I am looking for the ability to use a transparency mask and see where I have painted on the mask or what is currently masked by the layer. Photoshop doe this by using a red overlay that you can turn off and on as you draw your mask to see what is affected (see image).
One obvious way to ‘examine’ a Transparency Mask is to Convert it to a paint layer.
Then you have the question of how it is aligned to the original parent paint layer.
Then you have to do more ‘tricks’ to see the alignment.