Mask Features

The Mask Features let you define which areas in an image are affected by the controls of the Edges tab and which by the controls of the Surface tab. This does not only give you enormous control of the produced sharpening effect, but it also lets you adjust the available blur, glow and soft focus effects.

Mask Display

The Mask Display box offers various options for viewing the edges and surface areas separately. The two X-ray options display them as a b/w pattern, the two outline options display the edges colored and the two cartoon options overlay the image with the edges. Each of the three option pairs offers a negative and positive variation.

When adjusting the four sliders below it helps a lot to have a Mask Display option activated. You will then be able to see the changes you are making more clearly. However, please don't forget to switch off the Mask Display again unless you want to use it intentionally to produce a special effect.

Precise Check Box

If it is activated, the edges will be calculated more precisely. This takes two times longer and only results in a very slight improvement. So if you have a slow computer, you can keep it deactivated without fearing a loss of quality.

Intensity

The Intensity slider lets you decrease or increase the intensity of the edges in the image. High values intensify the edges and also increase their size whereas low values only weaken the intensity of the edges. At a value of 0 the whole image will be considered as "surface" by FocalBlade, so the settings of the Surface tab will be applied to the whole image and the settings of the Edges tab won't be used at all.

Smoothness

Without appropriate smoothness the edges in the edge mask would be too hard. As a result hard transitions between the edges and surface would occure when sharpening an image. The Smoothness slider avoids this problem by smoothing the edges. The more smoothing is applied, the wider the edges will get thereby amplifying the sharpening. So it is best not to choose a too small or too large value for this slider.

Remove

A noisy image usually produces a noisy edge mask. To filter out this noise from the edge mask, you can use the Remove slider. It will help you to remove edges that are the result of low-brightness noise. Please be careful to not assign a too high value to this slider, otherwise you may also clip essential edges and thereby prevent them from being sharpened. For images without noise you can use the Remove slider to shrink the edge areas.

Expand

The Expand slider gradually blends the surface areas with the edge areas. At a value of 100 the whole image will be considered as "edges" by FocalBlade. That means that the settings of the Edges tab will be applied to the whole image and the settings of the Surface tab won't be used at all. This slider can be used to bring the Surface tab settings more in line with the Edges tab settings.