The following AI-generated aka vibe-coded software. The software is specific to my needs and my system and may not work for you or your system. Support is limited, but if you report a bug I'll certainly look into it. All code is provided in a zip file for you to review should you choose.

Depth Map Reference Mask Tool

A small desktop app (Tkinter) for turning a depth map into a grayscale mask centred on a depth of your choosing.

You load a depth map, paint over the region you want to treat as the reference depth, and the tool produces an image where that depth is pure white and everything else fades toward black as it moves away from the reference — in either direction, whether it sits in front of or behind the reference.

Requirements

• Python 3.8 or newer, with Tkinter available (bundled with most Python installs; on Debian/Ubuntu you may need sudo apt install python3-tk)
• pillow
• numpy

pip install pillow numpy

Running

python depth-map-reference-mask.py

How it works

1. The loaded image is converted to 8-bit grayscale. Each pixel’s value (0–255) is its depth.

2. The reference depth is the mean grayscale value of every pixel you painted.

3. For each pixel the tool computes diff = |depth − reference|.

4. That difference is divided by the falloff range, clamped to 0–1, and inverted:

   output = (1 − min(diff / falloff, 1)) × 255

So a pixel at exactly the reference depth is 255 (white), a pixel a full falloff range away is 0 (black), and anything beyond is clamped to black. The falloff is symmetric — depth 100 and depth 200 are equally distant from a reference of 150.

Auto falloff range (on by default) sets the falloff to the largest difference present in the image, so the output always uses the full 0–255 range. Turn it off to set the falloff manually with the slider (1–255), which gives you a tighter, more selective band around the reference.

Using the app

Toolbar

Painting

• Left-click / drag — paint the reference area. A translucent red overlay shows what’s painted.
• Right-click / drag — erase. (Middle-click is also bound to erase, since some macOS input devices send it for a secondary click.)
• The circle following your cursor previews the brush footprint: teal when painting, red when erasing.
• The result preview refreshes when you release the mouse button, and the reference depth is shown in the right-hand pane’s header.

Panes

The left pane shows the source image with your painted overlay; the right pane shows the generated result. Both scroll and share the same zoom level.

Output

Save As… asks for a parent folder, then creates a subfolder named after the source image. If a folder with that name already exists, it appends _01, _02, and so on rather than overwriting anything.

Inside that folder, using bedroom.png as an example source:

bedroom/
├── bedroom_with_reference_set.png   # the generated grayscale result
├── bedroom_mask.png                 # the painted mask on its own (white = painted)
├── bedroom.json                     # sidecar metadata (also the project file)
└── bedroom.png                      # symlink or hard link back to the source image

The source image is linked rather than copied. A symlink is tried first, then a hard link. Symlinks on Windows need Developer Mode or admin rights; hard links need the source and destination to be on the same volume. If both fail you get a warning, but the result files are still written. The result filename always carries the _with_reference_set suffix so it can’t collide with the linked source.

Sidecar JSON

Reopening a project

Load Project takes one of these .json files (or a folder containing one) and restores the source image, the painted mask, the brush size, and the falloff settings, then regenerates the preview. If the mask file is missing or its resolution doesn’t match the image, you get a warning and the remaining settings are applied anyway.

The heading above the result pane reads (unsaved) or (saved as <path>) so you can tell at a glance whether the preview matches what’s on disk.

Persisted app settings

The app writes depth-map-reference-mask.ini next to the script, storing the window geometry, whether the window was maximized, the last folder used for loading, and the last parent folder used for saving. Deleting the file just resets the app to its defaults.

Optional icon files

If you want a custom title-bar and taskbar icon, place these alongside the script:

depth_mask_app.ico
Resources/depth_mask_app_icon_16.png
Resources/depth_mask_app_icon_32.png
Resources/depth_mask_app_icon_64.png

All of it is optional. Missing or unreadable icons print a one-line note to the console and the app falls back to the default Tk icon.

On Windows the app also sets an explicit AppUserModelID (so the taskbar shows the app’s icon instead of python.exe’s) and marks itself DPI-aware (so “Actual Size” really is 1:1 under display scaling above 100%).

Notes and limitations

• 8-bit depth only. Images are converted to mode L, so a 16-bit or 32-bit depth map is quantized to 256 levels on load. Fine banding in the output is usually this, not the falloff maths.
• EXR files appear in the file dialog filter, but Pillow can’t read them without an OpenEXR plugin. Convert to 16-bit PNG or TIFF first.
• Brush size is in display pixels. Painting at 0.5x zoom covers twice as many source pixels per stroke as painting at 1:1.
  Use “Actual Size” when you need precision.
• The mask is hard-edged. Brush stamps aren’t anti-aliased, and any non-zero mask pixel counts toward the reference average equally.
• No undo. Right-click erase is the way back; “Clear Painted Mask” starts over.
• The module docstring says to run depth_mask_app.py; the actual filename is depth-map-reference-mask.py.