Creating an exclusion mask

After you identify problem areas in your imagery, you can create vector masks in CATALYST Professional Focus to define the regions in the image to exclude from color balancing. The Mosaic Preparation module looks for vector masks in the input imagery and automatically omits areas under the masks from the color-balancing computation. It can also optionally omit the defined areas from the output mosaic.

To create a new vector mask in Focus

Create a new vector segment in the image that contains a problem area.
On the Files tab, right-click the affected image, point to New, and then click Vector Layer.
To view the new vector layer, right-click it, and then click View.
Click the Maps tab, and then select the new vector layer.
On the Editing toolbar, click New Shapes, and then digitize the problem areas, as necessary.
After you digitize the shapes that define the regions to mask, right-click the vector layer, and then click Save.
The layer is saved in the image file.
Repeat this procedure for any other images that contain problem areas.

The masks are saved as local vector masks in each image.