Photoshop is a bitmap app, therefore, you may lose some ‘crispy-ness’ eventually. You may want to try Illustrator, as it has the feature you want and then import into Photoshop, or use one of the appropriate selection method to choose the type, apply a stroke, then reselect the selection and remove. Not sure, if the result will be what you are exactly after, as it will also depend on the contrast level of the image. You can also use the layer masks as you suggested and refine them using mask options. Hope this is somehow helpful.
Cheers
Hisham