Making Masks
page 7
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masking step 5

IWhen you save a mask, since it must be an 8-bit B&W file, it’s fine to use a high quality jpeg file even when your original image is a TIF file – this will save storage space.
These tools have created “black or white” masks that will apply sharply different effects in the areas that are black from those that are white. In some cases, you may want a soft or blurry mask to smoothly introduce an image modification. The mask toolbox includes a blurring function you can apply after creating a basic mask, and a feather tool to make a mask expand or contract for better coverage of some images.
In other cases, you may want a mask to continuously vary an effect over an image where the variation is precisely related to the original image. This can be used for special tonal and color controls. Picture Window Pro includes a Brightness Curve tool that creates a continuous tone mask based on the tones of the image and tonal settings of a “histogram” tool . . .