How to use photoshop masks/alphas as colour masks

There's a right way and a wrong way to do this but the right way requires proper leadership. Not the design by committee approach many companies like Adobe often hide behind.

If it was me, I'd...

1. Create an Adobe Unity project.
2. Launch and promote the project as a benefit to multi-disciplined users and it's continuing five-year mission to unify common tools.
3. Get the Unity team to identify tools common to all apps.
4. Then Identify the evidence-based, tried and true way of executing tools (or the Adobe way of doing things).
5. The first release would be an alternative set of shortcuts that can be switched on/off using existing customisation tools.
6. e.g. There's no reason why zooming, panning, zoom-in to fit, or zoom-out to fit, should be different in every Adobe app. It doesn't matter if it's an art board, a video timeline, or audio. It's the exact same process and there's a fast way and a slow way of doing it. Just identify the fastest way and implement it everywhere. Many, many tools could benefit from this.
7. The customisation tools in most Adobe apps is wasted on most because people never use them (I've trained and managed many people over the years). Instead, release a thought-through set of intelligent defaults from a multi-discipline point of view. Again, evidence-based, tried and true, proven efficiencies.
8. Then start identifying tools within apps that could use more features and/or benefit from the Adobe way.
9. Slowly move tools towards the Adobe way. e.g. if Premiere's pen tool was incrementally moved towards Photoshop's, nobody would batter an eye once the five year mission was complete. 
10. But it takes proper leadership to stay the course. You have to ensure the Adobe way is better and you have to build trust and communicate what you're doing.
11. You're not dictating terms, you're focusing the entire company and taking users with you on the mission.
12. And if you get something wrong, you admit it and fix it.

An example of how not to do this, is how the Photoshop team recently changed shift-to-constrain, to shift-to-unconstrain. They did it on one tool, in one context, and only in one app. And to announce it? They sheepishly dropped it as small 'new feature' note to beta testers via the user-voice boards.

After it blew up, they didn't admit the mistake or fix it for months. Instead, they argued there were multiple consistency arguments. That's a red flag right there. If there are multiple consistency arguments, then you don't have a consistent outcome on the table. Some beta testers and YouTubers then dismissed the criticisms as 'you can't teach old dogs new tricks', suggesting the outcry was a generational issue.

But what the Photoshop team did, is the equivalent of Ford taking one type of car, and switching first gear with reverse but only when you're pulling into your driveway. Then only communicating the change to mechanics. Insane.

The silly thing is that 99% of the time, you want to constrain when resizing so the change itself is not stupid. But implementing it properly requires identifying the literally 1000s of places it's used in apps across the suite. It requires leadership to get all app teams on board. You have to communicate the upcoming change widely, with reasoning, with a change-over date and with plenty of time. You have to take people with you. You have to do it right.

Is it easy? Nope. Is it better in the long-run? Always.

Thanks Neil,

I was zoomed in but 90% of the time I couldn't place a point where I needed because the icon would change to a rotate tool. Also, the tool and points don't look, feel or interact like other apps and critical complimentary tools like pan and zoom are either missing or use different shortcuts (it's time for an alternate set of suite-wide shortcuts).

At first, this seems ridiculous but it creates instant familiarity and as long as Adobe copied the app with the best version of a particular tool, there's no cause for complaint other than the usual 'it's different than it was'. 

In the end, I created the points in one pass, then went back and adjusted almost every one to fit. Much more painful than Photoshop where you might go back an adjust 4 or 5 points (for me at least). 

I suspect Adobe teams see consistency as a constraint at times but it's actually a strength which allows anyone familiar with tools in one app, to work identically in another. And this says nothing for the efficiency of using the same UX across as many apps as possible.

Yes, this would require company-wide leadership and a set of suite-wide shortcuts but it's totally possible. Over the years, I've noticed many others bemoaning inconsistencies, it's a huge opportunity that Adobe could leverage for itself and its users.

Cheers

Ben

Thanks for the replies, much appreciated. I have no issues painting/masking in Photoshop but based on the answers above, it seems you can't apply a mask or bitmap to an instance of Lumetri colour.

In the end, I used Premiere's pen tool which was unesasirly painful because 90% of the time, you can't place points where you need them - hence the long-winded rants above!

Thanks Neil, I wasn't actually talking about code - I fully understand the pen tool code isn't copy/paste unless Adobe re-writes everything. 

I was talking about how tools work, how they're designed, and what they're like to use. Interaction design is not only an enormous cost before and after coding, it greatly effects the success of a tool/app. 

100% of pen tool interaction design is done and is tested with decades of refinement. Why should Premiere create its own, sub-standard version?

Yes, Premiere's pen tool has less features but the features implemented should look, feel and work identically to other Adobe apps. This is better for Adobe and for Adobe customers. 

The inconsistencies overall look disorganised, or maybe that seperate competing teams are fighting for their way of doing things - it feels chaotic if you switch between lots of Adobe apps.

That recent shift-to-unconstrain Photoshop 'feature' is one of many terrible examples. Shift-to-constrain is fundamental so changing it on one tool in one app was super low-quality work from every angle - this stuff is a worrying trend. We already have Apple doing this kind of stuff which is why many of us switched to Premiere!

Cheers

Thanks for the reply, will use other apps.

"You cannot compare Ps/Ai to Pr"

It's supposed to be a selling point of Adobe. They have high-quality pen tools in other apps so when an app needs one, just copy it. Tool unification leads to easy of use, speed, conistant quality, and allows teams to better focus their budgets. This was one of the main PR talking points when Creative Suite was first announced.

"Nope, you cannot use paths etc in Lumetri use Ae instead."

Using After Effects for a simple task is overkill which is why Premiere has a pen tool to begin with. But it makes no sense that basic interaction with Premieres' pen tool should be worse than Photoshops'. 90% of the time in Premiere, you can't click where you want a point. It's maddening.

Rant over, sometimes you just need to scream at the sky.

Cheers