Plugins

[MikeFromMesa]

Will all Bibble plugins work with ASP? And where can I find existing plugins for ASP? If the Bibble plugins will work I can google for them but ASP is still too new for a "ASP plugsins" to get much on the net.

While I am interested in any good plugins for ASP I am particularly interested in finding something that would allow me to be more versatile in creating masks. The masking functionality is ASP is very nice if you want or need to create a regular or semi-regular shaped mask, but is not good if the area you need masked is something like a sky with lots of irregular shapes like foliage on the horizon. I would like the masking to provide 3 abilities:

1) select mask areas by color or light,
2) select cumulatively (that is, select one area, add it to the mask, select a second, add it to the same mask, etc), and
3) manually remove areas from the same mask.

ASP does a nice job if the masking area is regular in shape, but does not allow me to do what I sometimes need to do. Yes, it can add/remove regular areas, but not highly irregular areas. Can anyone point me to any available Corel plugins? Maybe one will have this functionality (my Topaz plugins will not work).

Thanks.

[gareth]

2 & 3 available now
polygons etc can be additive or subtractive within a layer - and detail with brush
As for colour etc, I don't know what the future holds

[MikeFromMesa]

polygons etc can be additive or subtractive within a layer - and detail with brush

I know that the ASP masking functionality for polygons can be used as additive and subtractive and I assume the same is true for drawn masks. I am looking for something that would allow me to pick masks by color and/or light and add or subtract each different sub-mask into a single mask.

An example of how this works can be found with the photo editor Sagelight which allows exactly this sort of masking. While its masking ability is superb the user cannot, as of today, change colors or add a tint within that mask which makes fixing a blown sky difficult. I thought that ASP would do that kind of thing if I could effectively isolate the sky with some kind of mask. But selecting the sky in a mask in ASP is very difficult if there is any foliage that has to be taken care of.

Hence the question.

[df]

Mike you may want to give Paintshop Pro a shot. It does that rather easily.

[MikeFromMesa]

Mike you may want to give Paintshop Pro a shot. It does that rather easily.

I am sure you are right. I have had PSP, first X3 and now X4, for some time, but have only rarely used them preferring instead Dxo for most of my editing and CS5 for my mask work. However ASP seems so well put together and easy to use that I have been using Dxo less and less and I have never cared all that much for CS5.

Personally I would like to see PSP and ASP work together similar to the way LR3 and CS5 work together and I suppose that is coming with X5 or something like that. In the meantime I suppose I should learn something about the way X4 creates and uses masks. Thanks for the suggeestion.