Color enhance mask editing

[kmlevine]

Thanks for the great new set of tools. Can you tell me the proper way to edit and change masks if one is using color enhance and wanting to hold back an area or focus on an object.

Thank You,

Ken

[Martin Evening]

As you may have gathered, there are complimentary sets of effects for each of the Color Enhance which add a layer mask to the base layer effect in the Enhance set. The reason I did this was because the automatic filtering mechanism used in Color Enhance could not be guranteed to produce a satisfactory result every time.

Try running the +mask version of whichever effect you are running and then edit the mask by painting it with black to hide detail or paint with white to show more detail.

By the way, I will be on the road for the next two days, so further responses to questions about PhotoKit Color may take a while.

Martin

[kmlevine]

Thank You. Have safe and productive travels.

[kmlevine]

I've now purchased PKColor and wondered if you could clarify, for this dummy, the correct way to edit the masks. Could you clarify exactly how to edit, save and have the edited mask save and reflect the changes with the image?

Thanks for your patience.

Ken

[Martin Evening]

The intention with the color enhance effects that lighten or darken the primary colours (and the skin tone enhance as well), is to modify the luminosity tonal balance of an image in the way described. This means that as colours get lighter/darker other colours will also get picked up in the process and inevitably they are modified as well. So I have to mask these colours towards the end of the process so that what you see appearing lighter/darker, are more or less just the colours described. The mask has shades of transparency and with the standard effect, I simply apply the mask. In the advanced '+mask effects', I include the mask.

As you can see, these are a complex series of effects. These effects mostly work fine and within a reasonable range of tolerance. If I were to narrow the accuracy of the effects any further they would be perfect for some images but useless for others. So a balance has to be struck between reasonable precision in doing what the effects say they do and multi-purpose usability.

This is where the + mask versions come in. The user can adjust the mask themselves. You could simply hide everything and fill the mask with black. Then you could paint in the effect as desired by painting with white on the layer mask. Alternatively you could keep the mask as it is and add black paint to hide the effect more or white to reveal more. You could try blurring the layer mask to soften the mask edges. And you could follow this with a levels adjustment to readjust the sharpness of these edges. And furthermore, you could go back in the history palette use the history brush to apply the most recent history state to apply any of these adjustments. Now we are getting into the realm of advanced Photoshop work. I included the mask option because I wanted to allow those who knew how to use the layer mask would prefer being given the option to do so.

Martin