Digital Light & Color

I took a series of images with the camera set to save both Raw and JPEG formats.
Yesterday, I did extensive editing on one of the JPEG's. This included the creation of a mask for the heavily shadowed side of a person's face to allow selective lightening of that area. Thinking I might want to do some re-editing later, I saved that mask as a JPEG file.
Today I wondered if my editing results could be improved by starting with the Raw version of the image. I began by converting (in PWP 7.0) the Raw version of the same image. I then opened the JPEG mask that was created yesterday. But when I tried to apply it in the Gray>Brightness Curve transformation by clicking on the "select amount mask" box, the mask image did not show up (even though it was an active, opened image).
Then, I noticed that the converted Raw image I was using showed that it was a NEF (Nikon) file. So I saved it as a TIF. But when working with the TIF file, the mask would still not show up in the "select amount mask" box. I even went so far as to save the converted Raw image as a JPEG. But the mask created yesterday was still not available.
Thinking that the mask might not even work, a day later, with the out-of-camera original JPEG, I tried that. But it did work with the original JPEG from which it was created.

It appears that the image resulting from the conversion of a Raw file is enough out-of-sync with the JPEG version of the same image, that masks are only viable in connection with the exact image source used in the mask's creation -- and they are not interchangeable. Is this a correct analysis? Or is something else entirely going on? I didn't find any discussion of this in the electronic manual.

Camera generated JPEGs will generally have the camera manufacturer's specification for pixel dimensions [width/height]... ...so your mask generated from the JPEG will have theses dimensions.

PWP uses 'dcraw' for conversion so the dimensions for the resulting Tiff working image will generally be larger and the JPEG mask will not register.

To utilize the mask, crop the raw conversion tiff to the same dimensions as the mask in such a way that there is 1:1 registration.

Beware that an offset margin crop may be required. Once the margin crop has been determined for your camera, it will generally be consistent for future use... ...keep a record!!!

...den...

There are only 2 requirements for a image to qualify as mask.
1st is to be 8 bit Black and White, and the 2nd is to has the exact same size in pixels as the image it should mask.
It makes absolutely no difference where the image derivates from, if it keeps both above requirements.
If your mask works with your JPEG, it has to be in the correct 8 bit format, so the only thing why it don't work is that is has a different size.
You may need to crop your RAW-derivated picture slightly to get it to the correct dimension.

Found it... ...have these in memory anyway but the attached illustrates that different raw converters can produce different dimensioned pixel tiffs from the same camera raw file... ... I will sometimes mix channels from differing converters, so margin cropping to a common size for 1:1 registration is important for maintaining recorded sharpness...

...den...

Thanks, Den, for this response and also the previous one.
I resized the TIF created from the Raw file conversion to the same pixel length and width as the JPEG. (Hadn't noticed these differences previously.) With this modification, the mask created from the original JPEG worked perfectly with the modified TIF.

I didn't realize that the conversion of a Raw file resulted in different dimensions than the out-of-camera JPEG for the same image. In my case, it contained 1.6% more pixels (0.72% more pixels on the long axis and 0.92% more on the short). And now you say that the dimensional results vary from Raw converter to Raw converter. You learn something new every day.

Thanks for your response as well, Dieter.

Doug