Mask and Colour Picker Solution?

[kraslonewolf]

So I've been trying to work with masks and the "Hold ALT" colour picker... it's BAD.

When I hold down ALT with the intention to pick a value FROM THE MASK to apply it somewhere else in it, the tool simply decides to pick the GLOBAL value of the document instead, which makes working with masks a complete pain as I want to pick the value from the actual mask to control the ALPHA value for that mask alone. Switching to the Isolated view of the mask makes NO difference at all, it still picks the value of the Parent Layer.

The only exception to this problem is if you select the Colour Picker tool MANUALLY, which is slow enough to break my flow.

Why doesn't the "HOLD ALT" method use this behaviour as when you select the Colour Picker Tool manually? If holding ALT supposed to be just a quick shortcut to switch between the brush and the picker, why doesn't it work the same as the properties you assign to it in the first place?

Is there a workaround to this?

[Old Bruce]

Not completely sure if this works for you but if you set up the Colour Picker tool to use the Current layer as its source then the Alt key works for picking grey scale from the mask. With the caveat that if it is a completely transparent I seem to get the underlying colours from lower layers.