Finally, this plugin also gives you a little bit more. Aside from the filter functionality itself, it also creates a new menu item in Photoshop, providing access to the masking environment and two additional utilities: Mask Pro 3 Select and Mask Pro 3 Make Work Path. Mask Pro 3 Select allows you to launch into the masking environment, where you then use the standard Mask Pro 3 tools to generate a selection rather than a mask.

Mask Pro 3 Make Work Path is a little bit different. It opens up a custom interface that allows you to convert a channel or selection into a work path, along with custom settings for tightness and choke.[an error occurred while processing this directive]

While the Make Work Path functionality does not provide a visual reference based on your own image (using the clover image, seen above, instead), it does provide a useful alternative to a simple "Make Work Path" command in Photoshop.

Interface and workflow
The tools in Mask Pro 3 are powerful, no doubt about it. But the tools alone aren't what do it for me. What really stands out is how everything's put together. Mask Pro 3 is tight; it's fast; it's intuitive; and it's packed with workflow features that make it a dream to use. The interface, as you've seen, is quite clean. There's no lag when using any of the tools or finally applying your filter to your image. And there are just tons of little things that help take the edge off masking work.

By "little things," I mean all of the considerations that have gone into the design of Mask Pro. These include the ability to undo and redo either an entire stroke or small portions of a stroke. Unlike working in Photoshop's built-in tools, where one mistake might mean starting over entirely, Mask Pro 3 allows you to undo incrementally, which can be a great boon if you accidentally erase the wrong portion of your image toward the end of a long stroke.

And, as I mentioned, even after you apply the filter, close the document, quit Photoshop and restart your computer, you can still go back in Mask Pro and restore parts of the image that you've erased within the Mask Pro 3 environment--all automatically. If only Photoshop itself could do this!

Other niceties include:

• A total of 90 keyboard shortcuts for tool selection, tool use, navigation, editing, adjustments and views;
• Ability to view individual channels;
• Ability to show the layer in a variety of styles, such as original, transparent, layered over the composition, etc.;
• Customizability, such as the ability to set the colors of the highlighter tools;
• Ability to save, load and reset the workspace;
• Seemingly unlimited undo capability (I lost count after about 325 undos);
• The Magic Brush and Magic Bucket tools can be set to erase, restore or a combination of the two, while other tools can be set to erase or restore the image.

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