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(Page 1 of 3)   KnockOut 2 is a production of Corel subdivision Procreate. It can be used both as a separate program and a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop or Corel Draw.
Set UpThere’s nothing unusual or difficult in the setup of the program. In the end you should register it. Be sure that you are connected to the Internet. I chose to do the registration online and the only problem was that the page only loaded at the third time. If the registration is not successful, you will have the registration screen in your windows menu and can continue with it at any time.
If you are using the plug-in version, after the setup is finished and the registration complete, you will find Knock Out 2 in Filters menu of your Photo Editor.
To make a selection with KnockOut you should open your image in Adobe PhotoShop (or other Photo editor) and create a new layer. Then go to Filters, KnockOut, and open working layer. (If you haven’t created one, a message appears: File is wrong format. Possibly missing layers. Just press OK then and create a new layer).
The opening of a working layer brings you to a new screen – the KnockOut plugin (At the first time I was afraid that the program stopped working or some mistake happened: myAdobe PhotoShop disappeared from screen completely and for a few seconds nothing seemed to happen!).
The program has an Uninstall option and can be uninstalled without any problems. It only left out two folders containing background images but gave back their names and location so that I found and deleted them manually in no time. Apart from that, no traces of Knock Out could be found on the computer. InterfaceI found the interface quite friendly. What attracted most is the limited number of easily understandable tools. The main selecting tools: Inside Object and Outside Object, Inside Shadow and Outside Shadow come in pairs. Their functionality is quite clear. Every selecting tool has several modes of use shown on the upper horizontal panel in the usual and quite convenient Corel fashion.
When starting the selection you will usually draw a line inside or outside the object you want to select (whichever you find the easiest). KnockOut 2 tools do not allow to scroll the image, so you cannot work with a magnified picture and be precise from the very beginning. When I first realized that I was quite disappointed. Then I discovered the lovely polygonal mode (switched on by the checkbox on the modes menu) allowing drawing lines from point to point. From that moment and on I most of the time used it for the first rough selection. This mode considerably fastens the selection process and I strongly recommend beginning with it.
After you made the rough inside or outside line you can magnify the image and start adding and/or subtracting in the freehand mode until the line goes alongside the edge as close as possible.
If your rough line is relatively smooth and is just far from the edge you can simply press a big plus sign on the upper panel and the selection will expand automatically (you can contract it as well, just press the minus). I also tried to roughly trace the border, then expand (with the inside selection) or subtract (with the outside selection) the selection, and after that worked out the remaining imperfect parts by adding and subtracting.
After the first selection is ready you can either draw the remaining one yourself (and you will have the same options of adding, subtracting, expanding and contracting) or use the convenience of the Automatic Inside/Outside Selection (depending on the tool you were working with). It automatically draws the second line alongside your contour. All you do afterwards – expand or subtract the selection and, if anything is not perfect, add or subtract from it. With both tools you can add a single pixel to the selection (can be useful when working with hair or transparent objects).
After the selection is made, there are two additional tools for improving the results of the cutout. The Feather tool will make the transition area (the area between the outside and inside lines) blurred so that it does not look rough and ragged. It is also a selecting tool. But with it you should select the area that you want to blur.
The Syringe tool allows bringing background color into the selected object. To tell the trough I didn’t quite realized how it works, or rather which result it brings (even after the manual).
Some objects have shadows that should be kept. KnockOut 2 has Shadow Selection tools for it. They work in the same manner as Inside and Outside Object tools.
When all the selections are brought to the satisfying level you may process the image (it’s in the edit menu or just press the button with two blue curved arrows shown on the right). There are four levels of detail at which the image can be processed. The difference between results can be considerable.After the procession, you will see the resulted mask on a green (by default) background. You can change the background color or even load some picture as a background (there’s a set of them to choose from). These options are on the left with the other tools (a colored rectangle and a small picture with mountains).
The procession can be performed several times. You can change the outlines, add or subtract single pixels, use Feather or Syringe tools and process the image again and again. Syringe tool allows you to inject hair color in the transition area for precise location of color tones. Alternately the Feather tool allows the user to feather a transition area if the background tone is "leaking through". The feather does not remove the background but sometimes is a faster way to correct than using precise freehand masking.
You also can go back to the original image or have a look at the resulted mask (View – Alpha).After you exhausted the possibilities of selection tools (or your own patience as often happened to me), you can start retouching the knocked out image. There are two Touchup tools - Brush and Eraser -enabling you to work with the processed mask and improve it. The problems will arise, naturally at the edges. You will have patches of background at some places around the borders and there will be “holes” in the image or parts of it will be missing. Touchup Brush restores the foreground image and Eraser removes the extras. When doing touch up you will have two windows – of the original image and of the mask so that you can see what part of the original picture you are trying to restore or remove.
When you apply the selection, it is saved and returned to the main program where you can apply it (Selections - Apply Selection). Then cut, copy, and paste it wherever you want.The Knock Out 2 ads say that it lets you isolate and separate a detailed foreground object from an image, while preserving edge detail such as hair, transparences, blurred edges and shadows.
I tried to test all these types of selections for you.
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