ON1 Photo RAW: masking panel tutorial

Scott Davenport explains the masking panel in ON1 Photo RAW through a Dynamic Contrast edit on a landscape photo. He selects foreground rocks with Super Select, adds other areas with Quick Mask AI, then fills a gap along a ridge with the Brush tool. The panel shows these operations as four mask layers beneath the final target mask.

Davenport recommends using the masking tools directly for ordinary painting and erasing. He also points out confusing behavior in his example: the Super Select operation appears under a Quick Mask AI label, and the brush layer has an unexpectedly white swatch. He does not establish why either happens. Disabling all the mask layers makes the filter affect the whole image; when restoring them, he finds that he needs to enable the bottom layer first.

The panel becomes useful for Intersect mode, which he describes as a way to combine luminosity masks and brushes, and for adjustments to the completed mask through Refine Mask. In his Density example, a setting of 85 allows about 15% of the effect into the water and sky outside the painted selection. Feather softens mask edges rather than blurring the photo. Davenport cautions that feathering does not fix halos, which require other tools. He also notes that the panel can invert a mask.