How can I apply color corrections only to specific areas of a texture, driven by an alpha?

[BeneZ]

Hi there, a simple question for a long-tim problem:

Imagine you have the alpha of a texture pattern and want to color your texture red with this pattern for a quick render test in your Maya scene.
It would be a no-brainer in Substance or Photohop.

In Maya I know only this complicated workflow, with branching of the node tree, in order to do once the full correction, then merge both versions with an alpha.
If you have several corrections or just want to test something quickly, this is the slowest workflow I can imagine and quickly blowing up your network.

Is there any hidden input in look development nodes (as color correct), to apply a correction only to areas, controlled by an alpha?

Thanks

[hermit.crab]

It does work with a VRayLayeredTex, where the color corrected and the original images are its two layers, masked by the original and an inverted alpha. Though, I'm not sure if this is not as complicated as the setup you're referring to.

[BeneZ]

Thanks,
the problem with vray layered tex is that it is only displayed black in the viewport. Especially not useful when working on masks and texture placements. (I try to avoid this node therefore.)

why aren’t you introducing some own correction node with some proper mask inputs? it would be a powerseller for vray...