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Selecting Images with MaskPro |
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Working with Colors, Color SetsColor selection is very conveniently organized in MaskPro: you can not only choose a number of colors 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.
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. 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).
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
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). 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
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.ConclusionTo 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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