Soft Masks

A soft mask is a mask that includes varying levels of masking, instead of consisting simply of just masked parts and unmasked parts. For example part of an image may have a 50% mask applied, so that a subsequently applied operation has only a 50% effect on that part of the image. Or a mask shape could have a graduated mask that smoothly graduates from 0% masking to 100% masking. If such a mask is then used with the Photo Enhance Tool to brighten the photo, the effect of the brightening would be similarly graduated.

Not all operations support soft masks. For example Content Aware Scale, Clone/Magic Erase and Clipview creation will ignore any softness in the mask.

Creating a Soft Mask

You can create soft masks by applying the Transparency tool to your mask shapes on the mask layer.

Having firstly created your mask shapes;

Switch to the selector tool and open the Page & Layer Gallery
Expand the page to view the layers and click on the Mask layer to make it active
Click on the mask shape on the canvas and select the transparency tool

Drag across the mask shape to create a linear graduated soft mask

It may be preferable to draw your mask shape using one of the drawing tools rather than the Mask Painter tool. This is particularly useful when working with soft masks, where you are applying different levels of transparency to the mask objects. With the mask tools deselected, select the shape, and copy, or cut it. Now click on the Mask Painter tool and use "Paste in Place" in order to paste the shape in exactly the same place it was copied from.