Saving a partial masking session & reopening later

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Saving a partial masking session & reopening later

Postby ash1001 » Tue Jan 13, 2015 11:50 pm

Hi folks, this is my first post on the forum, so excuse me if I make a mess of it.

I have a panorama photograph on which I wish to change the background, I started to mask out the area I wished to change with a little bit of overmasking, which I deleted where required, as I wanted to do it in stages because of the complexity. I went to 'save as' and saved it as a .pe file. I then did more masking work and saved that also as a .pe file adding a Ref No. i.e Original 1 then Original 1a, then Original 1b etc.

I completed my masking, saved the final mask as Original 1c, I then closed the program, when I went to reopen the program I opened Original 1c and found that it was not what I had saved, it did not show the masking, neither did the masked image show at the top to the window.

What have I done wrong and can I recover my work, for the future how do I save partial masks? many thanks folks.

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Re: Saving a partial masking session & reopening later

Postby eadams » Wed Jan 14, 2015 9:40 am

Hi ash1001, welcome to the SPE forum!

Before someone can try to reproduce the error you are experiencing, they need to understand the exact steps you took when working on your image.

Statements like "I started to mask out the area I wished to change with a little bit of overmasking, which I deleted where required" are too vague. It is not clear which tool you used to do the masking, whether or not an effect was applied, what stage you were at when you saved the file, whether you used the "Save as Session" functionality to save your files, etc.

Can you please go through the process again and document each step? To give you an idea of the detail required, start like this:
1. Start SPE in stand-alone mode
2. Open image
3. ...

Add screenshots to show what your screen looked like before saving.

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Re: Saving a partial masking session & reopening later

Postby admin » Wed Jan 14, 2015 10:31 am

Hi Ash,

If you have created a mask, but not used it yet, it isn't lost when you load a .pe file back in. To use any mask that you've created, just hover your mouse over the effects gallery and choose show gallery for background (or whatever your mask is). If nothing pops up when you hover over the Gallery button, make sure Descriptions for tools on right is checked in your settings. If that doesn't help, follow eadams descriptions to give us a better idea of what's going on.

Tony

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Re: Saving a partial masking session & reopening later

Postby ash1001 » Wed Jan 14, 2015 11:21 am

Hi eadams, thanks for the reply, I will try and explain things a bit better:-

I am using SPE as stand alone software,

1 - I open my photograph which is of Sydney Harbour Bridge,
2 - I cropped it to the size I wanted,
3 - I went to Select Area, and chose replace Sky
4 - I then started to select my area (find hard edge setting) and because of the complexity of the bridge steel work I included it, with the intention of then finely erasing the steel work using a fine size with a small detector size tool, I filled in the rest of the sky area with the 'paint bucket'.
5 - Because of the precision in removing the masking from the Steel work of the bridge, I decided to do it bit by bit and save what I thought was my work up to a particular point. I did this by giving my project a 'name' and adding a post fix to each name so I had the various saved stages in order, I save each stage as a .pe file, thinking that if I made a mistake I could open the appropriate file and start off correcting my 'mask' where I had left off.
6 - I ended up with the masking in what I thought was 4 stages each with its own file name.
7 - I then closed the program and my computer, however upon returning to my computer and the program, when I went to open one of the stages (.pe format file) all it showed was the original photograph at the top with a second photograph showing where I had cropped it, and the main image on the desktop was of the 'cropped image with an arrowed circle on it' but no masking.
8 - Each of the saved stages showed the same sort of result - non showed the masked area.

The question I am asking is what have i done wrong when I went to save the various stages of my masking.

Many thanks for any help.

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Re: Saving a partial masking session & reopening later

Postby Arwin » Wed Jan 14, 2015 5:36 pm

Hi ash1001,

I see what's going wrong I guess..
If you want to save your mask in stages, you need to apply an effect first to the mask you are making before to save the stage as session, othewise your mask will be lost..

You can always apply a new effect the the mask you are creating in a later state if you want.

Steps to create your mask and save as session (I assume you're using the Select Area tool, background):
1. Start to make your mask as you would normaly do.
2. Hit Confirm Selection And Browse Effects.
3. Choose your effect and apply by hitting Ok.
4. Now save your first stage by using File > Save As Session...

Refine your mask:
1. Open the last session you saved, or stay if it's already open..
2. Click on the mask in the effect tab as the image below demonstrates.
3. Refine your mask as you wish.
4. Now save your next stage by using File > Save As Session...
5. repeat the Refine your mask steps till you're happy.
Mask.jpg
Mask.jpg (12.01 KiB) Viewed 9026 times


Choose another effect for your mask:
1. Open the session with your last saved mask.
2. In the effect-tab of your mask, click in the left upper corner to disable the effect (See image below).
3. Hover above the Effect Gallery button until you see a window pops-up.
4. In this window choose your selection(mask)
5. Choose an effect you like.
6. Hit Ok to apply the effect.
7. Save your work!
Disable effect.jpg
Disable effect.jpg (12.63 KiB) Viewed 9026 times


You can remove the disabled effect by clicking on the cross in the upper right corner of the effect, or click in the left upper corner to see the disabled effect again.

Hope this will get you where you wanne be.

Arwin
Check my Instagram if you have time, dedicated to my edits done in Smart Photo Editor!
Feel free to follow ;)

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Re: Saving a partial masking session & reopening later

Postby ash1001 » Wed Jan 14, 2015 7:11 pm

HI Arwin, nice to meet you.

Wowee that's some answer and really appreciated, now to put it into practice, will be back with results, thanks for all you effort in supplying me with a possible solution, here goes! All I have to do now is get my 75 year old brains switched on.

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Re: Saving a partial masking session & reopening later

Postby admin » Thu Jan 15, 2015 10:41 am

Hi Arwin and Ash,

You don't actually need to apply an effect in order to not loose your mask. You can load up the .pe files you already saved and the mask is ready to use. To use any mask that you've created, just hover your mouse over the effects gallery and choose show gallery for background (or whatever your mask is). If nothing pops up when you hover over the Gallery button, make sure Descriptions for tools on right is checked in your settings.

Tony

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Re: Saving a partial masking session & reopening later

Postby Arwin » Thu Jan 15, 2015 4:20 pm

Hi Tony,

This is partly true..

If you not apply an effect as I suggest, you will not have the mask visible as the black and white icon in the effect-tab, although the selection is available by hovering over the Effect Gallery, you still need to select an effect to be able to refine your mask or go to the effect editor and choose to edit the mask.
For someone that not used the effect editor before or will use, this will not be a very common way to find your mask again.

I think my steps are far more user friendly than skipping the apply effect first, or is it a bug that the mask is not visible in the effect-tab in my version?

Kind regards,
Arwin
Check my Instagram if you have time, dedicated to my edits done in Smart Photo Editor!
Feel free to follow ;)

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Re: Saving a partial masking session & reopening later

Postby ash1001 » Thu Jan 15, 2015 7:43 pm

Hi guys

Once again many thanks for all you help, what can I say other than - brilliant.

As to the problem I had, I have followed what you suggested Arwin and it works for me, so I am making progress for which I thank you, just to say I could not understand how i could work on amending a intricate selected mask in white on a black background, but then I realised that I had to go to 'Display Section as' and change to a red wash mask.
My question here 'your tutorials start you off using a "red Wash" to define the mask, but if like me you wanted to make a partial save, you come back to "white against a black background" its easy to end up lost as I did. with out the help of the forum I would have stayed that way.

As a beginner, as far as the program is concerned I have tried to follow your suggestion Tony on a different image and unfortunately up to now i cannot get it to work, so maybe like Arwin I have problems with the software as well.

Thanks guys for all of your support.

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Re: Saving a partial masking session & reopening later

Postby Arwin » Fri Jan 16, 2015 12:00 am

Hi ash1001,

Glad my steps are working for you, but you're right about the swith to the red wash mask in the Display Selection. Standard it would not show the selection but will add or remove the effect directly.

Tip from me for you, finish your mask in the end with the White on Black Background (also be found in the Display Section as) with this method you can quickly see any missed spots in your mask and be able to fine-tune your mask, otherwise you could ending with blurry streaks in your applied effect as the image below roughly demonstrates.
Blurry Streaks.jpg
Blurry Streaks.jpg (41.11 KiB) Viewed 9007 times


Did you are alread aware of the 'shift-key' function in creating a mask?
If not, this video can be interesting for you:


btw, I don't think it's a bug that the black and white icon is missing in the effect-tab if you follow the way Tony suggests, it's just the way SPE is designed.
Anyway, glad you're making progress!

Regards,
Arwin
Check my Instagram if you have time, dedicated to my edits done in Smart Photo Editor!
Feel free to follow ;)

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