Neverside

Mask Pro- other masking programs

Hey guys, i was wondering if any of you have use mask pro or any other masking programs? I have downloaded the trial of mask pro because i do a ton of extracting people, horses, other animals and objects from pictures, and using extract/marquees/adobes built in masking tools take far to much time, and dont get very good results (with things like hair, things that are semi-transparent, etc. Well, I've been trying to use Mask Pro, and i think i am doing it wrong, because it seems way to hard and doesnt seem to work that well. anyways, have any of you used masking programs? if so, do you kno where i can get some good tutorials for such, and, futhermore, which masking program is the best? thanks a lot.

___________________

"I am a band geek. I just never joined the band."

I don't know much about maksing programs (don't do it much myself) but have you tried reading the manual? (if it has one) Or maybe it has a guide on there website?

___________________

yeah. there was both. didnt really say much. told me what to do, i did it. didnt work. sux when that happens does it not?

___________________

"I am a band geek. I just never joined the band."

see this thread for my reply and example:
http://www.tutorialforums.com/showthread.php?threadid=74570

Using the tools within photoshop to create masks is actually quite powerful. I have never used a 3rd party program for any masking at all. The key to good masking in PS is the channels. Learn to edit, modify, and tweak them .. and you can create very high quality, professional masks. This is what Photoshop is good at.

When you open a photo, look at the channels. All color information is located there. This is all you need to create high quality masks. Learn to duplicate, combine and adjust these channels using various PS tools (calculations, curves, levels, brightness/contrast, color balance...etc)

It is not uncommon to combine 2 channels using the calculations tool (blue and red, for example) to create a new channel... then adjust the levels or brightness/contrast and combine this channel with one of the originals.... so on and so fourth.

The 3rd party masking plug-ins are doing just this, but in a somewhat automated fashion. It is a piece of software, and cannot see what you can to make the proper adjustmenst to the channels to achieve perfect masks. It tries, but it will never be able to replace the human eye.

I hope that makes sense. Just learn how to tweak the channels in every way possible, then you will be able to create maskes for anything, on virtually any photo.

Problem with that is though, you see, how am i suppose to do fine detailed hairs and such? Here. you give it a try.

Heres a cute pony picture, tail and main? Not the easiest feat... :-\

___________________

"I am a band geek. I just never joined the band."

five minutes with pen tool and layer mask....i know thats not what you are looking for, specially if u are doing it for a client you would want perfect quality...but the point is, ps can do this ver easily...first i outlined the donkey with pen tool and then deleted inversed selection. Then put a reveal all layer mask and brushed over the remaining parts with a hard black brush at 75 % opacity...i'll do the rest of it once i come back from school

___________________

The Philosopher. I? Why? <br>- Anonymous

Grub is correct, in most cases, absolutely nothing beats channel manipution for extraction, especially for fine elements such as hair. The native PS extract tool , will work as well as any 3rd party tool, just be prepared to take your time with it, and fine tune with eraser, history brush, and pen.

Hmm. I suppose i will have to give it a good try (channel manipulation). But um, saurabh_chitnis, that is a horse. Big difference. lol.Hope you never design ne thing for an EQ facility. (not to say i hope you dont get clients) they'll rip your head off for saying that. lol. (i thought it was funny tho)

P.S. Grub do you know of any tutorials for what your talking about?

___________________

"I am a band geek. I just never joined the band."

Last edited by rockaway315, April 23rd, 2004 02:29 AM (Edited 1 times)

hey rock, as mentioned above, theres plenty of tools and combinations thereof you can use to achieve what your after..

heres a few of the techniques u can try - all achieve the same knockout affect, just a different way of doing it depending on the complexity of the the background.

http://www.heathrowe.com/tuts/knockout.asp?knockout=intro

truely the extract tool can do wonders also - a little patience, and practice, a complex image can be clipped in no time, such as this one...
http://www.heathrowe.com/tuts/extracttool.asp

cheers
hope they help
heathrowe

___________________

Photoshop Resource: heathrowe.com
Creative Professionals: heathrowecs.com