Exp: Selections and Masks

[photoken]

I just came across this Web page
http://www.graphic-design-employment.co ... image.html
which demonstrates how to use a Photoshop plugin (costing $150 USD) to mask difficult subjects like hair. What struck me was how similar the instructions are to those for using the PL Border Matting tool.

The instructions for the plugin's selection tool are essentially what we have been doing with PL's various selection tools before switching to the BM tool. Once the instructions begin showing how to use the plugin's blending brushes, though, it seems like there's some valuable information in there. The plugin's Red, Green, and Blue brushes are the exact equivalents to the BM tool's Background, Object, and Working Area (Red, Yellow, and Orange) brushes.

Hope this helps in understanding a little bit better about using the BM tool....

[Alan9940]

Hello Ken,

Thanks for the additional input, but I'm pretty sure I have a handle on what the BM tools are supposed to do...

The main problem I have with the BM tool is that it doesn't work the way I expect it to work, based on my keep/cut/compute brushstrokes. After reading the Fluid Mask instructions, I opened the brunette girl image (Herbert123) once again, cropped out a small section of the fly-away hair elements toward the upper right area, used Automask for a basic selection, and then went into the BM tool to paint the keep/cut/compute areas. All brush strokes were painted at 400% view so I'm pretty confident that I didn't mark anything incorrectly.

Funny...after making a basic selection with Automask and before making even the first brushstroke in the BM tool, you might notice that the coloration of selected vs unselected areas and what appears to be "compute" areas are already marked; as if the Automask tool is using some underlying algorithm of BM. No clue if that even makes sense, but when I hit "Extract" in the BM tool it doesn't seem a coincidence to me that the resulting extracted image was based on the original Automask selection. In other words, it's as if all BM brushstrokes were ignored!

Anyway, bottom line is that I've decided life is much too short to spend hours and hours trying to figure out how to mask complicated image areas like hair, bridal veils, etc. There are other better masking tools out there!

Best regards,
AlanH

[photoken]

Funny...after making a basic selection with Automask and before making even the first brushstroke in the BM tool, you might notice that the coloration of selected vs unselected areas and what appears to be "compute" areas are already marked; as if the Automask tool is using some underlying algorithm of BM. No clue if that even makes sense, but when I hit "Extract" in the BM tool it doesn't seem a coincidence to me that the resulting extracted image was based on the original Automask selection. In other words, it's as if all BM brushstrokes were ignored!

When you make a selection with the Automask tool using a soft edge setting, that soft edge is what the BM tool uses for its "compute" area. In other words, the areas defined by the Automask tool as "selected", "not selected" and "soft edge" are automatically used by the BM tool to initially define its "object", "background" and "working area" areas, respectively. (If your initial selection with the Automask tool was set to use a soft edge setting of "0", when you switch to the BM tool there will be no orange "Working Areas" defined and the extraction will have hard edges.)

The other critical thing about the BM tool is the "Edit Soft Edge" checkbox. The BM tool will only re-calculate working areas if they are transparent in the preview. So, for example, if the checkbox is unchecked, and you paint with the "Working Area" brush, your paint strokes will be transparent and only those transparent paint strokes will be re-calculated when you hit "Apply". If you select the "Edit Soft Edge" checkbox, all the orange "Working Area" areas become transparent and they will all be re-calculated (plus any new areas you paint as "Working Area") when you hit "Apply".

[dutchman]

jennifer_hair-cutout.jpg

That's my result of cutting out hair.
Yes it was very tricky.
What I did:
Quickmask, corrected with the maskbrush
Then with the "Half transparency" (I don't know the english word for this tool - the last one in the "Masklist")
Mark the positions, Confirm and delete. The deleted portions are "half-deleted".
Time I spend: 3 hours, because, this was the first time.
I remade the actions then it took 20 mimutes.

toni

[Herbert123]

That's my result of cutting out hair.
Yes it was very tricky.
What I did:
Quickmask, corrected with the maskbrush
Then with the "Half transparency" (I don't know the english word for this tool - the last one in the "Masklist")
Mark the positions, Confirm and delete. The deleted portions are "half-deleted".
Time I spend: 3 hours, because, this was the first time.
I remade the actions then it took 20 mimutes.

toni

Can we have a look at the high resolution version?

[dutchman]

Sure, you can but:
The picture I used was NOT A HIGH RESOLUTION.
Perhaps not perfect, but you could do some of what "corrections".

What I ment to say is, that PL can manage a lot of complex works with a little effort. (If you know where to find the tools ).
As I mentioned... this was my first try!

jennifer-aniston4_freistellen.jpg

[Herbert123]

Taking the rather inconvenient quality of the original into account, quite a good result.

[photoken]

What I ment to say is, that PL can manage a lot of complex works with a little effort.

I agree.

Your result looks good. Just so I'm sure what tool you used, the last one in the "Mask" collection is the Border Matting (in English) tool:

mask tools.png

Is that the tool you used?

This image was intentionally very difficult. Our practice with such an image will allow us to learn much and gain skill. We will be well prepared to work on "better" quality images, I'm thinking.

[dutchman]

Hi Ken,
Yes indeed, I agree... in all three.

1)
I used the "border matting",
2)
The image was a difficult one,
3)
We want to get better quality images ... and BTW make PL more popular

Alltough I'm on the way with PL since about 1999.
I allways did some uncomplicated works with it and I allways got help from Hubers if it was tricky.
Since about 2 months I'm searching and solving complex challenges in PL.
My first steps I put in "samples" and "tricks"... Unfortunately I'm quite alone in these threads.
So I'm verry happy I did one with (difficult) Jennifer Aniston and the result was "nearly" OK.
I will follow the english threads and look forward to complex images to "build" and/or edit.
Sorry for my english... it is like a "germish" and I don't know the english terms in editing images, but I'm working on it.
Greetz
toni (dutchman)