Digital Light & Color

I had an odd (and not very reproducible) problem when using the 'mask' tool to create a mask. I did see this several times in a row, even after killing the program and re-starting.

I started editing, then decided I wanted to make a mask that other tools would use, so near the to of the tool chain, I inserted a mask tool and created the mask I wanted.

I then went down to one of my exiting edit tools, (brightness curve, I believe), and tried to add a mask. The tool did not show the 'mask' tool mask, just some other references to previous edit items.

I don't think this is related to brightness curve since I also tried 'multi-pass sharpen'.

I'm also using a relatively recent download of PWP.

I know this is not a lot to go on, if you want, I can try to narrow this down a bit more.

Thanks!

John P

Are you sure there are no intervening transformations that are altering the dimensions of the image? This is the most common reason masks don't show up. Otherwise, if it happens again, try to save a script file and email it to me.

I'm not sure about the intermediate size change possibility.

Would it be relatively easy to still show the illegal masks but put them red to show they are intentionally disabled?

Thanks!

John P

Just to be clear, if any of the transformations between the one creating the mask and the one trying to use the mask alter the size of the image (e.g. Crop, Warp, Resize, Add Border, Rotate, etc.), then the mask will not line up with the image you are trying to apply it to and it will therefore be omitted from the list. The only fix is to either build the mask after all resizing has been performed or to do all the resizing after you are done with the masks.

I could possibly include all masks in the list, with the invalid ones grayed out at the end of the list, however the list includes not just masks but also any 8- or 16-bit black and white image of the correct size, so this could be confusing.

There are only 2 reasons a mask would not make the list:

1) it is downstream from the current transformation

2) it is the wrong size

If a mask does not show up in a list, you can assume one of the above is true.

OK, Thanks!

John P