Selecting Images with MaskPro

MaskPro is a OnOne Software PhotoShop plugin working within this (or some other) photo editor as a kind of filter. Mask Pro allows not only selection of images but creating of selection paths as well. The program can be downloaded at www.ononesoftware.com as a free 30 day trial or bought for $159 (upgrade $69).

Interface

{mosimage align=right popup=1} MaskPro opens up in a separate set of windows through PhotoShop filters menu. All its panels (5 of them al in all) show on your desktop with it as a background so that you can see all your open programs. That can be distracting. Pity they didn’t set the option of minimizing all the windows when opening the plug-in or set a neutral background for it.

The interface itself is rather usual: the image window with the menu bar is in the center, the Tools panel - on the left. The Tools Options and Keep and Drop pallets - on the right.

The image can be seen in 5 different modes (you can see your selection on a transparent background, the cleanup view or the masked image can be seen on the background layer). All these modes can be chosen through the menu or by pressing little icons in the bottom.

On the right of the window, there’s a channel view option as well but you can’t select an image in a separate channel – the program uses the information of all channels all the same.

All the tools are in the Tools panel. The Tools Options for the currently active tool appear in the right top window.

MaskPro has a variety of tools not easy to apprehend at a first glance. Therefore, a good way to start working with the program is to read about the tools first. Even the short manual would be enough for the purpose. Don’t miss the tools description. I did it first and every time had to follow the manual step by step exactly. Miss a step and you cannot find where you are and what to do next. The steps are hard to remember sometimes (especially what you do in what view).

The first group off four tools – those that define keep and drop colors: the Eyedropper chooses the colors going to the Color Palette, the Highlighters define the areas to be kept or dropped. The outlined area can be filled in right away without changing the toll (the fill bucket will appear on pressing Alt key). That’s very convenient but you should read the manual or see the tutorial to know it.

By the way every tool has different modes built into it (not seen in the menu) which appear at the appropriate moment on pressing some key (Magic brush – the Hammer appears when the selection is made, highlighters – Bucket and Eraser show on the pressing of Ctrl and Alt keys).

The next big group of tools deals with extracting the edges. The magic tools (Magic Brush, Magic Pen, Magic Wand) will define it automatically (taking into account the colors you have defined earlier) their analogs will allow selection by hand.
There are of course touch up tools: the Chisel Tool cleans the edges, “shaving off” extras of background, Blur – blurs them.

The Brushes and the Buckets can work in different modes: Eraze, Restore, and Eraze/Restore (for the Magic Brush only).

And you can of course zoom the image and move within it.

Quick Masking with sharp contrasting color images.

When you have a good quality sharp image{mosimage ch=180 align=left} with a distinctive difference between the foreground and background colors you can use the quick masking, or so the manual says.{mosimage ch=180 align=right}

With the tulip picture I had such an image. First I applied the quick masking recipe the manual gives: chose keep and drop colors and double clicked the Magic Brush Tool. The result was not perfect at first but all the problems were easily solved with the better choice of the colors and some quick work with the Brush in both Restore and Erase modes.

{mosimage ch=180 align=right}{mosimage ch=180 align=right}But in this image the edge of the object to be selected is very distinct. This opens up another option: you can use Magic Pen for your selection which I did. In my case it traced the edges perfectly, better than Magic Brush. The minor problems were with narrow spaces between the curly petal edges. Those I deleted with the Magic Brush by choosing the color to be dropped. As you see the result is very good in both cases and you can hardly see any difference. As for the time consumed by the process, it is more or less the same.

Complex Images

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You wouldn’t encounter images similar to the tulip above very often in real life. Most of the time we come across something more complex with blurred edges, cluttered backgrounds, lots of hair strands, and transparent objects. Even within one image there are easier and more complex edges. MaskPro policy is to use the particular tool for the particular edge. {mosimage cw=90 align=right}

Magic Pen & Magic Brush
In the photo of the girl with black hair all the edges are distinct and there’re few colors. The hand, face, shoulder and the black T-shirt all have a clear and smooth line, perfect, in fact, for being traced with the Magic Pen. The time consumed by selection at this stage would be within 5-10 minutes. I performed the selection in sections leaving out hair and earrings for the Magic Brush.

{mosimage ch=150 align=left}To select hair I first chose three Keep colors (the darkest black, the grayish tone of the fringe and the midtone){mosimage ch=150 align=right}and one Drop color (white background).

With these I applied Magic Brush. But it turned out that the fringe on the right needed more attention and had to be dealt with separately: it became too transparent.  So I restored the image with the Brush and created a new Color Set especially for this section of the image. And then I applied Magic Brush again, this time with better results.

{mosimage ch=150 align=left}{mosimage ch=150 align=right}The part that needed correction (with the Brush in Restore mode mostly) was the white and black hair piece on the top. (Now I think, I had to apply regular Pencil to that part as well).
Another Color Set was needed to select the earrings with the Magic Brush (it is the bottom Keep Color Set). And then I used regular Brush to erase the rest of  the background (There’s a Cleanup view mode in MaskPro that is very useful at this stage. It allows to see not only all the gaps but the transparent areas as well).

The resulted image looks very good to me, and on different backgrounds, too.

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{mospagebreak title=Colors and Color Sets}

Working with Colors, Color Sets

{mosimage ch=170 align=left}Color selection is very conveniently organized in MaskPro: you can not only choose a number of colors {mosimage ch=170 align=right}to drop or keep but organize those colors into sets and use each time an appropriate set ignoring the others.
Here’s my daughter’s picture on a domestic background. The main difficulty with this image is the quantity of loose hair and diverse background under it.

As with the previous photo I used magic pen on body, face and clothes parts and left off the most difficult area containing hair for the Magic Brush.{mosimage ch=170 align=left}

As Help says Magic Brush works best with a small number of Keep and Drop Colors. But here the background is diverse and the fair hair takes in some of its color as well. It would require too many colors to keep and drop. That’s where Color Sets help a lot. For each area I created a new Keep or Drop Color Set (or both), turned off the other Color Sets, and then used the Magic Brush.

As you see, with the colors chosen the Magic Brush left off specs of background. When this happens you can add another color (right from the speck) and apply the Magic  Brush again. {mosimage ch=170 align=right}The remains can be wiped out with the Regular brush in Erase mode. It is being done best in Mask or CleanUp views (shows transparent areas in gray).

{mosimage ch=90 align=left}I also used Solid View to better see the results of the extraction and Composite View to check how the image blends with the new background (you have to have this background as a separate layer in the PhotoShop Image to use the option, otherwise the background will remain white).

Transparent Objects

{mosimage ch=100 align=left}{mosimage ch=100 align=right} Main tool for working with transparent objects is again the Magic Brush and Keep and Drop pallets. It should be mentioned though that preserving transparency and selecting an image are two different tasks in MaskPro.

With the medicine bottle on the left I first took off all the background using the Pen (the left side, the bottom and the cover tend to blend with the background and the Magic Pen in these places gives uneven line)  and Magic Pen (on the right side mostly, where the edge is clear).{mosimage ch=100 align=left}{mosimage ch=100 align=right}Now I have to make transparent areas look transparent on a new background.

The technique MaskPro offers here deals with colors and their value. You have to choose 3 to 5 colors in transparent areas to place into the Keep palette first. Then  you double click those colors in the Pallette and in the color grid that opens up shift them to get a color your object you think would have without the old background.

I also used one Drop color for the area that looks completely transparent. One more detail: when changing color values be sure to check the Color Decontamination button. The Magic Brush then takes off extra color value from the image.The CleanUp view here shows transparent areas in the image. As you see the bottom is not yet transparent. I used another Color Set for it.

And the edges were processed with the Blur tool to merge better with the new background.

Selection and Touch Up

{mosimage ch=100 align=left}{mosimage ch=100 align=right}The Magic Pen and the Magic Brush are main selecting tools. Magic Wand can also be used as such but rarely for it needs specific images. Regular Pen is good when neither Magic Pen or Magic Brush do the job and the edge is visible enough or can be guessed at least.

Touch up tools finish the image selection by taking off minor deficiencies.
Chisel Tool goes well together with the Magic Pen. It is designed to shave off the remains of the background from the edge as on the left picture where there is a dark halo along the edge of the girl’s arm.
Blur tool is good for the Magic or regular Pen edge that tends to be too sharp and look artificial on a different background.

Regular Brush is also often used to improve the selection. In Restore mode it works as an equivalent to PhotoShop History Brush and brings back the original image.

Conclusion

To sum it up, MaskPro allows to make selections of good quality. It would not always be automatic or too quick but good. And even very complicated images will not take too much time. This happens due to versatility of tools and very much depends on the presence of non automatic analogs to automatic (magic) tools. Another nice feature is the possibility of extracting images part by part and correct the extraction in the process.

MaskPro would certainly be a good buy for professionals dealing with many but mostly good quality images. As for non-professional use it is your program if you like to play with your photos, make collages or creative cards for your friends and do it quite often.

Look at the comparison of selecting tools and selection results here and at the rating of the plug-ins here.
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