Expert: LizaL - 12/21/2005

Question
What is mask? Or what is masking? How it is use and where it is used for?

Answer
Masking is used when you want to protect part of a photograph from alterations you might need to make to other parts of the image.

I'll refer you to a previous question I answered for someone who asked how to take away the background from an image. I told him about several ways of doing this, but one I mentioned was by using Quick Mask, which is a simple way of creating masks in Photoshop.

If you read the text, you'll see where I mention Quick Mask in the beginning of my answer. You'll also see where I point out the movie I've put online to help illustrate my point.

There are many ways to mask in Photoshop, but I think if you can understand Quick Mask and see how it works, you'll start to get the picture. If this makes sense to you and you want to do something more indepth, please post back and I'll help you through it.

Here's the link to the question and answer:
http://www.allexperts.com/answerq.asp?QuestionID=3994717&ExpertID=60259

Hope this helps,

Lisa