Masking (art)

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Masking tape being peeled off of a canvas, to reveal the protected, unpainted area below Masking tape on canvas.jpg
Masking tape being peeled off of a canvas, to reveal the protected, unpainted area below

In art, craft, and engineering, masking is the use of materials to protect areas from change, or to focus change on other areas. This can describe either the techniques and materials used to control the development of a work of art by protecting a desired area from change; or a phenomenon that (either intentionally or unintentionally) causes a sensation to be concealed from conscious attention.

Contents

The term is derived from the word mask , in the sense that it hides the face from view.

In painting

Masking materials supplement a painter's dexterity and choice of applicator to control where paint is laid. Examples include the use of a stencil or masking tape to protect areas which are not to be painted.

Solid masks

Most solid masks require an adhesive to hold the mask in place while work is performed. Some, such as masking tape and frisket, come with adhesive pre-applied. Solid masks are readily available in bulk, and are used in large painting jobs.

Liquid masks

Liquid masks are preferred where precision is needed; they prevent paint from seeping underneath, resulting in clean edges. Care must be taken to remove them without damaging the work underneath.

In photography

Masks used for photography are used to enhance the quality of an image.

Representations of a scene—whether film, video display, or printed—do not have the dynamic contrast range available to the human eye looking directly at the same scene. Adjusting the contrast in an image helps restore some of the perceived qualities of the original scene. These adjustments are typically performed on "blown-out" highlights, and "crushed" or "muddy" shadow areas, where clipping has occurred; or on desaturated colors. Photographic masks are peculiar in that they are produced from the image they will alter, an exercise in recursion.

Masks used to produce other effects are similar to those used in painting.

Controlling exposure

Film

The basic methods of controlling exposure are dodging and burning, which respectively lighten (reduce exposure) and darken (increase exposure) areas of an image. The tools a film photographer uses range from shaped pieces of black material (such as studio foil, foam, and paper) to the photographer's hands.

To create a photographic mask, a sheet of negative film is contact-exposed to the original film negative or slide positive in a particular way. Both films are then combined to produce a processed positive. The process is similar when applied using digital techniques: the inverse of the working image is reduced to an image mask; filters or other adjustments are then applied, using the mask to selectively block portions of the image.

Digital

Image editors offer at the very least a "Select All" command and a rectangular "marquee" selection tool. (The word "marquee" describes the "crawling ants" border used to highlight the active region.) Once a selection is created, further changes to the image will be confined to that area. To continue editing the rest of the image, the selection is either "deselected" or the entire image is selected. Advanced suites offer more ways to select portions of an image, as well as ways to combine these selections through.

Selection masks can be switched between an editable greyscale image and a mask. They allow the user to create a mask using the suite's painting tools.

Contrast masking

When the contrast range of an image needs to be adjusted, a contrast mask is a simple solution. The processed image resembles what would be achieved when exposing through a neutral density filter, but the effects are focused highly upon the extreme regions of the image. The blocking areas of the mask coincide with the highlights of the image, and the permissive areas with the shadows, resulting in more detail appearing in each.

Film

The mask is often made from high-quality black-and-white film, such as Kodak Technical Pan, which allows for a degree of softening on the mask. Its processing time is reduced so as to not completely oppose the original negative. Both negatives are combined and registered, and collectively exposed with additional time to compensate for the presence of the mask. [1]

Digital

Contrast masking is made simpler with digital editing. A grayscale version of the image is produced, either by desaturation or by calculating selected ratios of the image's color channels, inverted, and blurred. The mask and original image are blended together to produce the final processed image. [2] Some image editors allow for refinement of the effect by changing the strength of the blend.

Contrast masking can be considered to be the opposite of gamma correction, which adjusts the midtones of an image. Effects similar to contrast masking can be achieved by adjusting the response curves of an image.

Unsharp masking

A derivative of contrast masking is unsharp masking, an unusual term for a process intended to increase the apparent sharpness (acutance) of an image. Unsharp masking uses a blurred form of the image to increase contrast along regions of moderate contrast difference. Around edges, the blur region causes highlights to overexpose and shadows to underexpose. Taken to an extreme, the edges become overly visible and detract from the quality of the image—this is referred to as halation .

Unsharp masking does not increase the actual sharpness, as it cannot recover details lost to blurring.

Unprocessed, slight unsharp masking, then strong unsharp masking. Accutance example.png
Unprocessed, slight unsharp masking, then strong unsharp masking.

Film

Unsharp masking allows the photographer to sharpen areas that have become blurred in the original negative, due to long shutter speed/exposure time, or from using a wide aperture/"fast" lens.

When creating the unsharp mask, extra space or diffusing material is added between the image and the mask to produce the necessary blur.

Digital

Unsharp masking has become automated in digital editing, with higher-end suites offering the process as a "tool" or "filter" in their standard sharpening kits—the actual creation of a mask is bypassed in favor of calculations that represent the mask's effect. The process depends on three factors: the radius of the blur, the strength of the effect, and the threshold degree of contrast above which the effect will be applied. (Adjusting the threshold allows the editor to apply the effect selectively upon moderately defined edges and ignore image noise.)

Unsharp masking is computationally more complex than other sharpening algorithms, but results in a higher-quality remedy. Deconvolution allows for truer sharpening, but is much more complex than unsharp masking.

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Motion blur

Motion blur is the apparent streaking of moving objects in a photograph or a sequence of frames, such as a film or animation. It results when the image being recorded changes during the recording of a single exposure, due to rapid movement or long exposure.

Negative (photography) Image on photographic film

In photography, a negative is an image, usually on a strip or sheet of transparent plastic film, in which the lightest areas of the photographed subject appear darkest and the darkest areas appear lightest. This reversed order occurs because the extremely light-sensitive chemicals a camera film must use to capture an image quickly enough for ordinary picture-taking are darkened, rather than bleached, by exposure to light and subsequent photographic processing.

Unsharp masking

Unsharp masking (USM) is an image sharpening technique, first implemented in darkroom photography, but now commonly used in digital image processing software. Its name derives from the fact that the technique uses a blurred, or "unsharp", negative image to create a mask of the original image. The unsharp mask is then combined with the original positive image, creating an image that is less blurry than the original. The resulting image, although clearer, may be a less accurate representation of the image's subject.

Frisket

A frisket is any material that protects areas of a work from unintended change.

Enlarger

An enlarger is a specialized transparency projector used to produce photographic prints from film or glass negatives, or from transparencies.

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Krita is a free and open-source raster graphics editor designed primarily for digital painting and 2D animation. It runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and Chrome OS. It features an OpenGL-accelerated canvas, colour management support, an advanced brush engine, non-destructive layers and masks, group-based layer management, vector artwork support and switchable customisation profiles. It is written in C++ using Qt.

Tone mapping Image processing technique

Tone mapping is a technique used in image processing and computer graphics to map one set of colors to another to approximate the appearance of high-dynamic-range images in a medium that has a more limited dynamic range. Print-outs, CRT or LCD monitors, and projectors all have a limited dynamic range that is inadequate to reproduce the full range of light intensities present in natural scenes. Tone mapping addresses the problem of strong contrast reduction from the scene radiance to the displayable range while preserving the image details and color appearance important to appreciate the original scene content.

Edge enhancement

Edge enhancement is an image processing filter that enhances the edge contrast of an image or video in an attempt to improve its acutance.

Acutance

In photography, the term "acutance" describes a subjective perception of sharpness that is related to the edge contrast of an image. Acutance is related to the amplitude of the derivative of brightness with respect to space. Due to the nature of the human visual system, an image with higher acutance appears sharper even though an increase in acutance does not increase real resolution.

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Dye transfer is a continuous-tone color photographic printing process. It was used to print Technicolor films, as well as to produce paper colour prints used in advertising, or large transparencies for display.

SilverFast

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Darkroom manipulation

Darkroom manipulation is a traditional method of manipulating photographs without the use of computers. Some of the common techniques for darkroom manipulation are dodging, burning, and masking, which though similar conceptually to digital manipulations, involve physical rather than virtual techniques. Darkroom manipulations are those processes used, for example, to remove unwanted areas and change image background, among others. Varying techniques can be used to accomplish the same tasks.

Image editing Processes of altering images, digital or traditional photos and add/paste/and cut words

Image editing encompasses the processes of altering images, whether they are digital photographs, traditional photo-chemical photographs, or illustrations. Traditional analog image editing is known as photo retouching, using tools such as an airbrush to modify photographs or editing illustrations with any traditional art medium. Graphic software programs, which can be broadly grouped into vector graphics editors, raster graphics editors, and 3D modelers, are the primary tools with which a user may manipulate, enhance, and transform images. Many image editing programs are also used to render or create computer art from scratch.

Paint Tool SAI Image editor and digital painting software

SAI or Easy Paint Tool SAI (ペイントツールSAI) is a lightweight raster graphics editor and painting software for Microsoft Windows developed and published by Systemax Software. Development of the software began on August 2, 2004, and the first alpha version was released on October 13, 2006. SAI's official release (1.0.0) was on February 25, 2008, and an update preview was released shortly after. It has been available on Microsoft Windows from 98 to 10.

Photo Raster

Photo Raster is advanced online photo editor. Photo Raster contains integrated tools for digital painting, layer editing, non-destructive editing, photo retouching, image adjustments and filters.

References

  1. Contrast masking for Ilfochrome printing
  2. Contrast masking with Picture WIndow Pro