Just downloaded the latest build and it is good to see the brush, eraser and auto-mask now seem to be visible while they are being drawn.
However, I am still not at all happy with the “new” B&W masks, which hide far too much of the image, making it difficult, if not impossible, to add or remove masking with the B&W mask active.
Here, it is impossible to see the majority of the image because the black mask is totally opaque. Thus making it impossible to fine tune, add or remove to/from the existing mask.
As for the brush and eraser tools, PL6 never had a B&W mask, but it was easy enough to fine tune those masks…
In my opinion, either all masks in B&W mode should have a slight translucency, or they should be disabled for the brush, eraser and auto mask tools.
As it is, the auto-mask in either “normal” or B&W mode has never correctly concealed/revealed the masked area as it always shows the outer drawn mask area, not the inner selected area.
I find this B&W view (as it is now in PL7) essential for fine-tuning a mask using other controls such as Chroma and Luma. It shows the mask without ambiguity. If the black area was translucent, I’d be wondering: is that area masked out or not? For painting a mask, I like the color view with its adjustable hue, opacity, and other properties - but I understand that you’d like a black and white view that behaves that way also. As it is, the interface requires too many steps (I’d like to not have to close the color adjustment window in order to apply changes to the mask appearance) but it works in a way I find useful.
I’m not talking about anything other than the same translucency that we have always had with Control Lines and Points in PL6. See the above screenshots.
If the black is opaque, how do you edit the mask without having to go back to the colour mask which has the opposite sense of coloured = selected to the B&W mask sense of coloured(black) = hidden ?
Coming from the PL6 implementation for Control Lines and Points, everything is more difficult.
For what it is worth, the B&W masking for PL 6 and PL 7 control points and control lines seems to be working almost identically to each other in the Windows version. This appears to be a Mac issue.
For some reason my original screen captures didn’t work properly, I re-added them. You can see that PL6 and PL7 control points and lines are almost identical. Any difference between them is probably due to an inexact placement of the masks on my part.
Control points and control lines select parts of the image to mask based on Chroma and Luma and these LAs create a mask of varying degrees as shown by the B&W mask. You can adjust what is selected by moving the control point or dropper and adjusting the Chroma and Luma sliders.
Other masks are drawn by you and only affect the drawn areas and are NOT affected by Chroma and Luma. It’s is for this reason that I believe B&W Masks should not even be available for drawn masks.
The way I work is: use B&W Masks for control points and control lines and only use colour masks for the rest.
I don’t have FP which has the Luminosity Mask but if I did I would use the B&W mask for those too.
Hope that helps you understand how these mask types work.
I’m all for adding an opacity adjustment to the B&W mask view. If it makes the tools more versatile without losing anything, why not? My biggest gripe is that in a number of cases mask adjustments don’t have an effect until you release the mouse button. That problem is keeping me from upgrading to PL7.
Mark,
I find the same with the Windows PL7 (7.0.0 Build 65). The B&W masks look identical in so far as I’m to place the CP on exactly the same spot in PL6 and PL7.
I have, however, noted one different behaviour, which is if you alter the Opacity setting for the CP
PL6
PL7
In both versions of PL the help for Opacity says “Allows you to adjust the intensity of the selected setting.”.
If you reduce the Opacity setting to 0 in PL6 this also seems to affect the display of the mask and makes the image 100% black everywhere.
Doing the same in PL7 has no effect - which is as I think it should be since the Opacity here is about how strong the LA control effect is applied, not how the mask is displayed.
(Note - this shouldn’t be confused with the “A” setting for Colour mask displays in PL7 which is about mask display opacity).
In addition to everything that has been said so far (and which I don’t understand all of), the following points bother me in handling:
1.) When I select the Local Adjustments tool, the available tools should immediately appear below, no matter where I am in the palettes. At the moment you always have to use the slider on the right because the focus is not on the palettes and therefore a simple POS1 is not enough.
2.) If I stop marking briefly and then want to continue, I only see the new lines, not the previous ones. I then have to constantly switch back and forth between “Show masks” and “Don’t show masks”.
3.) If I call up the Local Adjustments again, the previous marking points are only shown to me if I click on the exact same marking tool again. I don’t see anything beforehand. Until now, it was always the case that after calling up the local adjustments I could see all previous points, regardless of which tool they were originally created with.
4.) Previously, when I completed an edit with RETURN (ENTER), the changes were executed and displayed and the Local Adjustments workspace was closed/exited. Now nothing happens when you press ENTER. At least most. I first have to turn off Local Adjustments by clicking the icon again (the tools and final selections remain visible!) and then press ENTER. It’s a lot of useless and confusing clicking and pressing back and forth.
5.) In some cases I tried, specifically related to the color wheel, I could notice next to no change on the screen while editing in PhotoLab, no matter how far I zoomed in. The effect was only clearly visible after exporting to JPG. Then often too clearly. Oops, then again.
Apart from No.5 (and that may be luck on my part), these are all points that I also am finding frustrating. I’ll add another: when adjusting a mask’s coverage using sliders (chroma, luma), the result is not shown live as I slide but only when I release the mouse button. A too much <–> too little dance occurs while I try to adjust things just-so.
As these issues seem not to be a case of being unfamiliar with new tools, perhaps someone should file an official bug report.
Some are newly noticed. The one you just mentioned - about having to release the mouse button to see the changes to a mask - is already known to the DxO developers from early access testing. I expect they are discussing how to address it. Nevertheless, I believe it would be helpful if many users report these problems to DxO support, as that might make fixing them more of a priority.
