If you want to see the mask itself, click off the RGB channel visibility and click on the Layer 2 Mask channel (or alt-click on the mask icon in the layers palette).

The mask is always a gray scale image. Anything in black is completely blocked, that is, becomes transparent in that layer. Anything in white is completely visible. Anything in between is visible in proportion to the gray level. Note that since I used an airbrush to paint the M, the edges are not sharply defined, but have a gray halo. You can see the effects of this by looking closely at the yellow edges above. You can paint directly on the mask if you like, but you will not be able to see what the mask is covering. Sometimes this is useful for cleaning up areas of the mask that have imperfections of various sorts.

If you want to see the mask itself, click off the RGB channel visibility and click on the Layer 2 Mask channel (or alt-click on the mask icon in the layers palette).

The mask is always a gray scale image. Anything in black is completely blocked, that is, becomes transparent in that layer. Anything in white is completely visible. Anything in between is visible in proportion to the gray level. Note that since I used an airbrush to paint the M, the edges are not sharply defined, but have a gray halo. You can see the effects of this by looking closely at the yellow edges above. You can paint directly on the mask if you like, but you will not be able to see what the mask is covering. Sometimes this is useful for cleaning up areas of the mask that have imperfections of various sorts.