Adobe® Photoshop® CS2 Studio Techniques

Viewing a Layer Mask

The thumbnails that show up in the Layers palette are just miniature versions of the images that show up in the main document window. That's true for not only the Layer thumbnail image, but also the Layer Mask thumbnail. You can view the Layer Mask in the main image window by holding down the Option key (Mac) or Alt key (Windows) and clicking on the Layer Mask thumbnail (Figure 15.44). You'll see it looks just like a grayscale image, and you can actually paint right on this image. I use this a lot when I get someone else's document, or when I open an old document I worked on months ago and can't remember exactly what I did in the Layer Mask. To stop viewing the Layer Mask, just Option-click (Mac) or Alt-click (Windows) its ...