I COULD CRY...MASK MELTDOWN

[Moonbeam1 Profile]

I love this program, I really do...I see great potential...this is the only reason I have not asked for my money back. But I gotta tell you guys, I'm at my wits end.

The crashing is still a problem, no matter what I have done to rectify it. But right now my issue is the darn MASK feature. I have spent 3 hours tonight masking and remasking and remasking a subject. Each time I complete a mask I try to save it every which way I can think of. I swear I thought I read that if you save a MASK as a session, that mask would still be available to work with. Weeelll, not tonight. I had at least 4 saved sessions, and none of them had the MASK effect saved.

One little slip by the operator, me, and good by hours of work. There has got to be a better way. WHY when you confirm the MASK selection am I stuck having to find an effect? If I don't select an effect and want to exit the gallery, I lose my mask. I have seen the little pics at the top of the window showing the mask but tonight it disappeared from there. When I saw that had happened, I knew I was doomed I'm writing this in the BUG section because of all the freezing of the program tonight. I checked my computer disk and the report is all ok. I thought, hmmm, maybe I'm running out of space on the computer. NOT. I have tons of room left.

AND, I have been searching these messages for help on deleting an entire background and can't find the answer. If anyone can assist on this it would be greatly appreciated. I'm getting the feeling the best I will be able to do with this operation is the ERASE function which is a whole another kinda heck when working with such a large area. Would be great if one could MASK the area and hit a selection: DELETE MASKED AREA. Voila, problem solved.

Sorry for the rant, just tired and annoyed.

Back to the drawing board,
Phoebe

[Moonbeam1 Profile]

As I thought might be the case, OPERATOR ERROR. I figured out how to erase the sky/background on the overlay. Seems I should perform that function before moving pic or anything. Long night at this, sorry.

Still my other points stand.

Phoebe

[admin]

Hi Pheobe,

Re: crashing. We are still looking into it, but from all I've heard it sounds like a memory issue, so we're going to do a 64 bit version of the software.

Re: Masks: If you've started a mask, the only way to delete it is to cancel it (by clicking on the little cross in the tab) when you're still making it. As long as it's confirmed, you can cancel the gallery and the mask still remains (try it). You can save that session and it saves the mask in it (like the .pe file you sent me). You can then hover over the effects gallery button and search on that mask at any time. Masks only get displayed in the tabs where they are used. Does that help?

Re: deleting the background: What do you mean by deleting the background. If you delete an area, what would you expect to see instead? Something like solid black?

Tony

[Moonbeam1 Profile]

Thanks for getting back to me.

Good to know you are working on a version that doesn't go wacko in the memory department.
ANY idea when to expect?

As for saving the mask effect, I thought I had it all figured out by saving as session as you have said. I'm pretty sure I did this before but for some reason it didn't work when I did it again after a lengthy masking session. It could be I did something wrong, I'll experiment on something less intricate and let you know.

And as to delete background, YES . I have seen other programs where when you delete background the result is like a translucent? grid looking area.
What do you think, possible?

Regards,
Phoebe

[admin]

Hi Phoebe,

I wouldn't like to give a timescale on the 64bit version, but we are working on it now.

As for deleting a background. The only reason for transparency is so you can see something that you put behind it. That's what the composite's Underlays are for. If you want it to look like a grid, underlay a grid!

Tony