Lately there's a lot of work on skin going on, i would love to see everyones effort on an image that requires a lot of masking work, something high-end, like a shot of a female model with plenty of flowing/fly-away hair, etc. Where she needs to be totally silo'd from her background, and placed onto another flawlessly.

I have the perfect image for this, but can't get the photog's permission...does anyone here have any images they would like to provide for learning purposes?

I would love to see everyone's techniques and input, there are a lot of talented ppl on here...i think anyone who is interested in high-end beauty retouching would greatly benefit this "challenge"

-any takers?

Heres an example of mine.

http://www.pellepiano.com/studiobild/images/imageb14.jpg

I find the extract tool can give a pretty good start and the Russell Brown Layer Mask method is good but quite timeconsuming.
I shoot against a bluescreen.

extract is great when you have the contrast to work with, i would love to see how people manipulate channels to get their refined mask,,,what techniques are out there. what people are doing to separate those flyaways from a background with no contrast.

i have the masking book by katrin eisman, which is really good.

extract is great when you have the contrast to work with, i would love to see how people manipulate channels to get their refined mask,,,what techniques are out there. what people are doing to separate those flyaways from a background with no contrast.

i have the masking book by katrin eisman, which is really good.

NO contrast? Well there's got to be some contrast. Here's a pathalogical one to torture yourself with:

http://www.pbase.com/zumbari/image/68082707/original.jpg

Bart

Well sure not my best ... bart that is a tough one. I think if I spent a little more time on the puppy's back edge it would not come out too bad... just more work than i want to do now... But if i was of a mind all it would take was a little work on the mask and some blurring.

To get where I am...

Duplicated the background

I used the pen to make a outline . Then converted the outline to a alfa channel. Then used that channel along with the extraction tool.

Made a selection mask of the extracted dog. and attached it to the duplicate layer... then erased the extracted layer.

Inserted my picture in the middle.

Butch

Excellent job Butch. I didn't post my extracted version because it's a lot harder to explain than it is to do.

I usually start with the extract tool, then plan B is the background eraser. In this case I didn't think extract would work, so I skipped to the BGE which handled about 70%. 20% was image-based masking, 10% was manually erasing with a stipple brush (the part of the dog that has no contrast at all).

First attachment shows the beginnings of BGE work. After using the BGE, I do the rest of the extraction using other methods and I'll focus on a section extracted using image-based masking (more or less what Russell Brown describes in his video tutorial.)

In the places where the BGE doesn't work well, this image has some contrast information in all color channels,not just one, so I use the info from all three. The second attachment shows how that works.
1. Original
2. Sample the hair color near the edge of the hair, but where the hair completely blocks the background. Floodfill a new layer with this color and set blend mode to difference--now the edge hair is black, and everything else is some other color.
3. Add channel mixer--set the coefficients to 50,50,50 Could have done 100,100,100--the import thing is they are equal because I'm using information from all three channels equally. Choose monochrome to convert the color difference into a greyscale image.
4. Add a levels control to accenuate the contrast
5. Use a brush to clean the areas away from the edge of the hair. Good idea to make a marquee selection in case you accidentally slip while brushing.

That's my 2-minute tutorial on converting information from all channels into a single mask.

There's more finish-up work I'll describe later--gotta go right now. As a preview, the final attachment is my final result.

Bart

this is all mask, back and forth, black and white. i added the neutral gray to really show the work. masks are great because you never have to alter the work itself, just the mask.

craig

This is mine, made from the red channel.

Got it something like, then adjusted the mask using levels. Final tweaking done with a low opacity black/white brush.

My masking didn't turn out great, so I used hair brushes to fix it up.

I have a question: What if you need to extract a grey object from grey background? :(

I had to do this type of work a while ago and ended up creating custom clipping paths, which took forever to draw and adjust!

Attached is an example:

In this case there was quite good contrast, and the extract tool did a passable job, needed a little hand touching with eraser and history brush, but whole job only took about 5 mins.

Of course if getting in really close, a clipping path will be the route of choice because of the crisper edge definition.

Well I didn't challenge you guys at all--nice work one and all. Okay, I'll have to dig up something more difficult. :grin:

Bart

Got it something like, then adjusted the mask using levels. now that's an interesting idea, gary. i sometimes blur the masks but hadnt thought that much about using adjustment layers on them. good tip!

bart,

we've had some wild challenges like this in the past. it's one of those areas that i wish Paint Shop Pro did a better job of. i did notice when i was working on this image that psp xi has changed some things in the magic wand, so going to have to study that a bit more. it's always struck me a bit odd that the human eye can discern the differences necessary but that the graphic editors cant seem to very well. ah well, gives the coders something to work on, i suppose :)

craig

we've had some wild challenges like this in the past. it's one of those areas that i wish Paint Shop Pro did a better job of. i did notice when i was working on this image that psp xi has changed some things in the magic wand, so going to have to study that a bit more. it's always struck me a bit odd that the human eye can discern the differences necessary but that the graphic editors cant seem to very well. ah well, gives the coders something to work on, i suppose :)

craig

Hi Craig,

Two reasons for this. 1) you (your brain) interpolates to find patterns where none exist, 2) not only can you see the boundary between color changes, but you can also see the boundary between texture changes.

In both of these cases, I just get a stipple brush and create the boundary I think I see in my mind's eye.

Photoshop is very productive for multistep extractions like this--the UI seems really geared for effortless manipulation of masks and selections and conversions between paths/selections/masks.

As for PSPXI, I was put off by the fact that the levels adjust tool has had the output slider removed--something I use quite a lot.

Bart

bart,

yes, and the mind plays tricks at times :) but yes. i think it also may be a flaw in the entire digital system, at least the rgb system. this is something i've been studying recently and havent fully grasped yet. it's somewhat an inherited system from a time when computers were much more limited. it's probably also why LAB came about; someone else felt the same way, apparently. it's a bit limited that we divide the entire light spectrum into only rgb; why not rgbcmyk...or even more? i'll work on it :)

as for the levels tool, i noticed but wasnt concerned. i actually use levels a lot less than most here. and they did add white/black/gray points to it. i suppose that was their solution to the output part. but yes, in general, i hate when they take away a favorite function. you could always put it back, you know. there is that customization feature in Paint Shop Pro. i've added back quite a few things.

craig

bart,

yes, and the mind plays tricks at times :) but yes. i think it also may be a flaw in the entire digital system, at least the rgb system. this is something i've been studying recently and havent fully grasped yet. it's somewhat an inherited system from a time when computers were much more limited. it's probably also why LAB came about; someone else felt the same way, apparently. it's a bit limited that we divide the entire light spectrum into only rgb; why not rgbcmyk...or even more? i'll work on it :)



The interpolation or extrapolation I'm talking about arises from our knowledge of how something should look--this is knowledge the computer doesn't have. So it's really psychological. Color space won't help here. What you'd need is for photoshop to be able to look at a photo and actually recognize things--there's a rock, there's a person, there's an eye, there's some hair, etc..

I think a better form of image compression would actually be helpful--jpeg tends to make a blocky mess of color. Jpeg2000 is a lot nicer in this regard. Don't know how long it'll be before the world starts using that instead of jpeg.


as for the levels tool, i noticed but wasnt concerned. i actually use levels a lot less than most here. and they did add white/black/gray points to it. i suppose that was their solution to the output part. but yes, in general, i hate when they take away a favorite function. you could always put it back, you know. there is that customization feature in Paint Shop Pro. i've added back quite a few things.

craig

The white/black/grey points is useful, but Paint Shop Pro already had that capability in a separate tool (with similar name.) In fact the white/black/grey points tool in the adjustment layers is a limited version of the older tool.

That output slider on the levels adjust is totally gone--can't be added back. I actually submitted it as a bug to Corel because there's a blank area in the dialog box where it looks like the slider should go. At least they added a histogram to the levels and curves.

The other handy feature that was dropped was you can no longer use the eyedropper to place points on the curve in the curves tool.

Bart

I have a question: What if you need to extract a grey object from grey background? :(

I had to do this type of work a while ago and ended up creating custom clipping paths, which took forever to draw and adjust!

Attached is an example:

I this case magnetic lasso and then polygonal lasso do a fairly good job, 5 min tops.

Used red channel, levels to increase contrast, brushes, another level correction, convert to selection, copied to a separate layer, eraser.

Extract the dead tree in the foreground. I'll post my result later after I get home and have a chance to work on it. This one would mainly be a combination of BGE and polygonal lasso for me--no shortcuts I can think of. Tell us your clever shortcuts! Maybe the saturation channel might have some info since the dead tree is pretty much colorless whereas the background has color.

http://www.pbase.com/zumbari/image/68264151/original.jpg

Bart

Man Bart... what a pain!!!

Well... I started with a red channel copy...levels... then I kept both the red copy and the RGB on screen... then just painted with black and white where needed... slowwww

Maybe some one has a better way.

Butch

Yet another good one Butch.

Well finally got a free moment. Here's mine. About 90% background eraser with magnetic/polygonal lasso in places where the shady parts of the snag were identical in color to the background.

Unlike masking, the BGE tries to decontaminate BG colors that have mixed with the fringes of the foreground. However, it's not perfect in textured situations like this, plus I had some low opacity background leftovers. To avoid manual erasing as much as possible, I create an inverted mask from the extraction (ctrl-click the snag thumbnail, add layer mask to copy of new background, ctrl-i to invert the mask). Sometimes I set the blend mode to screen, but in this case normal was fine.

I attached the layer palette to illustrate.

I also did a second mini-extraction on the new background so the snag appears to emerge from behind the trees--that's just one more layer. I left it out of the layer palette I attached for simplicity.

Bart

Another BGE user here. Tried all sorts of different approaches, but none gave as good a result. Found myself having to do quite a lot of touch ups with the history brush, and lots of on the fly tolerance adjustments with BGE.

Not totally happy with result, if this was anything but an exercise I think I'd have to play with it some more.

hehehe, you are definitely a sadist, bart ;)

just one thing here on the examples posted from all, i'd like to see these on a solid, neutral background, so we can really see how good these are. i know one technique mentioned here on RetouchPRO for doing these recommended finding a background where your extraction 'flaws' would not show as much. but here, for this exercise, i'd like to see them on solid backgrounds.

craig

Wish you'd asked that before I'd flattened image for posting Craig. ;)

I've only got a small hard drive (he says hanging his head in shame), so I don't keep the layered files for exercises like this. (Mostly I don't keep the files after posting either).

I've only got a small hard drive (he says hanging his head in shame).

I keep getting spam Emails about this sort of thing, I try to ignore them and get on with life :lmao: :lmao: :lmao:

Hi craig

Never flaws... just selection choices.... :tongue:

Butch

For those who prefer a plug-in approach for the sake of speed, Digital Film Tools just released EZMask (http://www.plugsnpixels.com/ezmask.html) this week. The example with the girl on the page is the very first time I tried it, and it only took a little practice to achieve the results shown.

For those who prefer a plug-in approach for the sake of speed, Digital Film Tools just released EZMask (http://www.plugsnpixels.com/ezmask.html) this week. The example with the girl on the page is the very first time I tried it, and it only took a little practice to achieve the results shown.

That particular example is pretty easy for either extract or BGE. I takes about 30 seconds with the extract filter in CS2 which (along with the BGE)--just use a fat brush and default settings. Extract has all the same defringing/decontamination technology although Adobe seems to go out of their way to not mention this fact (it's mentioned briefly in the manual buried in the text.) I'll give EZMask a try on some more difficult ones and see how it compares.

There's another one similar to EZMask (don't know if it's better) for less $ here:
http://www.imageskill.com/backgroundremover/backgroundremover.html

The imageskill tool works pretty well although I'd say it's only roughly similar in performance to the photoshop extract tool.

Bart

hehehe, you are definitely a sadist, bart ;)

just one thing here on the examples posted from all, i'd like to see these on a solid, neutral background, so we can really see how good these are. i know one technique mentioned here on RetouchPRO for doing these recommended finding a background where your extraction 'flaws' would not show as much. but here, for this exercise, i'd like to see them on solid backgrounds.

craig

The masked screening and/or multiplying (I only did screening as shown in my first post) I do takes care of any leftover old colors so the new BG color is automatically mixed into the fringes or semi-transparent portions of the extracted object.

In practice, I hardly ever have to be this careful because the new background is generally more forgiving than a pure color.

Bart

Bart, I've also got Background Remover on hand to add to the site--I need to get to that. As a Mac user I'm a bit slower firing up the Windows plug-ins, but I do run Windows on a MacBook, so...

ok, there we go. thanks guys.

let me see if i can dig up some past nightmares and see what you can do with these.

craig

ok, here's one that was posted in the art forums. i think it from Palms.

this is one where the extraction isnt all about 'around the edges' but also needs to be handled on the internal parts. if you truly want to extract JUST the mimosa here and no background, i find these pretty difficult and i'd love to see how others handle it.

craig

edit: ok, i looked this one up. it was originally posted by janet petty. thanks, janet :)

I used pretty much the same technique--background eraser plus history brush whenever I screwed up. Lots of changing the BGE settings interactively. I really did this quick-n-sloppy--my sloppines is visible. For a quality result, you really need as large as possible and very low-compression original. The jpeg block artifacts show up real fast when you start erasing.

Paint Shop Pro background eraser is very similar to the Photoshop BGE (in fact it's got a couple extra bells and whistles on it.)

(who's the sadist now? ;))

Bart

that's pretty good, bart. the bge is one of those that i definitely have not mastered. you seem to get pretty good results with it. i'll have to take a look at this thread again tomorrow.

craig

Hi all

Just had some time to work... I used the same as before... channeling.. then overly white and black with both the red copy and RGB active.

Butch

This was my second try on this image with the new EZMask. I literally did this with one hand, while eating a sandwich with the other! I drew green lines over parts of the plants, red over the background (top and bottom areas) and blue over the tips of the plant.

I finished my sandwich in time to type this ;-).

If your browser supports tabs, you can open each of our same-size examples and flip among them. I'd say my quickie is in the middle, quality-wise, of those posted. Further work may improve the results, I'm sure.

Photoshop: I don't represent EZMask--it just seems to be one of the easiest and best masking tools I've tried so far, and I have a bunch of them (see under Selection/Masking here (http://www.plugsnpixels.com/imageeffects.html)). I do still have to try Background Remover and report back.

Bart, I've also got Background Remover on hand to add to the site--I need to get to that. As a Mac user I'm a bit slower firing up the Windows plug-ins, but I do run Windows on a MacBook, so...

So I spent about an hour practicing with EZMask and exploring every adjustment and following the tutorial last night on extracting the dead tree, and I don't think that tool is really cut out for that sort of thing. After getting the best I could, I then spent about 15 minutes with the extract filter in photoshop. Neither is as good as 30-40 minutes spent with the background eraser. The Photoshop tool has an advantage in that it can import an alpha channel as a starting point so you have the full power of photoshop available to generate a rough outline of the tree. If the BR could do that, it probably would've helped.

Next I tried the pomeranian. Each tool did differently, but I'd say they were about equal over all. Only spent about 5 minutes on the extract filter and maybe 10 minutes with the EZmask (EZmask requires a little bit more manual painting than extract on these difficult ones). You don't want to split hairs (hee hee) when two results are close like this because the difference could be due to my lack of skill with it--that's why I just call it a tie even though the extract filter is a bit more to my liking in this case.

Imageskill's background remover pretty much bombed on both of these. I also have the trial version of vertus liquid mask and it just looks like a heck of a lot of work for both extractions (the dead tree is just rediculous)--I'm sure the background eraser is less work than liquid mask.

I'm attaching results from DFT's EZmask and Adobe's extract. I must say EZmask is the best challenge for the extract filter I've seen yet. You can tell the EZmask examples because the demo silkscreen covers the result. The EZmask result is a bit blurry--I think this is due to the demo version and the full version would not look like that.

I bet if I was a professional doing tons of fairly easy extractions every day, I'd probably find more benefit in these "magic" tools because they work lickety split on simpler extractions (eg., 1 minute lower skill work versus 2 minutes higher skilled work) which would add up to a real time savings after a few hundred.

Edit: I was using EZMask in the comparison here--don't know why I was thinking background remover.

Bart

this is good, guys. interesting results and interesting reading.

bart, i tried the Paint Shop Pro bge again last night and today. basically, i still suck at it. you keep touting it and i keep looking at the thing and going, 'yeah, right'. :) but, i'm also fairly sure it 'must be the operator' from how you've promoted it.

so, what's the trick? got a good tut stashed somewhere? it seems slow and clumsy and sloppy to me so far but when i look at your results....

craig

If your browser supports tabs, you can open each of our same-size examples and flip among them. I'd say my quickie is in the middle, quality-wise, of those posted. Further work may improve the results, I'm sure.


I agree that looks pretty good although there's some of the white background still left and when I tried it (EZmask) I couldn't get it as good as yours--in particular, the white background in the upper left wasn't removed at all whereas it's all gone in yours (I experimented with different markings and sensitivity settings.) Also, while mine looked good on black, it looked over-erased on white.

Definitely better than the photoshop extract in this case.

Bart

that's pretty good, bart. the bge is one of those that i definitely have not mastered. you seem to get pretty good results with it. i'll have to take a look at this thread again tomorrow.

craig

I tried it in Paint Shop Pro and it works just as well as in Photoshop (Photoshop Elements also has the BGE.) I'm attaching about 10 minutes work. I think the main parameters are keep sharpness low, sampling = "once", limits = "discontiguous", auto tolerance. The center of the BGE brush samples the background and the perimeter of the brush samples the foreground.

So you go near the perimeter of the flower and click with a fat brush so that the center of the brush is over background and the flower intersects the edge of the brush somewhere. Paint Shop Pro analyzes the color differential and automatically sets tolerance. Now you can drag back and forth over a pretty large area and remove a bunch of background--even the stuff inside the flower. Pick a new place where the BG didn't get erased and do it again.

Maybe I should do a background eraser tutorial for this months contest.

Here's a tutorial on the Paint Shop Pro BGE that might help you:
http://campratty.com/4tooltours/kz/bge1.html

Bart

Hi Bart

I get pretty good results the way I do it but it is a slow procedure. I'd like to give BGE a try.

You said you could use alpha channels. How do you use them? I can't get them to work with BGE.

If you are using the color to sample I guess you are working on a RGB layer and not a channel.... How and when do you combine them?

How does it work when you have a multicolored background?.. do you need to keep resampling at each color transition?

Butch

Hi Bart

I get pretty good results the way I do it but it is a slow procedure. I'd like to give BGE a try.

You said you could use alpha channels. How do you use them? I can't get them to work with BGE.

If you are using the color to sample I guess you are working on a RGB layer and not a channel.... How and when do you combine them?

How does it work when you have a multicolored background?.. do you need to keep resampling at each color transition?

Butch

Hi Butch,

You can import an alpha channel into the extract filter which is a separate tool.

The BGE samples from the color channels and then selectively erases them (ie., alters the alpha channel). The BGE also changes the color values to de-mix background color from foreground color in semi-transparent fringe areas.

If the background is multicolored, then you would have to keep resampling in which case setting the BGE to continuous sampling might be better. In the Mimosa example, the background is multicolored, but there are only a few different colors and since I need to erase deep within the object and the BG colors are varying even inside the flower, I don't use continuous sampling.

Bart

Wow, learn something new every day, have never used the Background Eraser

bart,

ok, i tried again last night, before reading your post with the tut link. i worked it and changed settings and by the time i was getting somewhat decent results, i was actually fairly close to what you posted about what settings to use. so, when i read that post today, i tried again with your settings and get even better results.

however, it's still too rough to post my results :) but, it is better and i believe now i can see the potential. i couldnt even see that before. so, this was definitely a case of 'operator error' in my long ago attempts at using this tool.

i havent a lot of time right now to refine the technique, but at least i'll know where to pick up later on when i do need to get it better. so, thanks! and thanks for the tut link. looks comprehensive.

craig

:bandit: Keywords: extracting, extraction, hair, animal :normal:
Hi!!

I read this thread and I found it very interesting!! Mask are a great to compositing.

I had seem a thread on how to remove a hairy object. This is the link:

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/rp-tutorials/2236-looking-good-tutorial-extraction.html?highlight=extracting

I had also worked on an image with this kind of hair problem to which Gary, a very nice and helpful guy, gave me some information on how to do it without being time-conscious! Thanx again Gary! :classic:

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/image-help/14639-bird-needs-hair.html?highlight=extract+hair




I recently was looking at an image that is a challenge for me as I am starting to experiment with the channels. I have used the RGB channels but I have not played with the LAB or any of the others.

I would work on it when I have time but in the mean time I am posting it in case someone wants to start breaking the challenge. I had noticed that as I look for the right channel some parts of the objects are either toooo light or toooo dark or even transparent. Let me know what you think. Again, I am not expert on the channel extraction but I would like to hear what you guys think.

The image has poor quality and resolution but I was not intented for work.

Take care

Donamai, if you come up with a higher-res version of that image, I'll give it a go. No point working off a pic with all those artifacts and blown-out areas--we need to give the masking apps the most data possible to work with.

Followed the method I've used in the previous examples: namely, background eraser with tolerance around 30%, in combination with masked multiply and screen layers (a la three mask method.) About 10 minutes--the low jpeg quality is a hindrance to getting good quality so I didn't spend any time cleaning some leftover ceiling texture.

Bart

i dont know much about channel extracting. i always use rgb.

i had to give your glass sculpture a try. this was a good image to practice on with the bge. i'm getting a bit better with it. i did find i had to follow up the bge with a normal erase and then a bit of push here and there. i'm still trying to refine my settings. currently, i seem to leave a lot of small dots behind and have to follow up with some cleanup. so, this was not a short job.

cool sculpture!

Hi

Sorry I had no better resolution image than that. My friend took a shot of it and used the smallest setting for his camera.
That is the only shot I had. I found it interesting because there were different colors in it and the outlines were different. I really like that picture of the sculpture but I can't fix the resolution it is bad.

Sorry about the resolution PLUGSNPIXELS but I went online and found some images you might have a go at.

Great job Bart and Kraellin.. nice job!!

Craig, spectacular job!

Just want to point out that mid-grey is, in general, the least demanding plain color--especially in this case where the original BG is grey. To really stress an extraction, pick a BG color as different from the original as possible for the acid test (black and white are good as are fully saturated primaries.)

Bart

I stand corrected! Excellent work, my friends!

So I gave it a try. Here is what EZMask did with less than a minute of effort on my part. Not as good as the others'--I did not do any touch up to the results nor did I try it a second time (doing other work)--but not as bad as I had feared.

I didn't pick this up in the discussion: what do you mean by BGE?

While you are discussing mask programs, I recently came across "Fluid Mask". The cost is quite high...has anyone tried this one?

Thanks for this thread...very interesting.

I didn't pick this up in the discussion: what do you mean by BGE?

While you are discussing mask programs, I recently came across "Fluid Mask". The cost is quite high...has anyone tried this one?

Thanks for this thread...very interesting.

BGE = background eraser. It's a brush in both photoshop/photoshop elements and paintshop pro.

I've been trying the trial version of fluidmask, but I've not had good luck. I hate to elaborate more than that because it seems like the most complex and difficult-to-learn of all the tools I've tried and so I might not be using it to its fullest.

Bart

thanks Bart...also please keep us posted on "fluid mask"

thank you, donamai :)

and thank you, bart :)

yes, you're right about the gray background. as soon as i put it on white or black, i found more stuff to correct.

and like bart, i tried the fluid mask demo. it didnt take long to realize this program was going to take a bit to learn to get good at it. the learning curve seems a bit steep. the results they show on their web site and video look spectacular and easy to achieve but the actual process seems to be quite a bit removed from that. i dont know if it's the windows version that is like this only or if the mac is like this too. i think it's going to take more than a 30 day demo to convince me to buy it, though.

Hi

I had some time to work on some of my images... You were right Bart! as you mentioned to Kraellin putting the extraction in different backgrounds gives you a better view of contamination or residual of the original background.

I did not clean it up as much as I should but I could see that some of the dots and lines were still part of the image.

I also worked on the one I found on the internet. It gave me a little more trouble as I found more color hidden and spread out in the image. :wink:

I used the "Select Color Range" the "history brush" and some of the "Extraction Tool" It took some good time to finally get the straight lines, though you can still see the extraction is not that clean. I used the "levels" on the mask but I could not get it to make it smoother as I wanted... well, you guys see for yourselves!

Take care!!

I spent some time with Fluid Mask when it first came out, and also with the new version (see my examples here (http://www.plugsnpixels.com/fluidmask.html)).

The screenshot is of the current version, using my own photo. It works by segmenting your image into sectors based on tonal range/color. You choose the Delete tool and wipe away the sectors you don't want. Then you process the results.

One thing I learned is that a higher edge sensitivity than used in the screenshot seems to improve the results.

The examples on the right of the page were done with the first version, where Fluid Mask operated more like Extensis Mask Pro, and still did quite well (I think my comp of the two flower shots is cool).

I should do a feature on currently available masking tools in an upcoming ezine (http://www.plugsnpixels.com/ezine.html), since this is an important and most practical topic.

How would you say Fluid Mask is for doing wispy hair types of extractions?

Bart

I personally haven't pulled that off (haven't tried much), but on a glamour retouch thread here, someone else did. I did have quick and easy success with EZMask (http://www.plugsnpixels.com/ezmask.html), though.

I should do a feature on currently available masking tools in an upcoming ezine, since this is an important and most practical topic. that would be a most welcome help. extractions are used frequently here on RetouchPRO and i think it's one of those things we all run into and all have difficulty with at times.

I featured several masking products back in issue 4 (http://www.plugsnpixels.com/ezine.html), though these aren't proper tutorials. The upcoming issue (7) deals with making lousy pictures look great with various plug-ins. So in issue 8, by popular request, I'll tackle masking as the issue's main theme.

When you publish your own ezine, you can do what you want when you want! :ditsy:

When you publish your own ezine, you can do what you want when you want! hehe, excellent :)

BTW, I'm a Mac/Photoshop guy, but on my MacBook I can run WinXP and Paint Shop Pro X1 and find it very cool (I notice you use it)! As I write I'm playing with Redfield (http://www.plugsnpixels.com/redfield.html) plug-ins (Windows-only) in Paint Shop Pro.

I masked the hotel on its own layer using Background Remover (Windows-only)--took a few tries to get a clean edge. I ran Redfield's SketchMaster on the original layer, and blended the masked version back into it.

SketchMaster is very cool!

the redfield plugins have always been one of my favorites. thanks for reminding me to put them back on my new machine :)

and i love that mac is now running windows stuff. very cool.

nice hotel rendition. i dont have sketchmaster, but maybe one day.