The Mask Texture tool is cumulative

[davidh]

I am sorry to come up with it now, but I might forget to post it later.

I was trying to create a texture mask and experimented with some settings. After each Apply I cleared the texture mask and tried another setting until I thought I got the right one. I clicked the Transformation OK button.

When I wanted to edit the mask and reopend the transformation I saw the fast succession of repeated Texture progress bar being loaded for each on my previous mask settings. The same followed when the transformation dialog opened and I clicked the Amount icon and selected Edit...

I guess this is not intentional as all the texture masks will, more or less, cover each other.
Besides, for example Color Range and Gradient tools, which also use the Apply buttons, are not cumulative in this way and only tehir last applied mask is saved and used.

[jsachs]

If you clear the mask by clicking on the All White button, this is does not remove the previous operations -- you might reasonably argue that the All White, All Black, and Half White buttons should implicitly do a Reset, but currently they do not.

To remove the previous operation, use the Undo button instead. Or, to start over, use the Reset command from the Mask Setting Menu.

[davidh]

Now I see that also Color Range and Gradient tools load all cleared masks and apply only the last one. They just load them much faster then Texture mask which is more time consuming. This misled me to a false assumption when I was comparing the Texture tool to the Range and Gradients.

....you might reasonably argue that the All White, All Black, and Half White buttons should implicitly do a Reset, but currently they do not....

Well, I would not expect buttons that are supposed just to clear the mask do the same as Reset does. Reset command resets completely the whole mask dialog, which will not be expected when you just want to rebuild a poorly made mask.
I would just not expect that all cleared masks were saved and loaded or read if they are not finally applied together with the last one as a compound mask.

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By the way, if you save some mask settings as default, you save with it also all its cleared mask if there were any, which will be loaded or read, though only the last one will be applied.

This may be the cause of the following problem:

1. create and apply a mask (I used Color Range), use at least once, or sometimes more, Clear Mask button
2. save it as a default settings using the Mask command Save As Default Settings
3. click transformation OK
4. reopen the transformation
5. click Amount icon and choose Edit..
6. go to Mask Settings and choose Reset -> PWP crashes
to reset safely you need first to Clear the settings and then Reset

This has never happened when I created a mask at one go, without clearing and recreating the mask

[jsachs]

Another good reason why setting the mask to all black or white should not clear the list of previous operations: you may be using it to temporarily remove the mask with the intention of restoring the mask by doing an undo.

I have fixed the crash for the next release.

[davidh]

That is true.
What I had in mind was whether keeping all the cleared masks after the transformation had been executed was worth it.
But yes, I see that revisiting the mask at some later step and going back to some previous version might come handy.
Just out of curiosity I tried to count how many mask Undo I can do. I gave up at about 60.