5 tips perfect masks + Edges in Photoshop 

Thank you Colin. I always enjoy your videos and learn something that I didnt know. or forgot about. You are a great educator

All good stuff Colin, although I have been using that sort of workflow for a good while. Layer masks are usually a good first step with complex selections, as you can then use multiple methods to clean up the mask and complete the selection. Nowadays that might start with Select Object or remove Background, and then go on to use Pen tool for the smooth hard edges - like the outline of a car, or brush in the mask using Shift to paint straight lines. Quick Mask can be useful to reveal the selection, but has the big disadvantage of not showing areas less than 50% selected. Rather than paint out the extraneous areas with the brush, I like to quickly draw around them with the Lasso tool and hit Alt Backspace to fill that area with black or white, depending. The other trick is setting the brush mode to Overlay so it will only affect areas brighter than 50% grey when brushing with white, and below 50% grey when brushing with black. Another trick with fringes is to use a Hue/sat adjustment layer and sample the fringe colour. You can then desaturate the fringe and adjust brightness to match the adjacent pixels. Or you could just mask it out as you suggested. 😄 I like this sort of tip video as it deals with things you are likely to use every time you work with Photoshop. That cements the tips into memory on a 'Use it or lose it.' basis. The Photoshop Cafe video I give people links to on the Adobe forums the most, is using the new Gradient tool as a workaround for the now defunct Lighting effects. I bet there is not a week goes buy without at least one person asking about Lighting Effects on the Adobe forum and Reddit etc. That was a very cool tip, and I think it can give better results than the original Lighting Effects filter. Keep them coming Colin, and tell your buddy Jesus Rameriz that we are missing him on RU-vid. If I ever get to MAX again I'll try and say hello if I see you. It's a long way from NZ, and even with a TA gig it is expensive.

Sometimes the layer mask is almost perfect but you still get edges that contain parts of the background. An easy fix is to add two blank layers above and turn them into clipping masks. Name one, lighter colour and put it in lighter colour blend mode, name the other, darker colour and put it in darker colour blend mode. Zoom into your selection edges and using the clone stamp tool just sample areas near the edges to then paint the fringed areas. Use either the lighter colour or darker colour layers depending on if you are trying to darken or lighten those fringed edges to match. Not only does this method match the colours but also clones the textures with it for a more realistic edge. Using darker/lighter blend modes protects the areas you want to keep. You can do this method using just normal blend mode on a single layer but I find seperating them into darker/lighter blend mode layers means I have more control without overspill. 😊

When painting black or white on the mask have the brush in overlay mode.