Is the checkerboard pattern the best way to show masks in color balance rgb module?

[rvietor]

I see. Thing is, with the default settings, each of the masks will mark the whole image. So you will see the background over a large part, if not most, of the image. Whatever background you pick, that will always be the case.

Now, what you can do is pick a colour or colour combination that contrasts with the image, but that will vary between images, and certainly between users, and perhaps even between masks for one image .

[TonyBarrett]

@Donatzsky

What exactly is it you don’t understand?

I appreciate your unwarranted sincerity!

[Donatzsky (Nis Donatzsky)]

@TonyBarrett

unwarranted sincerity

Please don’t take it the wrong way, I’m genuinely curious.

[TonyBarrett]

No, no. I’m being genuine in that I appreciate you trying to help people. My original comments were just some bon mots on my human condition and really not worth your effort. I don’t really get the mask but I haven’t tried very hard to figure it out and there’s so much in life that I don’t get and that’s just fine.

[Donatzsky (Nis Donatzsky)]

@TonyBarrett

My original comments were just some bon mots on my human condition and really not worth your effort.

Ah, case closed then! Just the typical internet misunderstandings

[kofa (István Kovács)]

@Donatzsky

I just realised a neat little trick to make sure you have mid-grey where you want it, when adjusting exposure.

…

Enable mid-grey mask in color balance rgb before adjusting exposure.

But you can already do that automatically, no?

[Donatzsky (Nis Donatzsky)]

@kofa

But you can already do that automatically, no

Yes, but this allows you to visualise it a bit better.

[pindakoe]

Fully agree. I have not been able to grasp that (but admit that I haven’t read the manual or dug around on the internet).

[priort (Todd Prior)]

You keep making this point and it’s a good one… the grey fulcrum from the manual is described as the point where all the masks have an opacity of 50%. … it’s defining the crossover between shadows and highlights. If you make the rolloff extreme it’s a sharp transition from that cross over. If you take the grey fulcrum all the way left with your desired mask selected you will go basically to a full checkerboard and then moving it slowly to the right you can visualize the mask appearing… so you can in a sense introduce the masked area more visually… I don’t often change those masking sliders. I do always use the fulcrum sliders as they define how master contrast and 4 way power (which is not masked) will behave…

[priort (Todd Prior)]

That’s the way I do it and I find it easy to get a nice starting point and it often provides a better adjustment than I would have applied. I suspect you could also unhide the output sliders and set a arametric midtone mask and then adjust exposure until the mask cover what you want. It’s a nice little benefit that if you sample you can see your input and output values after the exposure is added. You just have to be sure to turn it off when your done because you don’t want to actually apply the exposures masked that way