3. The Quick Mask

3. The Quick Mask
	Capítulo 7. Pintar con GIMP

Figura 7.9. Image with Quick Mask enabled

The usual selection tools involve tracing an outline around an area of interest, which does not work well for some complex selections. The Quick Mask, however, allows you to paint a selection instead of just tracing its outline.

3.1. Generalidades

Generalmente, una selección en GIMP está representada por el “desfile de hormigas” que recorren su contorno, pero puede haber más en una selección que lo que el desfile de hormigas muestra: una selección en GIMP es actualmente un canal en escala de grises completo, del tamaño de la imagen, con valores para cada píxel que van desde 0 (no seleccionado) hasta 255 (completamente seleccionado). El desfile de hormigas se dibuja a lo largo del contorno de los píxeles medio seleccionados. Lo que el desfile de hormigas muestra tanto dentro como fuera del contorno es en realidad un corte a través de los valores continuos.

The Quick Mask is GIMP's way of showing the full structure of the selection. Quick Mask also provides the ability to interact with the selection in new, and substantially more powerful, ways. Click the small outlined button at the lower left of the image window to toggle Quick Mask on and off. The button switches between Quick Mask mode, and marching ants mode. You can also use Select → Toggle Quick Mask, or Shift+Q, to toggle between Quick Mask and marching ants mode.

In Quick Mask mode, the selection is shown as a translucent screen overlying the image, whose transparency at each pixel indicates the degree to which that pixel is selected. By default the mask is shown in red, but you can change this if another mask color is more convenient. The less a pixel is selected, the more it is obscured by the mask. Fully selected pixels are shown completely clear.

In Quick Mask mode, many image manipulations act on the selection channel rather than the image itself. This includes, in particular, paint tools. Painting with white selects pixels, and painting with black unselects pixels. You can use any of the paint tools, as well as the bucket fill and gradient fill tools, in this way. Advanced users of GIMP learn that “painting the selection” is the easiest and most effective way to delicately manipulate the image.

	Sugerencia
	To save a Quick Mask selection to a new channel; Make sure that there is a selection and that Quick Mask mode is not active in the image window. Use Select → Save to Channel. to create a new channel in the channel dialog called “SelectionMask copy” (repeating this command creates “…copy#1”, “…copy#2” and so on).

	Sugerencia
	In Quick Mask mode, Cut and Paste act on the selection rather than the image. You can sometimes make use of this as the most convenient way of transferring a selection from one image to another.

Puede aprender más sobre las máscaras de selección en la sección dedicada al diálogo de canales.