Pro Photography Learning: "Fluid Mask 3" "Fluid Mask 3 Review" "Professional Photo Learning"

Friday, November 18, 2011

Cleaning up the Background and Foreground

There are many listings on e-Bay whose photos are distracting and busy. The background has other items in the photo or what the item is resting on is also distracting. Nevertheless, these items sell. However, with an extra 10 minutes, you can clean up the image to make the item for sale more attractive. The item below is a listing of mine - a 6" long Hubley Cast Iron Toy. It's nice but slightly distracting.

I used Fluid Mask 3 (by Vertus) to create the selection patterns.

You have the choice either to use the red brush (to remove), or the green brush (to keep portions of the image. I changed the red circle (remove) for the green (keep) brush (below).

The green will be the portion of the photo that remains

After you've brushed the keep areas, you use this tool (mask)

to keep what you selected,and remove the rest.

Here's the result. After you say "OK", Fluid Mask 3, which is a Photoshop plugin, closes down.

You then continue your work in Photoshop.

I wasn't 100% on the selection, because I knew that I could use the Photoshop eraser to remove the rest easily and speedily.

I then used Photoshop's magnetic lasso to separate the unnecessary parts to be discarded from the

actual Hubley truck.

The next step is to create what is called a gradient.

A "gradient" is a subtle change in a similar set of colours or tones form light to dark.

The squared selection on the left is the gradient button.

Now you add a duplicate layer to work with.

Creating the Duplicate Layer

The Duplicate layer to work in.

The Result.

Theres some "distractions" that I missed about 2" above the roof of the truck.

They appear as smudges on a computer screen. I'll clean then up later.

Flatten the 2 layers to one.

Now there's only 1 layer

The final result.

I also cleaned up some distraction in the background that wasn't seen when I had originally removed the distracting areas in the photo.

I'm sure you'll agree that this photo is much more presentable and that it focuses your attention on the truck more now than before.

We can be "a little fancier" by adding a shadow and then adding both the shadow and the truck to a gradation. It's a lot more work, but I'll show you anyway.

Here's the truck file again

I'm going to add what is called a "drop shadow" in Photoshop

Here's how the "drop shadow" selection looks in the layers window

This is the control window for adjusting the shadow

I'll leave it up to you to play around with the parameters

Here is the effect

I've added a white background, otherwise against the checkered background,

you would not see the shadow. Also, I wasn;t able to just select all and then paste the truck and shadow in the other file of the gradient (below).

Here is a gradient that I made.

Start with a new file, and make it bigger in size than the truck and shadow.

You want to leave space around the truck and maneuver it to your liking.

I like to position it at 1/3 from the bottom (please see later).

The file will look empty until you create the gradient.

The darkened icon above is the gradient tool

A cross appears, and what you do is drag the cross from the top to the bottom.

You can also drag the cross in any angle that you want.

Here's the gradient again

Here's the Fire Truck and Its' Shadow

I need to Isolate it from the white background.

I know you probably think why the extra step.

Thuis is how Photoshop works!

You sample the tones or colors with the eyedropper.

Each time you use the + eyedropper, it expands the areas of selection.

It's easier to select white than all of the different tones of the fire truck and its' shadow.

Once I've selected the whites, I can "invert" the selection. This will capture the truck and shadow.

One of the controls is the border selection.

The larger the number, the more it moves inwards of the "inverse" selection".

I chose 22 for the pixel width (above).

Here's the final result.

The white outline around the shadow is an error!

I don't know what I did wrong, but I'll be working to correct that!

Sunday, October 8, 2011

Fluid Mask 3

Masking Software

Please have a look at the Fluid Mask 3 site!

"Masking" is a term carried over from the printing industry, when there were no computers. Special adhesive-backed material would be carefully laid on parts of a photo that were not to be copied for the printing process. When a camera loaded with special lithographic film was used, those parts did not record , thus the term "mask". You can also think of "masking tape for painting", where you add tape to areas that you don't want to paint.

The Software Box

The Screen Icon

What makes Fluid Mask 3 interesting is that it seems to be actually "easy to use"! I'm going to return to this software and update this post, but for now, the material for this portion, was done in about 20 minutes.

I haven't learned the software, but as usual with me, I tried to "play around" with it, and see how intuitive it was. So here we go!

My Starting Image - A Tootsietoy Graham Car

The Working Window

The Left Side of the Working Window

If you've already worked with Photoshop or some other photo-editing software, you'll

most-likely know what the icons represent. I wasn't sure what the differences were between the second and third rows, but I know that "green was good" and "red was bad".

Once you activate the window, you get a series of lines that look like "isobars" on a weather map where areas of equal pressure are all attached together.

With Fluid Mask 3, all equal areas of colour or tone are attached together like "isobars"

I haven't seen this before in a software, and I thought to myself "wow, this is clever!".

You use the red or green tools to choose the areas that you want.

You can use red to "ged rid of" or green to "add".

Red and green are the 2 colours fo r masking

I chose green to choose the areas that I want to get rid of.

The circle with the crosshairs (upper left next to the car) is a tool that is used for adding.

I set it large in order to capture as many "isobar" areas as possible.

Of course, if you make a mistake, you can use the red tool to remove the mistaken area.

Here is 1 area that the software mistook.

Here is another area that the software mistook.

What's interesting about these "mistakes" is that I immediately understood the problems.

The 2 areas are very similar in tone to the surrounding areas, so they were captured.

What's also interesting is that I learned immediately potential problems to look for in future images that I will work with!

Smart!

Make a mistake or if the software makes a mistake, and of course you have an eraser tool.

Yo u have a magnetic lasso (sort of) that is represented by a rectangular marquis.

Therre are 3 options with this tool.

The yellow is the magnetic lasso that I used to outline the "incorrect area.

I will then use the red brush to change it back to "do not capture".

I'll show you htese later on when I return to work on this post.

I have no idea what the above menu is, but I think is a menu to "allow for more subtle selection in terms of similar tones, colours, or shades.

I only worked on 1 small photo.

I went to Photoshop

I added a missing headlight

Here's another view in layer mode

The Finished Result in Photoshop

I rushed through this, so the bumper and rear left wheel, and front left bumper/grill show poor workmanship.

However, for 20 minutes of work and learning, I'm impressed at the ease of understanding, working with the program and of course, the quality of the mask.

Second Try

Image # 2

Use the large selection tool for areas that you know will be easy to mask.

Use the small selection tool for areas that you know will be easy to mask

The Overall Capture or Mask

Mask area removed and Item wanted is shown

Image Brought Into Photoshop to Check Out

Time: 5 minutes

An improvement with a new understanding of the large and small-sized brushes.

Third Try

So now I thought I'd try a much harder image. A Maui Goat in a small forest when I was in Hawaii last year for my niece's wedding. These goats were let loose or escaped long ago, and are very numerous now. The problem is that Maui is very hot and dry where the goats are. They are overabundant, and unfortunately there is not a lot of water for them.

I'll leave the rest to your imagination.

A Maui Wild Goat

Masking of a Much More Complicated Subject

This took me much longer, because I needed to find a couple of video tutorials and study them.

I'd give myself a 3/10 for this result. It certainly is quite good, but needs lots and lots more work.

The one thing that I do find with this program is being able to grasp the menu and sub-menu commands in a short time. Personally, I always had trouble with Photoshop. I knew what to do, buy I never quite understood what I was supposed to do. With Fluid Mask 3, you can understand the basic concepts, especially if you study a few video tutorials.

I've only touched upon and used about 10-15% of this program, so I'll have to study it much more to give you a better all-around review. However, for now I'm quite pleases with the program, and it even helps you to understand Photoshop and layers better!

Third Try - Part II

Sorry about the goat's derriere", but that was a "choice spot" to work with!