Looks wonderful and I can't wait to play with this when I get home. A few questions though. Would like more details on the purpose of the mask - that is what issue is it addressing? In the video, what if we tried to remove the mailbox without the masking? Also what about the "Dye" click ? What does that do? (Maybe both of these will be obvious when I download and use the software)
Thanks for yet another greeat addition to QU
Mel W - Columbia, Md.
Mel,
Good questions. I had hoped to cover them in more detail in the video but was trying to keep it to about 10 minutes.
The masks:
What you are doing with the mask is marking the area that gets affected by your vanishes. By putting the mask over the mailbox, I can guarantee that only the areas that are masked off get changed by your vanishes. It's a good way to make sure you don't "damage" other parts of the image because you are making sure that only the masked off areas are being changed. Keep in mind that you can still vanish in other areas (outside the masked area) but for any vanish that
intersects a mask, only the area inside the mask is changed even if the size of your vanish extends well beyond that region. For the mailbox, we didn't really "need" a mask because the areas around the mailbox were pretty random. The masks really come in handy though when you are trying to remove a pole or an extra person behind the top of your main subject's head. You know you don't want to "warp" the image around the top of the main subject's head so you put masks on what you want to remove, making sure to mask just down to the main subject's head and stop there (no masks protruding into your subject). That way you know the top of what you do NOT want to remove isn't getting damaged by the "warping" of the vanish tool near that area.
The dye:
A mask is basically just another use for the red eye tool. If you want to remove red eye, you click on Mask/RE and click in the center of the red pupil and draw outward until the color is removed. In masking, it essentially does the same thing: the masks just remove the color from inside the masks and makes them B/W (and a little darker). That doesn't always show up very well if you put a mask over an area that is very dark, bright, or already near neutral (concrete sidewalk for example), so the dye just "injects" some dye into the mask circles so you can see exactly what is masked. It's for visual reference only, to help with the vanish tool application. If you put a mask on an image and you don't follow up with a vanish in that area, obviously the image will have a little B/W spot where your masks are. That B/W area is really on your image: it's up to you to follow up with a vanish on top, else your image will have B/W blots on it. By using the vanish, you are filling (vanishing) in the B/W blots.
So if you want to see what your image looks like with the masks and before you vanish, you look at it without the dye. Use the dye as an on-screen "reveal" of the actual areas that are masked: so you can see if you missed spots and so you can more easily see the areas that are going to be filled when you use the vanish tool near those masks.
Mike