Building a mask doesn’t change anything on its own — a mask only takes effect once you switch it on and choose how masked pixels should render. Both happen in Settings.
Inspecting a mask first #
From a mask’s actions menu, Details opens a read-only view: an Overview (how many instruments and insights it uses), its description, the instruments it’s compatible with, and each insight with its Min / Max threshold (a threshold with no bound shows as No limit). It’s the quick way to see exactly what a mask does before you rely on it.
Turning masks on #
In the Settings panel, the Masks selector lets you switch on one or more masks, grouped into:
- Predefined Masks — the platform masks available for your current instrument.
- Private Masks — your own masks for that instrument.
Selection is per instrument — the masks you pick apply to everything you render on that instrument, and each instrument remembers its own selection. (Only masks compatible with the active instrument appear.)
The four masking modes #
The Masking mode setting decides what happens to the pixels a mask hides. Remember the threshold range is what’s kept — everything outside it is “masked out,” and the mode controls how those masked-out pixels look:
- Transparent — masked-out pixels disappear, leaving only the pixels that passed. The cleanest way to focus on a feature (e.g. show only water, or only cloud-free ground).
- Solid Color — masked-out pixels are filled with a solid fill, so the kept pixels stand out against a flat background.
- Dimmed — masked-out pixels stay visible but faded, so you keep spatial context while the feature pops.
- Overlay — the opposite idea: the image stays fully visible and the masks are drawn on top as colored layers, each in its own mask color. Use this to highlight where a mask fires (clouds in red, water in blue…) rather than hide anything. Overlay adds the mask as a separate layer with its own legend.
A typical use #
- Clean optical analysis — switch on the cloud and cloud-shadow predefined masks in Transparent mode so every insight you compute ignores cloudy pixels.
- Focus a mineral map — apply a bare-ground mask so vegetation and water don’t distract from the geology.
- Communicate — flip to Overlay to show a stakeholder exactly where the flagged pixels are, without losing the underlying image.
Not to be confused with Zones #
Settings also has a Zones selector for masking out parts of an Area by geometry — that’s a different feature (see Zones, Geochemical & Geophysical Data). Zones mask by location; the masks here mask by spectral value. You can use both together.