Digital Light & Color

I'd like to see a shift-click feature in building brightness-curve masks when using the probe tool, where holding the shift key shows the range of values at the bottom of the histogram, similar to how the probe tool functions in Advanced-sharpen. Right now the probe tool shows a vertical line in the histogram at the point where the probe is, but being able to see the cumulative range from dragging the probe across the image would be useful in building the mask.

Darren.

Darren,

It sounds like you may want to try a similar feature in Mask/Colour Range: Hit Contract button, then probe the image holding Shift key, then hit lower Apply. This should include all the combinations of tones and colours that you've probed, in the mask. If you are interested including just probed brightness range (HSV-V), just like I understand you would like to do in Mask/Brightness Curve, do the same (in Mask/Colour Range, HSV Colour Space), but extend S and V sliders to full range before you hit the lower Apply button.

Cheers!

Thanks for the suggestion Maciej!

I tried your suggestion and just can't get the results that I can with the brightness curve mask. Not sure if I'm missing something but I can't isolate the brightest regions like I can with the brightness curve.

Darren.

I'm not sure, but it may be the smoothness of the boundary between what's included in the mask and what's not. In Brightness curve, which operates on HSV-V channel, the smoothness in arbitrary and depends on the curve you design.

In Colour range, you can try to mimic it by softening the boundary: i.e. separating black and white sliders which determine what's included in the mask (white means 100%) and what's excluded (black means 100%), while anything gray (i.e. in between black and white sliders) is a linearly weighted transition between black and white.

Cheers!

Darren, you know that you can add a control point to the curve by shift clicking in the image?
Select the eye dropper, move the mouse with pressed right mouse button in the image so it shows the red line of the value at the actual position.
If you reach the brightest point you wish to mask make a short shift click at that position, and do so at the position with the lowest brigtness and you have both boundaries as control points in the curve.

Hi Dieter, No, I didn't know that a control point is added with shift-click! Thanks! I had tried shift click and drag, but I was always starting in the brightest region, so no control point was added as one is already there by default! (255,255 on the histogram). I'll experiment to see if this satisfies. My original hope was to be able to drag the mouse across the image and have the range indicated so I can keep my eye on the mouse, not the histogram, then use that as a guide to set control points.

Darren.