September 30, 2008 from abduzeedo's blog
One of the most difficult, and in my opinion most annoying tasks is when you have already sketched some ideas, then you start the digital process and you have to cut a person, or tree from the background. Doing that can sometimes take hours until you achieve a good result.
There are many ways extract people and objects from the background. Photoshop has some nice built in features such as the Extract or the Background Eraser Tool. However, if you really need a professional result and don’t have much time to spend on it, you have to check out a plugin called Fluid Mask 3.
Fluid Mask 3 is the professionals’ choice. Fluid Mask 2 established itself as the market leader in still image cutting-out – Fluid Mask 3 takes masking to the next level. Quick to pick up and intuitive to use, Fluid Mask 3 gets professional results fast.
I have been using it for a few days and I’m really surprised with the quality of this plugin. You can get a fantastic result in a no more than a few minutes. Even for the most complex images.
Here are some features of version 3:
- Faster initial image processing - For multi-core machines, Fluid Mask 3 runs its initial image processing up to 40% faster. With ever growing image file sizes our everyday image editing tools need to catch up – Fluid Mask 3 runs faster than ever.
- Localised edge detection and blending - It’s a true-ism when cutting out objects from their backgrounds that often 90% of the time is spent on 10% of the image – getting a difficult edge “just right”. Fluid Mask 3 now has a set of easy to use tools to isolate a difficult area (in a Patch) and apply alternative edge finding and blending techniques - making easy the tricky parts of image cutting.
- Intelligent Edge Blending - Fluid Mask 3 not only finds edges but also understands the width and character of an edge.
On edges which are largely free of noise and where there is some contrast between foreground and background, Fluid Mask 3's intelligent blending is the only blending around to automatically extract the morphology (character) of an edge - remember there is no such thing as a 6 pixel feather on all edges in real life! Use feather blending where there is no contrast or lots of noise in an edge. Fluid Mask 3 will still find the correct edge width.
I highly recommend that you check this tool out. If you deal with this kind of task on a daily basis it’s a must have plugin for your tool box.
Below some example
- For Tutorials: http://www.vertustech.com/fm_tutorials.htm
- For Live Training: http://www.vertustech.com/fm_webcast.htm
