clown pass

how to use this to create a contrasting clown pass for photoshop?

yes I'm sure. I think perhaps you haven't uderstood what I wrote. The cryptomatte stores object id's which are then used to create masks of the pixels their id's relate to. A clown pass creates a single image where each object has a uniquely coloured mask (anti-aliased).

In the link you provided to the manual above, you need to understand this bit:

which can then be used in the Blender Compositor or another compositor with Cryptomatte support to create masks for specified objects. emphasis on the word 'specified'.

In other words it will only create a mask for manually selected objects using the picker tool on the cryptomatte node, whereas the clown pass spits out an image with all objects appearing as colour coded masks.

what I'd really like is this: blender.community/c/rightclickselect/ngjY/

Then I could make any pass I pleased.

the clown pass spits out an image with all objects appearing as colour coded masks.

On that point, Cryptomatte is the same as the clown pass. Both are basically just individual colors assigned to individual objects. They both require you an extra step to turn that colorful mess into a black and white mask. But AFAIK Cryptomatte solves a lot of issues that you would have with a clown pass:

• Cryptomatte have the masking system built into the node, while just a clown pass would require to add something like a Color Key node to pick the color you want and turn that into a mask
• Cryptomatte can stack multiple objects within the same pixel, and therefore, can be anti-aliased or even blurred and still be able to differentiate objects from each other.
• Cryptomatte makes it really easy to combine more than one ID at once, even if they do stack. Clown pass would require you to isolate each ID one by one, fine tune settings to reduce feathering on stacking objects if antialiased, and then mix the masks back together.

To my understanding, Cryptomatte isn't just a pass, it's also the tools that come with it to make it easier to use, scalable, and way more modern than clown pass.
So what does a clown pass brings to the table?

You're missing the point. I need a single image with all masks ready made, not one where I have to specify them first by selecting them :)

@L0Lock I think you need to do a bit of research into what a clown pass is, it's pretty obvious you've never used one, otherwise you wouldn't be making arguments that the cryptomatte is sufficient. The cryptomatte is vastly better of course, but it's not suitable if you just need a single image where all objects are represented by a uniquely coloured mask (so you can see them all at once). The cryptomatte will only output a single mask (black and white) for all 'SPECIFIED' objects/materials. The crytp pick channel is not suitable due to lack of anti-aliasing.

Try and make a single image that contains a mask for every object using the cryptomatte without any manual work. You should then understand the difference.