StarTools

It has happened to me a few times already, I have an image (taken from the city) that looks to me like a uniform bright red background after autodevel and yet doing wipe shows that there are a couple of small dark anomalies left-over after flats which create a halo, so they have to be removed. But clicking mask does not keep the display to the obvious wiped view with the halos, rather back to the uniform red backgound where I can't really see those dark anomalies. Is it easy perhaps for the mask to be editable with the last wipe performed?

Have you tried increasing the size of the Dark Anomaly parameter during the wipe? Set the temporary AutoDevelop to ON and check a variety of values and their effect on the final result.

ChrisH

No, I am not talking about something the dark anomaly filter can handle. I am talking about the classic dust spec that gives you a halo with wipe and you exclude it using Lasso. But it is often only visible after wipe has done its magic, so it is hard to lasso it out in the mask editor since it reverts back.

Tracking to the rescue;

If you find Wipe shows up halos due to dust specks or stacking artifacts, but despite AutoDev, you weren't able to see the dust specks or artifacts yet during mask editing (since you haven't completed the wipe yet that would show them), then simply go ahead with the wipe and "keep" the flawed result.

Now crop away the stacking artifacts/go into the mask editor to create the mask that you really needed in the first place. In both cases you can now see what you're doing. Now click on "Restore" on the main screen and choose "Original".

You will now end up with the pre-wipe data again, except this time with the stacking artifacts removed and/or with the correct mask set. Perform your Wipe as normal. Thanks to this Tracking time travel hack we were able to presage the "flawed" future of the Wipe result and correct the past.

Ah! I'd never tried the "Restore" button before. That's useful and it solves this particular issue as well - thanks!