Selecting images with Fluid Mask 2

Fluid mask is a Photoshop (or any other Photo editing program) plugin enabling you to make selections of images. Vertus is boasting quickness of the selections process and good quality. We tried to test that and the tools offered by the program.
To do it yourself you can load a free demo version of Fluid Mask 2 at www.vertustech.com . It will allow you to see the use of all the tools but won’t let to apply the selection back in Photoshop.

Installation

The installation process is easy and I didn’t endeavor any problems whatsoever.

Interface

The Fluid Mask 2 interface is fine and easy to understand enough. After you’ve created a new layer and entered Fluid Mask through PhotoShop Filters menu you have the workspace window containing the image you are working on in the center of your desktop. The three tabs allow you to move between different stages of the selection process. The Source window shows the original image. You apply tools and create the selection in the Workspace area. And Output window shows the final stage, the created selection.  You can easily go back to Workspace if the result is unacceptable and refine your selection. Or, if you want to start anew you should go to the Source and invert the selection you’ve made.
As your image appears in the Fluid Mask 2 Workspace window it goes through the analysis process. When this is over you see it again divided into segments by blue lines. The picture looks very much like stained glass now. The lines show edges of contiguous color areas and can be hidden (there’s a checkbox in the bottom) which is advisable nearer to the final stage – to see if you’ve taken in all the edges. There’s also a slider for changing the masks’ color transparency level.
All the Tools are visible on the Tools panel. Two sets of Brushes (the main selection tool of the program) help to create the selection. Clean, Smooth, Force Edge and Test Render tools allow to refine it. Regions tool can be used for working on specific areas and objects. It allows sorting the colors of the image into Keep, Drop, or Complex mask areas and can also be used when you want to work in a specific area without touching the rest of the image.
{mosimage cw=40 align=left}There’s also a usual set of Select, Erazer, and Zoom. You can zoom the picture with a slider in the Navigation Panel.
You can also change the background color for the masked image or make the background transparent. And there’s a button for the quick application of the selection.
On the left side there is an Options panel allowing the regulation of the active tool, an Edge Detection Options panel and a Navigator. You can use the Navigator panel to magnify the image. And you can change the transparency level of Keep and Drop masks using a slider in the bottom of the Workspace window.
Being a plugin Fluid Mask 2 is launched from the Filters menu in Photoshop and opens up on top of your desktop - Photoshop is minimised. This of course leaves all your desktop patterns, icons etc or other open applications as a distracting backdrop, it’s a pity that Vertus could not have minimised all applications or better still apply a neutral backdrop.

Edge Detection

When you enter Fluid Mask 2 through the Photoshop Filters menu it is performing the analysis of the image (the larger the image the longer this process will take) and shows it to you divided into segments or regions of contiguous color. {mosimage cw=120 align=right}This is the main feature of Fluid Mask 2 absent in the previous version and making the selection process much quicker and easier. Now, when using the local brush tool you can either point it to the exact color region or move through several regions at once and know exactly what will be selected. Whereas in the previous version of Fluid Mask you could have this kind of selection with lots of uncovered space around the edges and long tedious work ahead.

The size of the regions and the quantity of them are regulated through a separate Edge Detection Options menu (appears on the left) so that you can adjust them to your particular needs. There are 4 changeable characteristics in it. Below you can see how they work:

Edge Sensitivity:

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In focus Edge Width:

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Edge Contrast:

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Texture Filter:

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Quick masking

{mosimage cw=150 align=left}With simple images, such magnolia above, where you have a bright and sharp object on a relatively neutral one color background, Fluid Mask 2 allows the use of so called Quick Masking. You usually fill in one of the masks, either Keep or Drop, and then Apply the mask. The program will automatically add the opposite mask and the Complex mask outline and do the cutting. The result may need to be refined afterwards (which means the improving of the mask) as with the tulip photo on the right but can be satisfying without any other operations (see magnolia picture above).
{mosimage cw=150 align=right}As for the tulip I applied Local Drop brush (the drop area is usually filled in the first and the local brush is used the most) with the thick head medium strength and draw a stroke through almost all the segments of the background. It worked fine. I only had to work a little with the eraser and add some keep strokes on the curly edges of the tulip head. {mosimage ch=150 align=left}Then I applied the selection. The resulted image looks good apart form some smallish green patches around those problematic curly petals. They were removed under magnification with the exact Keep Brush. It just took a little more time and precision. Overall, the selection process was quickened a lot for all the rough work was performed by the program.
The tulip here has a very bright and consistent color. So I could work on the Keep mask and create the Drop mask automatically to the same defect and with the same speed. But usually you have to decide which mask is easier to create.

Complex Mask

Apart from the Keep and Drop brushes Fluid Mask has a Complex mask brush (painting in blue by default). If the Edge Detection helps with defining the zones to be kept or dropped, Complex mask covers the edge zone where Fluid Mask defines what is to be selected itself.
When the image is sharp and stands clear against the background you can have a thin Complex Mask automatically created (As with magnolia or tulip images). But it also can be used when masking such complex images as those containing hair or transparent areas.

Hair and fur

With hair you just apply a rather thick Complex Mask in the region where the image has both hair and background colors. The results though may be different.

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The picture of the girl on white background is ideal for masking. As you see I just drew a thick line around the head with the Complex Brush and that was all.
Other images did not go that easy though. When I had dark hair against the dark red background or fair hair against the cluttered background with some light colors in it the mask either dropped too much of hair or took in too much of the background.

The dark-haired girl’s selection looks unnatural.

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As for the little girl with tails, the background colors contained in the selection are clearly seen on the light color background but are not so visible on the dark background.
And, of course, not all hair strands are retained.

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{mosimage cw=200 align=left}Working with fur is the task of the same sort as masking hair. The picture of the baby manul looks particularly difficult to mask because of the similar colors in the animal and the background cage, and the fuzzy edges. {mosimage cw=200 align=right}Working with the image according to the tutorial , I painted Complex Mask over the fur edges, then applied Local Keep brush from within the image and Local Drop brush from the outside.

The result was fine in the places where the fur is whitish and more or less of the same color. But on the head, ears and back of the animal where there are spots of different color, the resulted edge was very rough. And with the absence of any restoration tool this could not be mended. No matter how accurately and how many times I tried to improve the masking the complex mask could not give me the needed fur edge. And you see that the very edges of fur are clipped.

Transparences, brunches, tracery objects and the like

I took the picture of the green leaves (you can see the original used as background for the tulip) to test the Global brushes, those that take in all like colors in the image. Global Drop brush worked well and covered almost all the background except for the inside corners of the leaves at one click. Those places were filled in with the Exact Drop brush with a 3 px head. After this was done I noticed a couple of stems a little blurred and transparent to the rear. This was obviously the Complex mask area. After the procession I saw that those stems worked out very well.

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Therefore, I thought of the other half transparent areas in the image and covered all such places with the complex mask blue. The result was good. You can see the background color through the leaves and they do look half transparent.
This was, in fact, so good that I thought of selecting a proper transparent object, the glass. This proved to be not so satisfying. This time the global brush took in almost all the background and most of the glass itself. I first painted all the remaining areas with complex mask. But in the cutout the wineglass almost disappeared. Then I applied the Keep brush in some of the places, which required a lot of precision. The result of the experiment was only barely satisfying though.
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But again, on the image of a dragonfly, with its half transparent wings, Fluid Mask worked well.

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One more image where complex mask worked very well has a very dark leafless tree against the bright sky. I first thought of using the Global brush again or the Regions tool, but those did not work. My use of the Complex mask was almost intuitive. I decided to treat those brunches as hair. So the whole tree (and delicate grass stems as well) was painted over with the Complex mask brush and the result was perfect.

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To sum it all I should say that the success of the selection with the Complex mask depends to a large extent on the sharpness and contrast of the image. The sharper it is and the more opposite the colors are the better the result will be.

Regions

{mosimage cw=200 align=left}{mosimage cw=200 align=right}Regions can be used in various circumstances in the program. It’s primary use – the selection of groups of colors and attributing them to one of the three masks. As a region is drawn (either rectangular or polygonal one) there appears the Region Editor panel containing a table of colors sorted by one of a number of characteristics (such as color, lightness or saturation). You can choose a set of colors and send them to one of the mask “buckets” (marked in green, red and blue). The colors you choose show on the image in yellow dots so that you can see whether they belong to the Keep or Drop area. The technique is very convenient when selecting such images as tree foliage or lattices.{mosimage cw=200 align=right}
But Regions can also be used widely with the Regions Editor ignored altogether. When the region is active any tool can only be used within it. So you can apply your tools freely not being afraid to spoil other parts of the image. The tutorials recommend the use of Regions before applying Force edge or editing hair, for example.

Making edges look better: Force edge and Smooth tools

{mosimage cw=180 align=left}Force edge tool is used when the edge is too soft for the mask to deal with. In that case you can draw the line along the edge and give it exactness. The tool works polygonally, drawing lines between the points you click. After the line is drawn, you fill the areas on both sides. The resulted mask will have the exact edge you’ve drawn. The tool is also rather tempting when you cannot make the Drop/Keep mask fill the needed area for several times.
Smooth tool also makes the edges look better. They simply become smooth. The tool is applied to the whole image at once.

Previewing and adjusting: Test Render

{mosimage cw=300 align=right}Fluid Mask has no retouching tools but to help adjust the mask it has a very nice and convenient Test Render tool. Test render allows to preview a part of the image before applying the whole mask and improve the mask in those particular places. It is particularly convenient when working with complex images such as hair, fur, or rough edges. When using Test Render, there appears also the options menu for the tool where you can change the auto complex mask thickness and fix the edge noise.

Overall Fluid Mask 2 is a really good selection program seriously increasing the speed of the selection process. It has a number of problems with hair and fur selection and is not perfect with some transparent objects but with other kinds of objects can produce very good results. There’s a number of rather convenient and easy to use tools. Although not all the tools can be used intuitively OnOne has good and easy to understand tutorials online. All you have to do is watch them and then try the techniques on your own images.

Fluid Mask 2 is sold  at $199 at www.vertus.com; that is a little expensive for a non-professional user to my mind but professionals should make it up quickly enough. The visitors of our site can buy Fluid Mask with a special 10$ discount.

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