feather tool fails occasionally in masks

[jsachs]

I am having trouble understanding what you are doing to see the problem.

The mask for transformation #5 does not include a blur or feather operation. What exactly do you mean in your step 4) about changing them? If I re-open the mask and add a new feather or blur, I can change the settings with the slider (I assume you meant slider and not scroll bar?).

Transformation #6 does include feather operations. If I re-open the mask and undo back to a feather operation I can change the feather amount.

The symptoms you are describing sound like there is some kind of memory or resource leak so in complicated operations you are running out or some system resource, however I ran a check for leaks but nothing showed up.

[johnp]

Sorry for the lack of clarity in my description.

1) open transform #5

2) re-open the mask for editing.

3) push either the blur or feather button.

4) the slider moves, but the value displayed does not change and the slider appears to have no effect.

I've attached a screenshot showing the blur button pushed and the slider pushed way to the right, but the radius still shows
50.

I hope this helps and I appreciate your effort in solving this!

John P

[jsachs]

It looks like you have the mask transparency set to 100% for that mask so no mask overlay is visible. When I changed the transparency it seemed to work OK.

[johnp]

Well, you're partially right, with the mask color set to transparent, it doesn't work. But...
a) why doesn't it work? Just because I don't want to see the mask, the blur radius and feather setting should still work, I would think.

b) There's a weird dependency that shows up:
- with transform #5 again,
- start re-open the mask edit with the mask already transparent
- try to change the blur radius... it fails. Oops, me bad, so
- set the mask to be non-transparent, then try to adjust the blur - it still fails
- now (the mask is still NON transparent, try the feather tool. PWP prompts to finalize the previous (blur) change, hit no, then try the feather slider - it also fails even though the mask is not transparent.

c) When I start the re-edit with a non-transparent mask, I can get the blur and feather tools to work.
- now if I change the mask to transparent while the blur tool is active, it continues to work.
- I can change between blur, feather and free-hand (setting abandon after each tool change) and it still works

d) When the feather or blur has been successfully used, ie, slider seemed to work and the red-running man is on, if I close the mask edit window it does no prompt me to apply the pending changes.

Thanks for your help!

John P

[johnp]

I just noticed another mask edit oddity.

If I start a mask edit blur (and I assume other) operation, the red-running man lights up.

- If I use ^d to toggle between the final image and the initial image with the mask showing, the red-man stays active.
but...
- If I use the buttons in the transformation window to toggle, the mask editor finalizes the mask edit and turns off the running man.

I was a bit surprised that the two methods of toggling between input and result images affect the mask edit operation differently.

John P

[jsachs]

a) It does seem to work OK -- there are 2 reasons it might look like it's not working -- with a large blur radius the mask turns solid white so changes may have no effect, and you need to finalize the mask to see the changes (unless you use the Mask Settings Menu to select "Update transformation with mask".

b) Similarly with feather -- it works OK here.

Closing the mask window always finalizes any pending mask operation without asking.

You are right however that Ctrl-D should finalize the mask. I have fixed this for the next release.

[johnp]

Could we have a zoom call to show you in real time what I'm seeing?

I'm in Pacific time, BTW.

John P

[johnp]

I've attached instructions and a simple (renamed) workspace script that lets me repeatedly reproduce the blur radius issue.

I hope this helps you see what I'm seeing!

John P

[jsachs]

Just to be unambiguous, the revised workspace file only has one Brightness Curve, so when you refer to #5 in the notes I assume you mean #2. Also, can you clarify what you mean by "rectangle clear"? When you say "it fails", what exactly were you expecting and what happened?

When I follow the steps for the first scenario, at the end I add a Blur and nothing visible happens at that point, but the red running man button is turned on, indicating the mask has not been finalized. The mask itself is blurred, but the mask overlay is hidden so you can't see the blurred mask. Since the mask has not been finalized, the output image does not yet show the effects of the blurred mask. When I click the button to finalize the mask, the output image updates with the blurred mask. If I make the mask overlay visible, I can see the mask blur when adding the Blur operation. Trying to apply mask tools with the mask overlay turned off is likely to be confusing since you cannot see the effects of the changes you are making to the mask. Normally I only use this option briefly to check the underlying image when the overlay obscures some important details.

To avoid some of the potential confusion, you might want to turn on "Update transformation with mask" from the Mask Settings menu. I am about to upload a new release (482) that fixes a few minor issues with the setting, but in short it eliminates the need to finalize masks as it does this automatically each time you alter the mask. For some very slow transformations this can be annoying, but you can always turn it off again.

[johnp]

The latest update does not help. I think the most productive way to approach this is a zoom call so I can show you what's going on.

John P