edge, I can very easily go too far, especially if I have a soft edge brush and I get over here suddenly it can look like I'm going a little bit beyond. And I know if you can see it right here. Do you see it like almost little glow around this and also right there, I'll choose undo a few times to get that back. So I want to show you some tricks that will make it so you can clean up masks much faster than you might normally be used to. I'm going to be painting with white. I'm in the standard paint brush tool, the same thing you use for painting in any situation. But I'm gonna customise the settings that appear across the top of my screen. I'm gonna first change this menu called the blending mode, and I'm gonna choose a choice that's called hard mix. Hard mix is rarely used but is overly useful in this particular case. That little menu notice the blending mode menu changes the way my brush interacts with whatever it would usually paint on. For instance, if I were to choose the choice in here called Darken, it would only be able to darken what I paint on. And if it would usually brighten it up cause I'm painting with white or something, it just wouldn't affect the image. It all this menu would prevent it from being able to lighten anything when it's set to the choice called Darken Hard. Mix a special, though. Let's see if we can figure out a little bit about what it does. I got my brush here. I'm painting with white and I'm just gonna paint and you see how I can get things toe. Be white, just like before, But watch what happens when I overlapped the background. Worth black Notice that in general it's leaving the background alone except for one spot at the bottom of my photo. I'll choose Undo. The only problem with it is it's usually too aggressive. In this particular case, it might not be bad, but in a lot of images like if we'll start working on hair, you'll find that it's too aggressive. Instead of letting the hair suddenly show up mawr in the mask or something, it's blatant going all the way to solid white very quickly. But the main thing to know is that this, when we're working on a mask, will protect the opposite color is what we're painting with. If we're painting with white, it's gonna protect black. So I can't change the areas that are already black. And that makes it much easier to be able to come in here and just paint over these things and not have to worry about being precise, because if you get overland overlap onto the background, it's protecting things that are solid black. But it's on Lee protecting things that are solid black. If there are any shades of gray like can you see down here? If I zoom up a little bit that I can see a hint of the old clouds or something within this, that's not truly black right here. If you can see that, yeah, you can see it. Uh, and so it's on Lee gonna protect solid black. So when I get over that area, look what happens. You can get into it under choose, undo. Though I find this is usually too aggressive, though. And if there's any little hint that's ah, little bit brighter than black, it starts changing it too much. So what I usually do is I change the opacity setting at the top of my screen, and I bring it down to about 20% 20 to 30 years old, usually, but I vary it. One way of changing the opacity is just hit the number keys on your keyboard that takes whatever tool you're working on and if it has an opacity setting attached to it, changes it. So if I hit two, it goes to 20 hit five. It goes to 50. Hit zero goes all the way up to 100. You can actually get zero just type zero twice. Oh, can't on this one, but usually like on a layer or something, you could type 00 and it goes there. But I'm gonna bring that down to 20. And now let's see if it still in any less aggressive. When it comes to that background you see barely changing the sky, that hint of sky. And so I find when it's a 20 or 30% then I can still go over an area like this. And it's not gonna change the clouds that are showing up a little bit in that background, quite as much. And so it's it's not of problematic. But now here's what's cool about it. Even more cool than that. Let's just start with. And that is, if I change the color and painting with down here with these little double arrows. So I'm paying with black now. It's gonna protect the opposite of black, which means it's gonna protect the white areas. So if I want to clean up this area where I can see little hints of clouds now, I could go in there and do it, and I don't really have to be concerned with getting over spray onto the white areas, so it makes it much easier like back here on if you can see that or not. But there's something looks somewhat like clouds. I can touch it up, and I just looked through my mask. I think down here. Easy areas in the background. Yeah, just so you know, they're not as pronounced on my screen. But if you guys were looking in the audience, I'm not sure what it looks like on the feed, but I can easily clean those things up, and usually it doesn't take very much time at all to do this. It takes me a lot of time to describe what it's doing. It's all so in here. I can see some gray on the tower itself, which means you'd be able to see through the tower little bit because white means show up. Black means disappear in something in between means going between meaning make it partially show up. So paint with white there and I'll just clean that up, sometimes have to click twice one of down a 20% opacity, and we can very quickly get a pretty darn clean mask. Now. The same technique is not just for working on towers. This is working on anything. This is going to be especially useful once we start working on hair because after I'm done with hair, I will often times need to come in and really refine the end result. And I'm seeing just some shades of gray where some of these tower things cross, like where a shadow used to be on the edge of them or something. And I don't have to get this to be perfect because nobody's going to see my mask. They're only going to see the end result, so don't spend too much time on this. I usually would do this while I'm viewing this as a composite meaning like with the layer that's underneath in there, and I'm not actually looking at the mask. Instead, I see a little hint of the tower where I can see through it. And so I paint with white over that area when the mask is active. But I'm not actually looking at this. Instead, if I option click my mask again, which is that's the method I used to view the mask, and if I option click a second time in the mask, it will hide it. I'd be looking at like this, and if I could see through part of the tower, I'd come over here with my brush. Just make sure the mask is active and I would paint to fix it. All right. I see some microphones and hands, which means there's got to be some questions. So what questions will? Yeah, when you went to 20%. Yeah. And if you click and then click again, will the doing Miller 20? Yes. Yes, it builds up. So if 20% isn't enough, I just paint over an area two or three times. I don't usually need to paint more than about three times to build it all the way up to get solid white or black. Yeah, thank you. It's possible to do retouching on a mask. Is it possibly retouching a mask? Yes, it is. A mask is just a grayscale image in any tool that would be usable on a great scale. Picture could be used in a mask. All you need to do is make sure that the mass cast the little corners highlighted, which means it's active. And if you don't see the corners, it would look like this instead. Just click on it, and that way it knows you're working on it, and you can use any tool that we're working on a black and white picture. It work on that filters retouching tools, anything. Um, so the master are quite nice. Now, when you zoom out on the image like this, you're not always seen the full quality you needed Zoom up to really see the edge quality. But we've done that before and seen some of it s so I'm gonna now take this and save it, just in case. We need to get back to it later. Ready for Internet? Sure. Awesome. Sun Dog would like to know. Can you describe what the advantages are to using hard mix rather than overlay? Uh, I would have to look at how overlay interacts with a mask. It's not a bloody modem used to using quite as much. There are about two or three blending modes that will be similar to this. But if you experiment with it and you find that it protects the opposite color of what you're painting with, then it probably wouldn't matter, right? I'm just used to picking one go to blending mode, and I use art mix because it happens to work in this case so But if you find that overlay has similar qualities when working on a mask, then go for it.