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It would be very useful to be able to save the mask out to the layer mask, rather than applying it as part of the process. This would enable localized adjustments after using Focal Blade.

It would only make sense to NOT apply the mask as part of the process if you are only using the controls from the Edges or from the Surface tab sheet in FocalBlade, but not both. Otherwise the result would not look like what you are seeing in the preview.

I could add an option to copy the edge mask to the layer mask, but then again the final result would look different from the preview.

So at the moment the best solution is as it is now. You can render the edge mask to the image and copy it yourself into the layer mask field. This requires applying FocalBlade two times, but avoids confusion among users.

Okay, I don't know what's going on under the hood, so bear with me.

At the moment, I can render the edge mask separately and copy it to the layer mask. But this is only useful I want to use a different sharpening method than FocalBlade itself. This is often what I do now. Use FocalBlade for it's great dynamic mask creation, then use the mask it creates as masking on a layer to which I apply Unsharp Masking. The benefit of this is that the sharpening has been applied to the whole layer at whatever strength I've set. I can then paint in to the layer mask in white to increase how much sharpening is seen, say around the eyes in a portrait, or in black to reduce how much sharpening is seen.

If I use FocalBlade to do two passes as you suggest, the mask has already been applied to the image, so rendering it separately isn't useful. I can always make a blank layer mask and use it to reduce the FocalBlade sharpening locally. The problem arises if you want to use the mask to paint _in_ some sharpening locally. Because the mask has already been applied, the full strength sharpening isn't available in the image layer, so there's no way to increase it's visibility.

Hope that explains it better.

Ok, I see what you mean now. I think I was wrong with my previous comments. It should be possible, but you would need to apply FocalBlade on a duplicated layer. It would probably be best to use a special mode for such a feature.

Definitelly worth considering once layer mask support is availble in FocalBlade. However, I am not sure if it would be really interesting for a large number of users.