lawrence_hudetz

Matt, I tried your method, and it's the exact opposite of what I want. What I want to see when painting with Levels, Curves etc is the current image that changes only where I am drawing. When I am done, I would like to be able to tweak the curves or move a slider and see only the painted areas change. I can get there most of the way using and hiding a dupe layer, getting the tool from Image. But I lose the actual settings value as soon as I accept the settings, so no change is possible except to change the blending values for the dupe layer.

I am still a babe in the woods about Layers, masking techniques and such. I read about some of the things people do with these tools and go "Really? You can do that? I am a traditional darkroom photographer that appreciates and uses methods and tools that extend what I am able to do in the analog darkroom, which is huge in itself. I guess I'll have to make that final step away from darkroom thinking and really grasp the comprehensiveness of PS. I'm not sure I can ever get my arms (or brain!) around it.