Photoshop – Use Quick Mask Mode!
Throughout the whole Adobe Creative Suites, masks are among the most important editing tools. In particular, Photoshop provides a quick mask mode, which allows for creating a suitable mask on the current layer fast and comfortably.
We wish to darken the borders of an image in a smooth manner. This can be achieved in probably a hundred thousand ways or more, but I shall present the Quick-Mask-Mode-way.
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Select an area using the Marquee Tool (M).
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Enter Quick Mask Mode (Q).
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To edit the mask you can use any brush, shape, text, filters, etc. Let’s apply a Gaussian blur filter.
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Invert the mask (Ctr+I).
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Exit Quick Mask Mode (Q).
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Edit the masked image to your liking. Open the Levels dialog (Ctr+L) and move the black point slider and the midtone slider up.
Sweet.
Btw: the picture was taken at the Santa Barbara City College.
Photoshop, quick mask mode, tutorial