I understand that a saved effect cannot include mask bitmaps. However they could include the ‘Hue’, ‘Luminosity’, and ‘Range’ values that the ‘Color’ and ‘Luma’ masking use for creating the mask bitmaps. It would also remember whether it was inverted. Those masking values could be applied to any image, to get a unique mask bitmap. This would help, for instance, in having a ‘Reduce Noise’ adjustment that removes noise for dark areas but not in light areas, or for shifting the yellow in a landscape to be a little more green.
I would think that it is because one you click “Done” the mask is no longer being adjusted. If you notice that reopening the Mask will only show the Alpha.
I may well be a difficult ask to have that retained in a project file.
It doesn’t seem like Topaz’s software developers will have any significant problem. They do a lot more difficult things than this. To a user, it looks like the information is gone, but to a software developer, it’s just data that needs to be stored for later use. When the user clicks ‘Done’ for the mask, it would store the slider values for hue, luminosity, range, inversion, and the others in ‘Adjust Mask’. Then when the user applies a saved Effect to a photo, it applies the mask also.
Would you find it useful if, for instance, a saved Effect would automatically mask out sharpening and local contrast in a landscape photo’s blue sky?
