The selective drawing tool of DENOISE projects 2 professional should be given special attention. With this tool, you can edit selected areas of an image without having to create complicated masks by hand in other image editing programs.

DENOISE projects 2 professional has a newly developed intelligent corner-detection-algorithm that can independently distinguish corners, lines, borders and light differences in drawing-mode. It also saves crossed borders - via the mouse - as a mask.

These masks, which are incredibly simple and precise, serve as the basis for 10 important image enhancements: "Shade"; "Lighten"; "Intensify Color"; "Reduce Color"; "Enhance Detail"; "Increase Contrast", etc.

These masks can be saved in image filesand can also be used in other image editing programs.

How this all works is best explained with a simple example: We open the Selective Drawing window (Postprocessing/Finalization - bottom right).

A simple RAW-file is suitable as an image example, a typical image of the sea and a beach.

The color details of the image have already been processed and brought to the foreground, so now you just want to slightly lighten the rocks without taking away the evening atmosphere of the image by also lightening the sky, the water and the beach.

1. Select the editing target

In this case, select "Illuminate". Make sure that the selected mask-function is activated via the green check mark.

2. Activate the drawing-mode

3. Activate the fill-mode for all brush-functions

4. Go over the contours without clicking on the mouse buttons. You will see the size of the brush and can correct it if necessary.

5. Keep an eye on the mask display. The object whose boundaries can be detected automatically is displayed in a whitish color. Now, while holding down the mouse button, drag along the edges of the selected object until it is fully selected. What is displayed at the moment is the effect and the mask above it.

6. When you have finished selecting the object, hide the mask by moving the mask display slider to the left.

7. Now you can see the effect, i.e. the brighter rock - because "Illuminate" had been selected in the editing target. The intensity of the effect can be adjusted. Move the slider in the + direction or in the - direction so that you have your ideal intensiry. Done: the rocks are brighter while the sky, beach and water remain unchanged.

8. Click "Close". You will return to post-processing and the selected changes will be applied and displayed.

9. Use your quickly created mask for further effects: Return to the selective drawing mode. Our constructed mask is preserved. Click and copy the mask to the clipboard. Switch the mask to "Sharpen" and reintegrate the mask from the clipboard into selective drawing. Now you have the rocks in focus while the other areas of the image are left untouched.

10. Every effect you have constructed can be activated or deactivated with the green check mark.

11. In each image the intensity of the edges will be different. But with the default settings you can be relatively sure that in most cases no adjustments will have to be made. From time to time, however, it will be necessary to readjust the settings of the contours as well as the smoothing in order to achieve ideal results.

12. If you have gone over the edge despite all the edge detection available, you can simply use the eraser to erase it. If you only want to erase a little, you can use the eraser with restrictions. If the opacity is set to 50%, you can only erase 50% of the mask, no matter how many times you run the eraser over it. This is also how selective drawing with constraints works, because it draws only with the specified opacity.

13. If you want to mask all but one very small object in the image, it is better to mask only that one object and then invert the mask. Just click on .

Pro tip: You have two fill-modes to choose from for filling the mask. When do you choose which one? We have already used the "normal" fill-mode ( ) in our example for large areas. This is the fill-mode to use for sky and water areas.

The ray fill-mode performs its tasks very precisely and is preferred for smaller objects, geometric shapes, or other objects with straight lines, as in the example shown.

You can now use ray fill-mode to mask the walls of this multi-story building, while leaving the glass surfaces unselected.

Pro tip: You can use the "Blend in original image" feature to partially focus selected areas of your image.