Color or luminance contrast in text and images

Question

Text color can be changed by Font Color property. However, for other images/objects the change has to be in Color Mask property. How does the Color Mask work exactly? When Color Mask can be used in Text?

Answer 1

In images and vector graphics pixels may have different colors, defined by a content, loaded from Material Library. In contrast, Text element has a generic property, Font Color, which sets a color for rendered text directly.

The Color Mask effect is something different, it can be applied to any rendering such that each original pixel gets multiplied by the value of the Mask Color property. Multiplication is separate for each color channel.

For example, when the red color mask (normalized RGB is 0.5,0,0) is applied to an image, then white pixels (normalized RGB is 1,1,1) there turn to red (1x0.5,1x0,1x0 =  0.5,0,0). Black pixels on the same image stay black (0x0.5, 0x0, 0x0 = 0,0,0). Thus, Color mask effect emulates look through colored glass on the original image.

There are some extra facts about the Color mask effect:

• Color mask effect does not affect transparency of the original pixel;
• If Mask Color is white (1,1,1) it means that Color Mask is not applied at all;
• Color mask effect is hardware accelerated but in general rendering gets slower than rendering of the original image.

For Text element Color Mask is redundant, it’s better to change the generic text color.