two things about masks

[davidh]

When the Mask dialog is open, the Brightness Curve Display Input Button shows the current Mask overlay image and not the Brightness Curve input image preview. To get the input image preview you need to choose the Transparent Mask Overlay in the Mask dialog or close the Mask dialog.
Is this intended?

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1. When you tune the mask Curve (density curve - the one next to the Paint Brush tool) you discard the current mask with either of the following methods:
1. Clear Mask button which preserves the Curve and all the previous masks - preferred method.
or
2. Curve Settings buttton -> Reset, which also resets the Curve - suitable if you want to start afresh. This however also preserves all the previous masks.

3. You can also use Mask main tool bar -> Settings button -> Reset which not only resets the Curve and closes the Mask Curve extended dialog but also discards all the previous masks - suitable if you want to use another masking tool.

My suggestion: Would it make sense to discard all the previous masks in the second method as well? If you reset the curve, you probably do not need all the previous tuning steps.

Here is the main reason:
Tuning a curve can mean a lot of steps before the right one is found but without the need of its history. If you later decide to reshape the curve again and reopen the mask, all the history is unnecessarily loaded into memory - this might be quite a lot of data. To discard it you need to use the third method, but you lose the curve shape as well.

Or perhaps to add to Curve settings menu something like : Discard history?

[jsachs]

>> When the Mask dialog is open, the Brightness Curve Display Input Button shows the current Mask overlay image and not the Brightness Curve input image preview. To get the input image preview you need to choose the Transparent Mask Overlay in the Mask dialog or close the Mask dialog.
Is this intended?

Yes, this is intentional -- sometimes you may want to display the mask image by itself to make it easier to use some of the freehand mask tools. If you want the mask to go away so you can see the underlying image, you can either close the mask dialog and re-open it later if necessary or just make the mask fully transparent.

The recommended way to fine tune a curve you just applied is to undo the Apply to discard the previous mask and then re-select the curve tool which restores the previous curve so you can make adjustments to it.

[davidh]

OK, thanks for the advice.