Hello everyone!

For several past years there have been a lot of activity in computer vision science community (especially in microsoft research), trying to create some advanced selection and image cutout tools (instead of magic wand and magnetic lasso), but none has found its way to the user yet :sad:.

We have lately created out own technique for that :happy: :
http://graphics.cs.msu.su/en/research/Segment/index.html

and implemented it in a Adobe Photoshop selection plugin (freeware), that can be downloaded right here:
http://vision.graphicon.ru/soft/en/GrowCut/

What we are very interested in - is the feedback from Photoshop professionals and amateurs. Is the plugin in any way useful? What is good, what is bad, what should be improved?

Our plan is to develop it further, but not based on some pure scientific interest, but on the needs of the Photoshop users. So we would be grateful for any feedback on it :happy:

I was reading about segmentation some time ago. Might even have been your paper.

Kudos, and wow!

Took a bit of getting used to, but I'm seriously liking it.

Two little things so far:
- seperate brush size for Eraser
- space bar to pan around

It's great for continuous selections, but I can't make it work well for discontinuous like hair with the background showing through. It made a mess of the first example. Is there a technique I'm missing?

Selections are not completely objective so the ai cannot be expected to succeed 100%. I tried GrowCut on a subjective selection, i.e. selecting a nose. It was actually a hindrance for that because there's no way to give it appropriate instructions in that situation. The image on the left is my unassisted selection; the other one is with GrowCut.

I wish the plugin followed the Photoshop keyboard conventions (ctrl-a, ctrl-d,[, etc.) and that the size of the working image were more than a little window.

In spite of all that, I can see how this will help make some selections a lot easier.

Pierre

Panpan, maybe an analogy will help you know when GrowCut is good and when it is not so good.

Imagine an image as a petri dish. Now imagine putting 2 different kinds of bacteria in the petri dish, one red and one blue. Then the two are allowed to grow in the image petri dish using the image petri as rules for where and how they grow. After growing using the image dish, the blue bacteria will be transparent and the red bacteria will be opaque.

I hope that makes sense.

Moroz, GrowCut doesn't seem to like edge boundaries. Don't know if this can be fixed or not.

I also ran into a problem with a 'hole'. It was kind of like a winged-edge hole if you are familiar with that technology. Had to get crazy with the Boundary brush to fill it in.

Really glad to see that people here (at least two of them) find is useful :happy:

I'm a little busy right now, I'll answer questions/comments later. The second author of this plugin should join the forum shortly, he will also participate in discussion.

Moroz, GrowCut doesn't seem to like edge boundaries. Don't know if this can be fixed or not.


What is "doesn't like"? :confused: My english fails me here.


I also ran into a problem with a 'hole'. It was kind of like a winged-edge hole if you are familiar with that technology. Had to get crazy with the Boundary brush to fill it in.

Can you show an example image where you encountered the problem?

I can't seem to reproduce the 'hole' that I had earlier.

However, I did manage to break GrowCut. Doesn't seem to like breaks in the red line.

1. Image with good line for cutting
2. Blue line along one side to make transparent
3. Red line along other side to make opaque
4. Eraser to erase a tiny bit of red to break the red line
5. Click Next
6. Crash
7. Restart Photoshop

edit:
Sorry. I'll explain the edge boundary thing later.

Still can't get the 'hole'. If I can get it again, I'll be paying better attention and post details.

Edge boundary thing.

There is a default blue boundary when I get started with painting blue and red. I can try to paint the edge red, but my mouse gets very laggy if the center of the brush leaves the preview boundary. Then the mouse will behave as if I have the button down and I have to click out it. Particularly annoying with scroll bars. Probably something to do with event trapping or something. I don't know.

Okay. Now, even if I do manage to paint red at the boundaries, I still end up with a 1px edge border that is transparent even though I painted it red.

I'm having a blast with GrowCut.

That's about it from me for now.

Hi everyone, i am the second creator of GrowCut. I am also here for receiving some feedback from the users.

There is a default blue boundary when I get started with painting blue and red. I can try to paint the edge red, but my mouse gets very laggy if the center of the brush leaves the preview boundary. Then the mouse will behave as if I have the button down and I have to click out it. Particularly annoying with scroll bars. Probably something to do with event trapping or something. I don't know.
Does mouse behave as if the button is still down only when you release the button over scrolls or even somewhere else? (i managed to reproduce it only when releasing it over the scrolls - and this bug will be fixed)

Okay. Now, even if I do manage to paint red at the boundaries, I still end up with a 1px edge border that is transparent even though I painted it red.
I think we'll get rid of that 1px edge transparent border soon. And to remove the default border you must select a rectangle in the first dialog around the image (when the image is zoomed, so it is less, than the whole preview window, you can click the mouse button inside the preview window, but to the left and above the image, and to release it to the right and below the image). It is not very intuitively, so we would like to hear your proposals about this.

However, I did manage to break GrowCut. Doesn't seem to like breaks in the red line.
Unfortunately, I didn't manage to reproduce this crash. Could you try it again and to write more details about it?

Two little things so far:
- seperate brush size for Eraser
- space bar to pan around
Seperate brush size - ok.
And what is "pan around"?

And finally,
I'm having a blast with GrowCut
What does it mean? (i don't know this expression) Does it mean, that you like it or quite the opposite?

welcome to retouchpro, moroz and vadim! and thank you for your plugin.

What is "doesn't like"? 'doesn't' is does not. it is what we call a 'contraction' in english. we put two words together and use them as one.

'like' is have affinity for. 'he doesnt like swimming.' means he has no affinity for swimming.

Moroz, GrowCut doesn't seem to like edge boundaries. so this means growcut works poorly with edge boundaries.

I'm having a blast with GrowCut. means 'i'm having a lot of fun with GrowCut.' yes, it is an english expression. slang. 'having a blast' means having a lot of fun.

'pan around' means to move the image around as if you were moving a camera around. 'pan' means to move the view around, like if you were moving a camera around. and 'around' means all over. so, 'pan around' means to move the camera view all over.

does growcut also work with other adobe compatible plugin programs? i use paint shop pro 10. will it work with that and will it work with other programs besides photoshop?

Craig

I would love to try it out guys. Is it Mac compatible?

Chris

it does not work in paint shop pro 10. it is an .8bs extension and paint shop pro wants an .8bf for plugins. it would not load in. i even tried changing the extension to .8bf and it did not work.

Craig

Hi Moroz and Vadim.
Welcome to Retouchpro and Thank you for your plug-in.


I could not wait to try this so I installed is at work this afternoon (Win ME and PS5 – yes Five)
The setup program installed into a PS7 Folder by default but once I had moved it to my PS5 folder it worked fine.

I did have the same problem as Stroker the first couple of times I used it where the right mouse button seemed to be locked down. But after trying it on a couple of pictures it seemed to go right and then I could not even repeat it. So I’ll put that down to user error.

I am now on my other PC (XP PS7). The setup program worked fine.


Here are a few suggestions.

Step 1.

Once the selection is made there is no way to adjust it. Maybe a grab tool or selection handles to adjust.

Step 2.
An Eraser rather than a clear button would be good.

Step 3.
The refine Button only seems to work once. Also it needs an Undo so that you could try it with and without smoothing. (Or maybe a slider would be good)

The black squares make it difficult to see the selection on dark areas. So maybe a choice of colours for the mask. Or maybe an Invert button so that we could invert the selection to see what is selected.


The Combine Selections is Great. I didn’t expect it to work like that when I already had a selection. Great Idea.

One last thing.
I would make the instructions smaller (or get rid of them altogether). You don’t need instructions after using it once or twice and then we could have a bigger area to see the image.

This is a Great piece of software. Far better that the extract tool. And I’m sure I will use it as it is. Even if you don’t add the features above.


I used it to extract the car here. (In my second Post)

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11813


Ken

this means growcut works poorly with edge boundaries.

Well, my English is not THAT bad (at least I hope so :)) What I meant - is some more details on the edge problem. We just didn't notice any problem with that during our tests.

means 'i'm having a lot of fun with GrowCut.' yes, it is an english expression. slang. 'having a blast' means having a lot of fun.

That's some good news :)

'pan around' means to move the image around as if you were moving a camera around. 'pan' means to move the view around, like if you were moving a camera around. and 'around' means all over. so, 'pan around' means to move the camera view all over.

Like Photoshop 'hand' tool, I suppose?

does growcut also work with other adobe compatible plugin programs? i use paint shop pro 10. will it work with that and will it work with other programs besides photoshop?

It should work Ok on any program that support Photoshop selection plugins. I'm not quite sure whether Paint Shop Pro does. It surely does support filtering plugins (.8bf), but what about selection (.8bs)? I don't know, I'll try to check...

I would love to try it out guys. Is it Mac compatible?
Chris
Unfortunately - no. We don't have any Macs available and are not familiar with Mac programming also.

Hi Moroz and Vadim.
Welcome to Retouchpro and Thank you for your plug-in.

....
Ken
Thanks a lot for positive feedback and valuable comments! I think that we will gather the feature requests and bugs found and release next verison within next week.

If you think of some more suggestions/requests - don't hesitate to share them :)

your english is quite good. if my russian were that good, i'd probably work as a translator :)

well, i tried to get this to work in Paint Shop Pro 10 again. i first just put the .8bs in the 'Selections' folder, but that didnt work. i then tried to alter the extension again to what psp uses, which is '.PspSelection', but that didnt work either. so, i guess i'm out of luck :(

Craig

Craig.
While I was at work (with PS5) I noticed that it had installed into PS7 folder. I renamed it to a .8bf file and moved it to my PS5 Plug-In folder and it still worked. May be worth a try?


Moroz and Vadim

I will reserve my Vote for a later version.

One picture that we all have had problems with is this.

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11717


I tried GrowCut and still had problems. Although I realise that by combining selections it may be possible but I wondered if you had any suggestions on a picture like this. I know the quality is bad but these are the sort of pictures that we come across a lot.


Ken

Craig.
Moroz and Vadim

I will reserve my Vote for a later version.

One picture that we all have had problems with is this.

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11717

I tried GrowCut and still had problems. Although I realise that by combining selections it may be possible but I wondered if you had any suggestions on a picture like this. I know the quality is bad but these are the sort of pictures that we come across a lot.
Ken

Thanks for the example. As some people already noticed - we do not treat things like hair or thin leaves (like on this picture) adequately yet... Probably, to solve it we need to add some matting (masking) technique, not only binary (object/background) selection. We'll think it over.

ken,

i tried changing the extension to an .8bf. no go; at least not in Paint Shop Pro 10. i seriously doubt it would work in 9 or 7, but i can try it easily enough. i think this is going to be one of those Photoshop but not Paint Shop Pro things.

Craig

Might be interested in trying it?

Is there a version for Paint Shop Pro?

Steve

Might be interested in trying it?
Is there a version for Paint Shop Pro?
Steve

Paint Shop Pro (as it seems) does not support Photoshop plugins for making selections, cutouts, etc. :( It only works with image filtering plugins. (Am I right? Does anyone know a third-party selection plugin for Paint Shop Pro?)

If people are really interested in trying our plugin in Paint Shop Pro - we can consider make a workaround like this - make a filtering plugin that creates a mask from the image (i.e. - object is white, background is black) and then you can make a selection from this mask image by built in Paint Shop Pro features.

Excellent plugin, so far. Do you have plans to add 16 bit support and feathered (soft) selections? The first one could be a critical improvement because, so far, I haven't seen a single selection/masking plug-in (for the Windows platform, I mean; I know of FluidMask, but so far it's only available for Mac) that does, not even Photoshop's integrated Extract tool, so you could easily get an edge there over the competition :wink:

Also, I have a question. Photoshop's Extract tool works by completely filling the foreground area, whereas Corel Knockout 2 and other third-party plugins expect you to cover both the foreground and background areas entirely. I see that GrowCut can manage quite well with just a few loose brush strokes for each, but wouldn't it benefit if the user (perhaps wanting the best possible result) painted both areas completely? If so, maybe a Fill tool would be a useful addition to your plugin.

Thanks, and keep up the good work.

I installed in CS plugin folder and it doesn't show up in Filters. Any suggestions?

dead moroz,

i'd certainly be interested in a plugin for Paint Shop Pro. i've used psp ver. 4.12, 7, 7.02, 9, and 10 and i've never found a plugin that does selections. it wasnt until version 8 or 9 that psp even had a 'selections' folder and i'm not even real sure what's in there. psp uses an extension in there of '.PspSelection' for the few files that are in that folder, but i'm not sure what they do.

Paint Shop Pro has gotten better with selections. the 'edit selection' function allows one to make a mask and turn it into a selection or to turn a selection into a mask, edit the mask and then turn it back into a selection, and this is a nice feature, but the tools for making automatic selections are still pretty weak. in a complex image where the background isnt that much different from the foreground and especially if the colors from one have bled over into the other, psp just doesnt do the job without going to 'edit selection'. thus, i can mask anything and turn it into a selection, but this is often a LOT of very fine hand work. anything you could do to help speed this up would be appreciated.

here's an example from another forum on retouchpro of an image that Paint Shop Pro does NOT do well when working with something like the magic wand:

Craig

edit: the person who posted that picture wanted to remove everything but the palm trees.

I installed in CS plugin folder and it doesn't show up in Filters. Any suggestions?

It's a selection plugin, and therefore appears under that menu: "Select" > "GML" > "GrowCut..."

dead moroz,

i'd certainly be interested in a plugin for Paint Shop Pro.
...
anything you could do to help speed this up would be appreciated.

I see... So Paint Shop Pro users might benefit much more, than Photoshop. Got it.

here's an example from another forum on retouchpro of an image that Paint Shop Pro does NOT do well when working with something like the magic wand:

Craig

edit: the person who posted that picture wanted to remove everything but the palm trees.

Yes, I've seen that picture, thanks - see post #20 in current thread. We still dont't have remedy for thin leaves like this. Need to think and research further :glasses:

cspringer I installed in CS plugin folder and it doesn't show up in Filters. Any suggestions?

It's a selection plugin, and therefore appears under that menu: "Select" "GML" "GrowCut..."

cspringer If you are still having problems as I did see my attachment. for some reason I have a PhotoShop7 folder although I have PhotoShop.CS ..
In any event GML installed in PS7's plugin folder.. simply copy (or drag) it to the CS plugin folder and all is well... :)

I haven't had a chance to test it yet as I was experiencing your problem and had returned here hoping for an answer... instead I found your querry! Telling me I wasn't alone... hope this helps...

this might be an issue you developers might want to look into.
RonDon

Sorry I've taken so long getting back to this.

I have been trying to reproduce the 'hole' and the crashes that I experienced. No luck. I think what happened is that I pushed my computer a little too hard and the internals were getting funky. Looks like a reboot solved the 'hole' and the crashes.

If either of those happens again, I'll be sure to post.

The plugin crashed on me once, but I have not been able to reproduce the problem. It worked again after I restarted Photoshop.

Pierre

sounds a lot like a registry crash, where you havent rebooted yet to make a new reg entry take effect.

Craig

Excellent plugin, so far. Do you have plans to add 16 bit support and feathered (soft) selections? The first one could be a critical improvement because, so far, I haven't seen a single selection/masking plug-in (for the Windows platform, I mean; I know of FluidMask, but so far it's only available for Mac) that does, not even Photoshop's integrated Extract tool, so you could easily get an edge there over the competition :wink:
You can apply feather after you have made selection by GrowCut, so we did not want to double the Photoshop functionality. Regarding soft selections (like Extract does) - this is a topic for future work...
[FONT=Georgia]
Also, I have a question. Photoshop's Extract tool works by completely filling the foreground area, whereas Corel Knockout 2 and other third-party plugins expect you to cover both the foreground and background areas entirely. I see that GrowCut can manage quite well with just a few loose brush strokes for each, but wouldn't it benefit if the user (perhaps wanting the best possible result) painted both areas completely? If so, maybe a Fill tool would be a useful addition to your plugin.

We are thinking about a variant of plugin with interface like Extract has (but with better quality :) ) - user loosely paints the boundary and fills the object, and we calculate the borders.

dead moroz,

are you familiar with these guys and this product: http://www.vertustech.com/ ??

Craig

dead moroz,

are you familiar with these guys and this product: http://www.vertustech.com/ ??

Craig
Yes, I am. I've seen their demos (Windows version is not yet available.)

Some demos make me think, that for certain instruments like used in http://www.vertustech.com/downloads/tutorials/hair_pop.htm they used technology very similar to ours...

I wonder whether they read our paper.

And what do you think about it?

well, i've only seen the demo too and we all know that demos put their best foot forward to show off their product at its best, but it does look impressive. seems pretty pricey for just a selection tool. however, i see a lot of folks struggling with selections and selection tools and i do also, so if it works as well as they say and show, then it might be worth it to a pro. but it's definitely outside the normal price range for hobbyists and amateurs. i'm definitely looking forward to trying a pc demo of it.

which reminds me, anything new on your product and getting it to work for us Paint Shop Pro users?

Craig

which reminds me, anything new on your product and getting it to work for us Paint Shop Pro users?
Craig

We're working on it...

hehe, ok, i'll leave you alone and let you work :)

Craig

New version is ready, it includes a plugin for Paint Shop Pro also! I think I'll start another thread on this topic.