Depends on what you’re masking and how you want to mask it. Without having a copy of the book to look at it’s impossible to say.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that there’s probably a very good reason that the CIAB tutorial recommends the brush options it does for that particular lesson.
Unless it’s a mistake?
It would seem to me that is like cutting the rubylith with a dull knife, so wouldn’t it be better to use one of the hard brushes to paint the mask?
Not necessarily. It might be to get a smoother transition for whatever the tutorial is trying to accomplish. To use the knife metaphor, this would be the equivalent to using a mask layered with several layers of acetate between to blur the edges.
Why not try the tutorial twice, once with hard and once soft, and see the difference. A great way to learn.
As others have said – it all depends. Most times, I use a hard brush and then use Refine Edges to fine tune it.
Haven’t got my copy of CIAB here at work – but I’ll check it out tonight and see if I can give a more definitive answer.
Max
I had a look at that chapter, and I agree with you a hard brush would have been much better for several reasons (sharper edge, quicker filling of body of statue).
Only reason I can think of is they wanted to create a very rough mask first, then show you how to edit it – I note on page 181 they eventually suggest a hard-edge small brush to clean up the edge.
