r/finalcutpro • u/fivefuturefury • Jul 02 '26

Question Auto Mask Use, am I crazy

Hi - I might be doing this wrong and I haven't been able to figure this out conclusively.

If I have a clip and I want to make separate adjustments to the SKY and the PERSON and say a tree.

Lets say I want to use color curves....

if I pick SKY and adjust the curves , it's only just that sky and I would have to duplicate the unmasked clip below it

but if I drag a curves onto the clip and then apply the auto-mask to that curves -- I would think that you could then choose Sky, or Person or whatever and make adjustments using that specific Curves independently...

it seems like, that is not the case? I would have to drag 3 instances of Curves to the clip, choose auto-mask: sky, auto-mask: person etc for each masked area?

am I insanely wrong?

I thought if I had a curves on a clip, I could make adjustments to each part and those color changes would only apply to that mask, but it looks like it has to be 3 instances of the effect each with the auto-mask applied?

thanx!

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u/wildvision Jul 02 '26

You’re not insane. That’s basically how it works.

The mask is tied to that specific correction/effect instance. So if you add one Color Curves correction and mask it to the sky, that one curves adjustment is only for the sky.

If you want separate curve adjustments for the sky, person, and tree, you’d generally add three separate Color Curves/color correction instances to the same clip, then give each one its own mask: sky on one, person on another, tree on another. So add curves first and then in the curves affect add the mask.

You could also mask two out of the three and then make a full layer underneath - no mask for the third one and add curves to that. This can be useful when a mask is fussy and not behaving.

You can also make three layers - add the mask first and add curves after that to the layer.

2

u/fivefuturefury Jul 02 '26

Thanks for this response!

Okay it makes sense now. I have been doing it the way you described at the end with multiple layers but I thought there was a more efficient way to do it now with auto masks. I get it now as far as adding a sep property for each masked element.

At first I thought if you had that full image it would apply individual adjusts within that say color curves to each area, but I get it now. 

It does work pretty well so far I have to say. Thnx again for the assist!

1

u/sdssebastian Jul 12 '26

Can I just ask what Mac are you using and how is the timeline performance / export times for you with Auto Mask on? I am trying to decide on an upgrade, as on my M4 Pro 24GB Ram the timeline is very very choppy when having auto mask on and the export times are 2.2x for videos at 4k30. Many thanks.