New script: ColorMask

[souls33k3r]

Cheers for putting in all the hard work Rick. Much appreciated.

Here comes the silly question, how to use it? I'm only a beginner so I do apologise for asking such question.

[pfile]

first post describes pretty much how to use it...

rob

[RickS]

Cheers for putting in all the hard work Rick. Much appreciated.

Thanks.

Here comes the silly question, how to use it? I'm only a beginner so I do apologise for asking such question.

Rob's answer is a good one (thanks, Rob!)  The first post is a rough example of how you could use ColorMask on a narrow band Hubble palette image to get the common gold/turquoise colouring that seems popular.  It shows some of the basic things you can do.

The more general answer is that you use the script whenever you want to isolate and process a specific colour or range of colours.  As an example, say you have a faint blue reflection nebula that you want to enhance.  Make a blue mask with ColorMask, apply it to the image, and use standard PI processes to enhance the blue areas of the image - as an example you could use CurvesTranformation to boost the blue channel and perhaps do a small HistogramTransformation boost to brighten the blue areas as well.

ColorMask is just a basic tool.  It relies on you to figure out when and how it is useful.  If you're just a beginner it may take a while for you to figure that out.  When I started out I found the technical side of processing didn't seem that difficult.  The part I found difficult (still do!) was developing a sense of aesthetics and knowing what an image "needed."  You may find that ColorMask makes more sense as your personal sense of aesthetics develops and you start to have stronger ideas about how you want an image to look.  ColorMask is only one of many tools that you can use to get to where you want to go.

Cheers,
Rick.

[akulapanam]

Hopefully this gets added to the standard distro soon!

[souls33k3r]

Rob's answer is a good one (thanks, Rob!)  The first post is a rough example of how you could use ColorMask on a narrow band Hubble palette image to get the common gold/turquoise colouring that seems popular.  It shows some of the basic things you can do.

The more general answer is that you use the script whenever you want to isolate and process a specific colour or range of colours.  As an example, say you have a faint blue reflection nebula that you want to enhance.  Make a blue mask with ColorMask, apply it to the image, and use standard PI processes to enhance the blue areas of the image - as an example you could use CurvesTranformation to boost the blue channel and perhaps do a small HistogramTransformation boost to brighten the blue areas as well.

ColorMask is just a basic tool.  It relies on you to figure out when and how it is useful.  If you're just a beginner it may take a while for you to figure that out.  When I started out I found the technical side of processing didn't seem that difficult.  The part I found difficult (still do!) was developing a sense of aesthetics and knowing what an image "needed."  You may find that ColorMask makes more sense as your personal sense of aesthetics develops and you start to have stronger ideas about how you want an image to look.  ColorMask is only one of many tools that you can use to get to where you want to go.

Cheers,
Rick.

Cheers for this Rick, i think i know exactly what i was doing wrong. I thought that by choosing the parameters and applying them will apply to the actual image that i'm working on but in fact it creates a mask based on the colours available in the image? am i right in saying that? and then apply the mask and like you said make changes to that colour using the CurvesTranformation as an example. Am i on the right track here?

I am getting quite familiar with most of the inbuilt PI features

[msmythers]

Here is an example I had forgotten about using Rick's ColorMask. I used the color mask with the ColorSaturation and MorphologicalTransformation tools to reduce blue halos around stars in my image.

http://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=9250.msg59525#msg59525


Mike

[RickS]

Cheers for this Rick, i think i know exactly what i was doing wrong. I thought that by choosing the parameters and applying them will apply to the actual image that i'm working on but in fact it creates a mask based on the colours available in the image? am i right in saying that? and then apply the mask and like you said make changes to that colour using the CurvesTranformation as an example. Am i on the right track here?

I am getting quite familiar with most of the inbuilt PI features

Yes, that's the idea.  Good to hear you're figuring out your way around.  It takes a little while but it is worth the effort!

[souls33k3r]

Yes, that's the idea.  Good to hear you're figuring out your way around.  It takes a little while but it is worth the effort!

Top man, cheers mate

[astrovienna]

Thanks for writing the script, Rick.  I'd like to use it to shift green to blue in an HOO blend, but I can't get it to select much green.  It selects blue without trouble, and cyan selects the same as blue, but green only gets a few star halos.  Since the green and blue layers are identical, I would have thought it would generate identical color masks.  I've tested this on images posted by other people and I get the same result.  Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

Kevin

[RickS]

Thanks for writing the script, Rick.  I'd like to use it to shift green to blue in an HOO blend, but I can't get it to select much green.  It selects blue without trouble, and cyan selects the same as blue, but green only gets a few star halos.  Since the green and blue layers are identical, I would have thought it would generate identical color masks.  I've tested this on images posted by other people and I get the same result.  Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

Hi Kevin,

ColorMask selects colours based on hue values.  If you're having problems selecting specific areas it's worth checking the values in those areas with the readout cursor.  Go to the Edit>Readout Options dialog then choose CIE L*c*h* for the Data / Color Space and enable Show Readout Preview. Then click around the areas of interest and note the range of h values you see.  Make sure the range you select in ColorMask includes these values.

Hope that helps...

Cheers,
Rick.

[dlamothe]

Hi guys,

What is the step by step to install the Color Mask script in PixInsight. I am running PixInsight on MAC.

Thank you

Daniel Lamothe

[dlamothe]

Hello.

What is the step by step process to install Color Mask Script?  I am running PixInsight on Mac Platform.

Thank you

Daniel Lamothe

[RickS]

What is the step by step process to install Color Mask Script?  I am running PixInsight on Mac Platform.

Hi Daniel,

Here's a short tutorial which describes how to add a script: http://pixinsight.com.ar/en/docs/2/pixinsight-add-script.html

Cheers,
Rick.

[cardiofuse]

Fantastic script.  How does one know precisely what the hue angle values are (if you want to tweak them to your image colors)?

[msmythers]

Rick

You change the readout data cursor.


Mike