Color Mask (nonlinear) vs. Colour Mapper (Linear)

Bruce Donzanti

Adam

I mostly do NB imaging and I use the Color Mask script as part of the post-processing.  I am playing around with the new Colour mapper with linear images.  Please explain what you think are the advantages and disadvantages of each approach to obtain a color palette because off the top of my head, I cannot be a big plus or minus to either approach.

Bruce

BlockHead

Your questions come across as a challenge. 

The benefit of working with linear images is using tools such as SXT and BXT on the data. These work best on linear data. There are also a number of other operations which are best done in the linear state. 

In terms of the color itself- disregarding the above- there isn't any. Assigning a color to a pixel by mixing RGB values does not have to do with linear/non-linear operations. 

I have not finished the NB series and intend to touch on non-linear blending as well.

-the Blockhead

Bruce Donzanti

OK- it sort of is.  I understand using SXT and BXT in linear as that is what I do now as well as several other steps.  My answer is really in your second paragraph- "there isn't any".  That is what I thought.

As far as challenge, it is more of confusion to an extent.  There are several new ways to develop a color palette for an image - which is great to have options- BUT- not too many folks want to compare and explain the pros and cons of their approach/tool vs. the other guy.  I understand there may be some competition involved to an extent, but I am not sure it benefits the AP hobbyist community.  Perhaps, this is a bit of an over-reaction on my part. 

BlockHead

In this particular case, there isn't a tension between methods or scripts. They are literally different tools/methods of doing things. Is there tension between pliers and a wrench? :)

Color Mask is a selective method that allows you to modify a range of colors based on an initial chosen range of colors (and brightnesses). 

ColourMapper is entirely agnostic to how things will blend. You globally assign colors to "layers" (not unlike Photoshop of old) and globally blend things together. This is a completely different approach. I would easily imaging using ColourMapper followed by ColorMask to fine tune particular colors. 

My answer above was really addressing the "linear" part of the question more than the assignment of colors and comparing those methodologies.

-the Blockhead

Bruce Donzanti

I see (not the analogy as I have had plenty of tension between a pliers and a wrench at times, LOL).  I just took one of my old images and started over with the linear Ha and OIII and used the colour mapper along with my other steps prior to using GHS.  I then used ColorMask to fine tune the color blend I chose with the colour mapper.  I get the idea, but I need to practice a lot more to fully appreciate the benefits of this approach.