Digital Light & Color

So I've had a few more tries with the new mask functionality, and I have found that using the "Flood Fill" tool is now not as smooth as it was. Before, clicking once with the tool would select a certain amount of the image, and subsequent clicks would accumulate, or add to the first selected area. Now, the second click with the tool erases the first selection and selects a new part of the image. So the new procedure is: click, click on the running man, click again, click on the running man, and repeat until you have selected the right amount of the scene as intended. A much slower procedure.

The accumulation works okay with the "Color Range" tool... you can continue to add to the mask selection and then click the running man once at the end to make it stick

Is there any way to make the need to "perform pending mask operation and update transformation" (running man) optional for the Flood Fill tool, or make it accumulate like the Color Range too?

The advantage of the flood fill tool working the way it does is that you can play with the threshold or the seed location before applying it. The Color Range tool does not accumulate -- like Flood Fill it responds to changes to the sliders and only locks them in once you click Apply.

One thought is I could make shift-click in Flood Fill automatically do fill followed by and apply.

Ah, yes, I get it. I just have to break away from my old habits... No changes necessary.

I made the change already for the next release.

(Don't you ever sleep?) Excellent, thank you. I am really warming up to the changes in the mask tools.

It's funny, I was showing a friend how to accomplish something in PWP 7 the other day, and I spent all the time coercing them to download PWP 8... I remembered how I thought I*'d be happy with ver 7 for the rest of my like, as it was just seemed so complete, but now I can't imagine life without ver 8.

AND you are still committed to improving it.

You have truly created something wonderful. Thank you Mr. Sachs.

When PWP7 entered its final version, I was heartbroken, both for the programme and the supportive community of dedicated users. Just like Mark, I started planning to die with the latest version, which I knew well enough to do most that I wanted.

I was initially sceptical about PWP8, which seemed to me to be a scaled down version of the former with improved workflows. I forgot about Jonathan being able to pull miracles on a dime. PWP8 has matured, became nearly problem free, added loads of new useful features and the community recovered. Not only that, but it's constantly growing and improving, on a schedule that puts my work ethics to shame. Thanks!

@tomczak: +1

Perhaps I spoke too soon. I am using this function and find it useful, both with the click function and with the shift-click function. My issue is, the operation causes PWP8 to freeze and crash; in fact the crash is so hard I have to reboot my PC to recover. Granted, I am working on a large file (3000x21000 pel), but my system is reasonablely robust (16 GB main storage, 4 core AMD 965 cpu running at 3.3 GHz), but this operation is driving main memory occupancy through the roof (97%). Am I doing something strange, or is there an issue with the code? I am trying to use Mask/Separate to outline a tree line, and then clean up the resulting mask. The crash is occurring as I work on the mask image, adding in areas that have been incorrectly separated. TIA for advice.

Here's my system config: RYO System Configuration (updated 2020 08): SCP: Win10.1909.18363.959 Pro 64bit; Mobo: ASUS Crosshair IV Formula Rev 1.02G; BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. V1005 08/06/2010; CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 C3 BE, 3.4 GHz; RAM: Corsair Dominator DDR3, 16 GB (4 x 4 GB); SATA III SSD: Samsung 860 EVO 500GB; SATA III HDD: 3 x Seagate 2 TB (Hybrid SSD/HDD), 1 x WD 500 GB, 3 x Seagate Backup Plus 3TB USB3 (with Seagate Replica 5 SW for automatic backup); ODD: 1 x Plextor SATA DVD RW, 1 x ASUS SATA BlueRay DVD RW; VGA: EVGA GEForce GTX 750, 1 GB; USB3: 7 port PCIe card, PSU: OCZ FirePower Tech 550W; Case: Eagle Tech-Skyhawk Server; Cooling: CPU-stock; 2 case fans.

The recursive mask flood fill algorithm can use lots of stack space if the image is very large and the filled region is complicated. I looked over the code and increased the internal stack size it uses by a factor of 16 for the next release.

Hi Jonathan,

That's a wonderfully quick response. Indeed, the image is large, and the masking is complex -- filling in around conifers in the background to apply your nifty haze transformation. Thanks.