Vis Mask in Painter: no you're not going crazy.

[Thelonious]

Many people don't use the Visibility Mask in Painter. To them it is just an extra complex step that gets in the way of painting.

The same can be said for a lot of Painter's extras. Like the mosaic for example or the curves palette. Some folks just want to paint, and Painter is mighty good at it too.

Eventually everyone gets around to exploring the other stuff. And if you ever get round to the Visibility Mask, you can be in for a nasty surprise. You see the principal seems simple enough, there is a Vis Mask (not to be confused with the User Mask) which controls what parts of a layer is visible. That's what it says in the book.

However if you try to erase pixels on an unfilled layer using the Vis Mask. It seems to do what it is supposed to. However if you try and make the pixels visible again you will get nasty black artifacts in your stroke and also around the edges of your stroke.

You might wonder what you are doing wrong. But fear not you are not doing anything wrong. As crazy as it may seem (especially if you are used to a layer mask such as the one in Photoshop) this is how it works in Painter. Some people have come up with "work arounds" like selecting before erasing but this is not very effective for a complex stroke although it does help a bit.

The sad fact is you are not going crazy, it's just another badly engineered part of Painter. If you don't use Vis Masks then it wont bother you. However if you are a Photoshop user and think that the Vis Mask is a layer mask you will have a tough time. Actually I don't know what the purpose of the Vis Mask actually is. It is just a half baked Layer Mask.

Below are some samples: the green stroke has been made invisisble with the Vis Mask then it has been restored but as you can see the problems are obvious.

In case you are wondering Corel have decided not to do anything about this at all it P7, in fact they have indicated to me that it is only a possibility that they will even think about it for P8.

This post is just to reassure the unwary that it is not you who is doing something wrong. In the meantime you'll have to do your layer masking in Photoshop.

thelonious

[Thelonious]

Quote from P 157 of the excellent Painter 6 WOW book which I'm sure Corel would endorse.

"Using the Eraser variant of the Erasers to remove unneeded paint from a layer permanently removes the information. If there's a chance that you may want to restore the information on the layer, consider editing the layer's visibility mask instead of erasing the layer's pixels. Begin by clicking on the layer's name in the Layers section, then click on its visibility mask in the Masks section.

Choose the Eraser (Erasers), choose a brush (such as the Scratchboard Tool variant of Pens, choose black paint in the Colors section of the Art Materials palette and paint on the mask to reveal the layer again."


This is the entire unedited quote from WOW. Looks like they are using it as a layer mask to me. There doesn't seem to be any warning about not going off the edge or you'll ruin your layer. Do you think they are just playing a nasty trick on us. Well Doug are you going to explain this little anomoly. Somehow I think not.

Of course in the other threads I could never get this far without someone telling me that I just don't understand but they will be happy to explain it. But more likely it would be buried by the moderator telling me not to be rude to people like you who offer useless suggestions without understanding the problem.

T

[This message was edited by Thelonious Hink on August 30, 2001 at 09:44.]

[Thelonious]

Many people don't use the Visibility Mask in Painter. To them it is just an extra complex step that gets in the way of painting.

The same can be said for a lot of Painter's extras. Like the mosaic for example or the curves palette. Some folks just want to paint, and Painter is mighty good at it too.

Eventually everyone gets around to exploring the other stuff. And if you ever get round to the Visibility Mask, you can be in for a nasty surprise. You see the principal seems simple enough, there is a Vis Mask (not to be confused with the User Mask) which controls what parts of a layer is visible. That's what it says in the book.

However if you try to erase pixels on an unfilled layer using the Vis Mask. It seems to do what it is supposed to. However if you try and make the pixels visible again you will get nasty black artifacts in your stroke and also around the edges of your stroke.

You might wonder what you are doing wrong. But fear not you are not doing anything wrong. As crazy as it may seem (especially if you are used to a layer mask such as the one in Photoshop) this is how it works in Painter. Some people have come up with "work arounds" like selecting before erasing but this is not very effective for a complex stroke although it does help a bit.

The sad fact is you are not going crazy, it's just another badly engineered part of Painter. If you don't use Vis Masks then it wont bother you. However if you are a Photoshop user and think that the Vis Mask is a layer mask you will have a tough time. Actually I don't know what the purpose of the Vis Mask actually is. It is just a half baked Layer Mask.

Below are some samples: the green stroke has been made invisisble with the Vis Mask then it has been restored but as you can see the problems are obvious.

In case you are wondering Corel have decided not to do anything about this at all it P7, in fact they have indicated to me that it is only a possibility that they will even think about it for P8.

This post is just to reassure the unwary that it is not you who is doing something wrong. In the meantime you'll have to do your layer masking in Photoshop.

thelonious

[freebird]

I once tried masking in Painter and after a long time of trying to figure out what the heck was going on...and a few expletives also [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img] ...I saved it as a psd and just took it into Photoshop.

I am having a hard time acclamating to layers and masks in Painter as compared to Photoshop and so much appreciate your post and explanations.

[DLFrost]

A couple of points directed to Mr. Hink...

(1) Painter's method of editing layer/floater visibility masks predates v6. Painter has never featured Photoshop-style layer mask editing, nor did anyone ever pretend otherwise. I do agree with you that the proxy mask system used in Photoshop is desirable for Painter. But keep in mind that implementing this would shoot up Painter's memory requirements tremendously for users who need more than just a few layers. And it would probably slow down screen redraw. The Clip Masking used by PhotoPaint would probably be better because you could manually control which layers use it.

(2) Your problem with artifacts described in the opening message is probably due to your using a captured-dab brush to do the editing. Try using the Digital Airbush, or one of the simple chalk brushes if you want to apply texturing. I don't have the problems you are describing.

(3) You were not thrown off the Painter List bcause it is a cabal filled with Painter yes-men, but rather it's because you violated the clearly stated posting policy.

Doug Frost

[Thelonious]

(1) Proxy Mask? that's a new one on me. Why don't you stick to the correct terminology. Layer mask. If you mean Layer mask, then I do not say that Photoshop's layer mask is desireable for Painter. You are welcome to cut and paste if you disagree.

What I do suggest is that the Vis Mask is clearly meant to act like a layer mask. The evidence for this is that most people refer to it as a layer mask. But check this out. There is an on line training company called VTC (virtual training company) they have dozens and dozens of online quicktime training videos. For about $25 you can subscribe for a month, which I did. On the section about Vis Masking in Painter I was curious to see what they did. They had some image and then they showed how the mask was used to edit the image. Then they show how you can paint on the mask in black to restore the image.

There it was on screen for the whole world to see. It was very small and you had to know what to look for but while restoring the image they had wrecked the layer. You wouldn't notice if you weren't watching for it. This clearly shows that professionals do expect the Vis Mask to act like a layer mask. And as I have said earlier in the thread, if the layer in question is filled with image then it *does* act exactly like a correctly working layer mask.

I've only suggested that the Vis Mask should work as it was intended. After all could you please tell me what is the point of it? I mean how would you use the Vis Mask if not as a layer mask?

Clip masking? I don't know anything about photopaint and I don't want to.

(2) You use the word probably a lot and you are incorrect this time as well. Probably. First of all it is not "my" problem with artifacts. Also it is worth noting that these are not artifacts in the normal way we use the word. The black is the very same black that is painted on to the layer when you paint on the Vis Mask and you move outside the image area. The black artifacts is the very same black. I was just showing how Jinny Brown's workaround would not work. Jinny suggested to make a selection for the stroke you want to edit first so that you won't paint black outside it. But I wanted to show that the Vis Mask contains other data. The black dots are holes in the stroke because it is a chalk stroke so that when you erase and resore you paint black into the holes.

It doesn't matter what brush you use. I can believe that you indeed don't have the problems I've been having. I also havn't been having any problems that others have been having with P7. That's because I don't use P7, geddit?

(3) In fact I threw myself off the Painter List because the administrators are peabrains, who would/could not engage in a logical discussion and stick to points and answer straightforward questions or even stick to their own rules. The Painter List has a set of rules much longer that your arm and I joined this list specifically because I thought it would be a heavy duty place for hard core painter questions. However it is more like a friendly little tea party. The Rules are very specific about off topic threads.

However it soon became apparent that these extensive rules are not adhered to at all.

It all started when Skydancer posted what would have been one of the most offensive missuses of the list I could imagine. Someone had written to her privately to thank her for her images. She posted to the forum threatening this poor sucker with dire consequenses and asked other forum members with a conspiratorial nudge in the ribs, what they thought about it. That's how it all started...

Then we went on to the Vis Mask thread after it got a bit heated. However instead of just dispassionately going through the points one by one and answering questions the Cabalistic members of the List covern would just throw insults.

Eventually it was promised that anyone throwing any more insults would be thrown off the list. I continued to get insults and noone was thrown off. Basically the Painter List is a sad joke.

Now if you want to send me a rif file showing me how there is no problem you can do so.

Regards

thelonious

[This message was edited by Thelonious Hink on August 30, 2001 at 00:21.]

[Erik Heyninck]

I have CorelDRAW9, dutch edition. Trying to install the SP2 patch, I got a message half way that a certain file wasn't original, and the install simply broke off. I mailed, but got no answer. I called, and they simply said that this was normal behaviour.
When I read what Corel did with Xara, I simply couldn't believe it.
And now this.
Sorry for Painter, but I have no trust whatsoever in Corel, and I won't ever buy anything from them anymore.

Thanks Thelonious for taking the trouble to explain this. You also gave me a deeper understanding of Photoshop. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_cool.gif[/img]

[eky]

about the layers and masks, Thelonious. I printed it out for future reference so I won't get myself into the troubles you've experienced.

[athena]

<ul>premises
<LI>we have many talented visitors to this forum
<LI>we have many busy vistors to this forum
<LI>we have many visitors who come here with questions and they hope to find answers
<LI>these sets of people do not necessarily intersect or overlap each other in any or all instances.
<hr>
given that the above are true, I consider it very important for people who post to recognize the needs of the various audiences that gather here.

<LI>I would further point out that if the busy or talented people do stop and diagnose a question or concern that a visitor has, then they should at least do the visitor the courtesy of reading their question or concern in it's etirety. . . .before jumping to a diagnosis. All will be much better served if the plain english that is written here is read carefully before a diagnosis is delivered.

<LI>please appreciate that an off the cuff diagnosis only exacerbates the frustration a user can feel when he or she has plainly taken great effort to illustrate a question or concern.

<LI>of course, it is also customary in civil discussion, to not fly off the handle at visitors who offer their diagnoses in an attempt to salve the injury . . . but sometimes the diagoses or prescribed treatment could be like salt on a wound -- especially if it appears that the suggested treatment has not addressed the source of the problem or only addresses the symptoms.[/list]

With all that said, here are my newest

1. observations on the vis mask issue.
   
   <LI>it seems to be OS independent. I have been able to generate similar artifacts (i'll go ahead and use artifacts because for my images, I got grey dots or darker purple dots . . .not black . .. this will cover any dots that are not colored the color that I had intended and are generated by some vis mask activity) in my images when i use a vis mask that does not go from edge to edge. ( i have not tried to simply go edge to edge on a layer and see if the vis mask works flawlessly. Thelonious is using a Mac OS I am using Win ME
   
   <LI>we have not eliminated that this is not processor dependent. Both Thelonious and I are using non intel processors. this bug could be looking for something that the intel processor delivers (and we know how well intel processors can calculate [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img] )
   
   <LI>whereas Thelonious seems to be able to duplicate this error regularly, I can only duplicate it every now and then. For me, the artifacts appear sporadically. Although I am looking into a link between the vis mask and the zoom tool. I currently suspect a zoom rasterizing problem corrupts tiny fragments of the layer. but this is only a guess. and I would have to run more tests to be more conclusive for my system.
   
   <LI>this vis mask, when it malfuncions, actually does permanent damage to the layer because when you save the file as a .rif and then re-open the file the artifacts are still visible
   
   <LI>I have no previous experience with Adobe Photoshop so I have no expectations of what the vis mask should do
   
   <LI>I do not make it a habit of reading the manual unless absolutely necessary. This particular topic seemed to be obtusely written (unlike other items in the manual that are more clearly written). . .it was not explained the way i would explain it (and this assumes that I have, through fiddling around, grasped what is going on with the vis mask
   <LI>
   
   1. <LI>when I generate a new layer, we'll call it Bugsy layer Painter generates 2 supporting masks in the mask toolbox
      <LI>these 2 masks are the
      
      1. <LI>Busgsy RGB mask --- this defines the colors within the vis mask
         <LI>Bugsy vis mask ---- this defines the shape of positive and negative space within the vis mask which ultimately defines the positive and negative space within the layer
      
      
      <LI>my observations also note that you can use black ... and i think i read somewhere shades of grey and white to define the shape of positive and negative space in the Bugsy vis mask.
      <LI>whether the Bugsy vis mask is selected is very important in determining if you change the shape of the bugsy vis mask.
      <LI>color selection also seems to play a key role in adding or subtracting to the shape of the bugsy vis mask.
      <LI>whether you have selected the color before or after you select the Bugsy vis mask also seems like an important factor.
      <LI>I was unable to definitively cause artifacts to appear on my layer by erasing and then using the undo last stroke but I did have a mysterious artifact appear in a part of my layer I thought I had not touched with my brush/stylus
      <LI>the Bugsy vis mask is like a stencil i can fill with color by selecting the Bugsy RGB mask. I must have the Bugsy RGB mask selected to color in the Vis mask stencil
      <LI>I think, I can only affect color when I have the Bugsy RGB mask selected.
      <LI>it was while coloring in some fun colors in my bugsy stencil (while having the Bugsy RGB mask selected) that I generated a number of artifacts that showed up within the confines of the Bugsy Vismask
      <LI>I don't know if this is just another bugged feature of the vis mask or an accurate or innacurate reflection of Thelonious' error.
      <LI>If I seem to be on the right track, I will then take the time to generate some step by step images to clarify my experiences.
      
      <LI>If i have been unclear, please tell me. I would now like to get to the bottom of this.
   
   

thank you for your patience and your time

Athena

[This message was edited by T. Athena Hatton on August 28, 2001 at 06:46.]

[athena]

ok Xara ltd. of Gaddsden Place somewhere in England. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img] (provincial texan that I am. . i believe it is outside of London . . .too lazy to look it up at the moment).

Had a product called Xara Studio. Somehow they made a deal with Corel that Corel could market Xara, the program at least in the US and apparently in the UK. When TigerDirect (a US Computer junkies catalog) helped advertise a Corel Roadshow going through Houston, I got to admire, for the first time, the concept of graduated transparency in a vector application (this was back in '95 . . when CorelDRAW 6 was coming out in conjunction with Win95). I read the TigerDirect Hype and it looked awesome. I went to the roadshow and Xara was great. Admittedly, as Freebird says, version 1.1 had printing problems but Xara (not Corel) fixed them in either version 1.2 or 1.5 AND they did those as free upgrades. (they did not make you pay for a bug patch)They added great functionality in those versions also.

(you know what, Freebird, my recollection is fuzzy I don't recall if us diehard Xara fans just exported to .tif and printed from those -- we so adored the Xara tools)

But the shoddy treatment from Corel that Erik is referring to, I believe, (not being the best of mind readers [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img] ) is this:

Corel never bought Xara the program or Xara ltd. lock,stock, and barrel. They took great ideas from Xara's product, incorporated them into Corel Draw and then locked Xara 2 the next version of the program in the dustbin in the basement. Barely letting Xara have food, water, or letting Xara see the light of day. Sadly Xara 1.1, 1.5, and 2 were the stepchildren of Corel and Corel really only seemed to show interest in sustaining CorelDRAW!. that is how the xara Community saw it. . ok .. that is how I saw it. (Corel did a horrible job of marketing XARA2). When the contract finally ended between Xara Ltd., and Corel. All rights of ownership and marketing reverted back to Xara Ltd. They were free to market their program as they saw fit. All that time, Xara maintained complete control over the program code of Xara. So I think their parting was amicable. . . as amicable as such a parting can be.

Corel never wrote or owned the code for Xara.

Corel's purchase of Painter and other former MetaCreations software WAS more along the lines of Lock, Stock, and Barrel. To my understanding, they DO own the code for Painter and everything that that implies. (metacreations,if they are still alive --- as if we care--- do not want the program back. they just wanted the money)

And yes, Thelonious, I agree. If you didn't care about Painter you'd let this issue drop. Customer Service people have to realize that when a customer is complaining, they are giving the company a 2nd chance. . . a chance to redeem themselves. I remember a similar instance where I had bought a program called HoTMeTaL Pro and they had a bug that they fixed in a new version. . . they did not fix it in a free patch. A bug I considered a functionality bug. and I never bought the next version. I took my money elsewhere. I switched to Dreamweaver and have never looked back. I quit caring what HoTMeTaL did.

Since Corel now owns Painter. .. the code. .. .I would expect that Corel will sustain Painter. I think that because of the unique nature of Painter, they will never try to make it compete with Adobe Photoshop or Corel PhotoPaint. I'm not sure that Painter could sustain a head to head battle with Adobe Photoshop. Painter used to be marketed kind of as natural media tool (or that's how I viewed it) and not as a competitor to Photoshop. But all that aside, I agree, it is not unreasonable to ask a company to produce a product that works. I think you've been doing a fantastic job presenting the problem here. It makes perfect sense to me. Although, [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img] I still haven't tried to duplicate the error on my machine.

But where I'm guessing the Corel people are coming from is this: You can work and work and work and still not get a 100% perfect program. so at what point do you say you can let a program out of the gate? Allow the users to enjoy new functionality? (admittedly, from watching the thread on print quality, one does wonder what new functionality is in this program). Corel has been notorious for letting version A out with bugs (forcing the user to get out the cans of RAID, the big Boots, and the rolled newspapers) but they are normally pretty good at getting alot of stuff fixed in version B. They (Corel) drive perfectionists crazy but they do move the program forward (you may never see the forward motion because of the distraction from the other problems, but the movement is there [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img] ).

I really hope that they move this feature up on their list of bug fixes. It would make Painter so much cooler to have this feature work the way you describe that it could work. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Thank you all for this fascinating discussion,

Athena
[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

(ps I once had professor tell me that as a perfectionist, I might lose out to the person who regularly delivers shoddier material because they do more in the same amount of time and have a greater likelihood of getting decent stuff out ... decent not perfect . .. something seems insane about that. . . but I understood his point.)