refine edge - hard image need help learning

[egosbar]

hi all , ive only been using ps for 5 months and one of the things im still struggling a bit with is refine edge, ive watched tutorials etc, most of these have reasonable good images to work with

im struggling with this one , im looking for a step by step explanation of how to get the best of this one

 

[ibclare]

Hi egosbar, you sure picked a tough one! I played around with it, doing a channels selection on the sky area, then a quick select on the rest of the photo, masked each and used refine mask with about a 1 pixel smart radius to pull out the fringe and hair. Touched both up in the mask, including a soft low opacity white brush to restore some of the feather near the fringe as I got aggressive with the smart radius tool. When you're painting out the figure in the alpha channel, you can use the brush on overlay to do pretty much the same thing as smart radius before masking.

For the image I am uploading however, I used only the quick select, mask, refine mask, etc. I did not go carefully among all the feathers to see if I missed background. I would do that in the mask. I also did not work to get her body edge's very smooth but that is easily done.

I used hair brushes on layers above and below the hair to restore the fine hairs somewhat. On the top layer I then used the eraser on low opacity to blend the brushwork. I also did a channel mixing on a selection of the bottom of the hair which still had green tinging and used the adjustment mask to blend that down.

It's not perfect. I would probably get some feathered brushes to touch up the feathers but it depends on how much you want to restore. As you can see, some feathers show the white through them and if that bothered me I would mask them out and use brushes.

 

[Tom Mann]

Clare's understanding, approach and end result is absolutely masterful, but, FWIW, sometimes money *can* buy you love. :mrgreen:

The attached animation shows the result of spending about 1 fairly mindless minute in Topaz ReMask. I didn't do any touch-up work on the output of ReMask.

In the interest of full disclosure:

a) I applied ReMask to a higher contrast, more saturated version of the original to make ReMask's job easier. I then used that mask on the actual image. This set-up step probably added another 30 seconds.

b) It probably took me another minute or so to set up the animation, and probably 5 minutes to write up this description.

The areas circled in red in the 3rd frame of my GIF animation shows the errors in my extraction that I spotted. I could have easily touched them up, but for the purpose of a comparison between essentially a fully automated extraction and a heavily manual extraction, I didn't retouch these areas.

The two errors along the bottom edge of the frame and the uppermost error (the big white area between feathers) were completely due to my inattention when I was painting in the "keep", "cut", and "transition" areas in ReMask.

However, I would consider the whispy leftmost error, and the green background bleedthrough at the ends of her hair to be shortcomings of ReMask.

Anyway, thought ya'll might find this comparison interesting, especially if you ever are in a situation where you have to crank out a bunch of cutouts in a limited amount of time.

T

 

[MikeMc]

Tom, If I get it correct you recommend the Topaz plug in , over refine edge? I see all of the "shortcomings" of RE in this image. With the Topaz plug in and a few more minutes the mask could be perfect ? Looks like a "must" tool for most of us?

 

[ALB68]

I have Topaz ReMask and it works well as Tom has demonstrated. It's a time saver. However, I am thinking that alpha channel may be better for some things with a lot of complex detail. But, your image has to be suited to using alpha channels, some with lots of different junk in the background are difficult. This one is not ideal, but Clare did an admirable job, but as she stated, she had to still do some cleanup. Tom however,did not have to clean up but he used a more sophisticated technique that most of us "average bears" would not know to do. (I don't mean to imply that Clare's technique was not sophisticated, it was, but a lot more work than what Tom did with ReMask)

Tom, If I get it correct you recommend the Topaz plug in , over refine edge? I see all of the "shortcomings" of RE in this image. With the Topaz plug in and a few more minutes the mask could be perfect ? Looks like a "must" tool for most of us?

 

[egosbar]

thanks guys for your comments , i did pick a tough one and a really good example for practice

it was the top half of the feathers i was having trouble with , i dont think i done a bad job in the end and certainly understand it a lot better now , i only used refine edge , smart radius then edge detection and painted back some of the areas that needed too with the erase refinement tool , problem i was having was the edges were not as yellow as the bottom feathers , refine edge done a great job on the bottom half but the top half of feathers was tricker and look washed out , i guess i should of painted these in while it was cut out on a blank backround , ill try that tonight

what im after now is how to get the edges more defined and better color at the tips but all up not too bad , ill look at the topaz plug in , havent used alpha channels yet so ill look at that too

 

[ALB68]

Hey, it looks good egosbar. I mean who's gonna look that close in the real world. (Tom and Clare excluded LOL). Here is another technique you can try that kinda simulates the ReMask process. 1. Use Quick Mask to put an outline all the way around the image on the outside of the feathers and all. Get as close as you can to the edges.( I use about a 6 pixel hard brush) . (Be sure and go all the way around it with the outline)After your outline is complete, use the Paint Bucket to fill outside the outline. You will need to fill it twice.2. Next enter Q and your mask will show as marching ants, then Invert the mask. 3 Now, hit the Add Layer Mask at the bottom of the Layer's panel and your masked Layer will appear. 4 Then, use Refine Mask on the result. Works pretty well I think.

 

[egosbar]

yeah clare would look , its definitely acceptable and in the end wasnt a bad job for just using refine edge quickly , but i do like too master techniques for future use , ill give these a try and might just invest in topaz

the top half of the headress feathers look washed out , i guess i should of painted these over while the selection is there using opacity to blend in , im about too try that now

 

[Tom Mann]

With respect to the question of whether or not one should purchase Topaz's ReMask or any other third party selection tool, this is something I've thought about A LOT over the years. It turns out that in addition to Topaz's ReMask, I also have onOne's "Mask Pro" and Vertus' "Fluid Mask" on my system. In fact, five or so years ago, I was one of the beta testers for Fluid Mask.

When Adobe introduced "Refine Edges" (aka, "RE"), it was a major improvement, and caused my usage of the third party selection products to drop to probably only 10-20% of its pre-RE rate. However, I should point out that in my work, I rarely need to swap backgrounds or composite multiple images. Most of the time, I need to select one area over another in a photograph only for the purpose of selective adjustments because of mixed lighting (eg, events, environmental / informal portraiture, quick-and-dirty equipment shots, etc.). Such uses tax selection tools much less than swapping backgrounds or putting together composites. For most of my uses, using Refine Edges to fix up a quick-and-dirty initial selection made with the pen or quick select tools is completely adequate for me.

However, when I have to make a difficult selection, or a simple selection that has to be done very accurately, *then* I turn to the 3rd party plugins, but even with them, I usually clean their output up with a final tweak using Refine Edges. This is a very, very powerful and fast technique and I can recommend it wholeheartedly.

The attached GIF animation shows my previous result before and adding a final tweak to the mask using Refine Edges (plus a couple of quick manual repairs to the mask). Notice that the bleed of the green background into her hair at the bottom of the frame, as well as the bleed of the bright sky into the feathers at the top of the frame has been greatly reduced, if not completely eliminated. The final result looks wonderful whether against black, white, or any other background that I tried. It's much better than using ReMask alone, and it's still quite fast. Note how the wispy feathers at the very top of the headdress are much better resolved and have retained their color better than in any of the previous versions shown in this thread. Starting with Topaz ReMask allows one to use much smaller parameters in Refine Edges, compared to trying to do everything with Refine Edges alone on say an initial pen or quick selection. This is the heart of the matter.

 

[Tom Mann]

The next question is which selection tool should one use first. The choices are:

a) an initial selection with (say) the quick-select tool followed by a 1st refinement using Refine Edges, followed by a 2nd, lighter pass, again using RE;

b) Topaz's ReMask, followed by a 2nd, lighter pass with RE;

c) OnOne's Mask Pro, followed by a 2nd, lighter pass with RE;

d) Vertus' Fluid Mask, followed by a 2nd, lighter pass with RE;

e) Some classical method such as using channels, followed by a 2nd, lighter pass with RE.


I never use Method (a). If one pass with RE doesn't cut it, a 2nd pass with RE doesn't help very much.

I haven't used the "channels" method, ie, (e), in years. All of the 3rd party plugins work by performing a vastly more sophisticated version of the channels technique and I find absolutely no reason to go back to it.

In the conventional "channels" masking technique, you look for the channel with the best contrast between subject and background. In contrast, all three of the plugins listed above look locally for the best differentiation between the subject and the background using both hue, saturation and brightness. So, if on one side of a subject's head, the background is a dark blue sky, whereas on the other side, the background is very bright warm colors from a sunset, all three of the commercial plugins will adapt (or can be made to adapt) to accurately find the edges on both sides of the head, whereas a situation like this will completely throw a simple "channels" technique.

The ultimate extrapolation of the above situation is an image where both the background and subject have variegated / patchy colors (eg, whispy hair against fall foliage with patches of sky peeking through gaps in the leaves). This will stress any of the algorithms / plugins, but with familiarity and good technique, one always gets the best result from one of the commercial plugins followed by a final tweak in Refine Edges.

With respect to choosing one of the three commercial plugins, I would recommend Topaz's ReMask. It's the simplest to use, and the results (with proper technique) are as good as either of the others. IMHO, OnOne's Mask Pro is a bit more difficult to use, whereas Vertus' Fluid Mask probably can be tweaked to produce astonishing results, but there's a lot of things to learn how to tweak.

HTH,

Tom M

 

[MikeMc]

Excellent explanation Tom. I have used RE with limited success and never had better luck with channels I like the whole technique with Topaz and RE...I may need to get this soon.

 

[vishnu123]

that is one fine photograph ! thanks for the tips on refining edges .. i needed them too !!

 

[ibclare]

I'll say this again.

Many people cannot afford Topaz. All Photoshoppers, IMO, need to learn how to use the native PS tools to get the best results they can. If you look at the render I made, it does not have all the imperfections you are pointing out Tom. I can see some cleanup that needs to be done with some of the white within the headdress, and I thought egosbar's render was pretty darn good, even if he overlooked the grass BG showing through in a couple spots.

I'm not putting down Topaz plugins. They do some great things, though I think there is quite a learning curve, but what difference to people who have climbed their way up the PS ladder of learning . . .

Just my two cents for Photoshop basics. Learn 'em first, then tackle the ancillaries.

 

[MikeMc]

I'll say this again.

Many people cannot afford Topaz. All Photoshoppers, IMO, need to learn how to use the native PS tools to get the best results they can. If you look at the render I made, it does not have all the imperfections you are pointing out Tom. I can see some cleanup that needs to be done with some of the white within the headdress, and I thought egosbar's render was pretty darn good, even if he overlooked the grass BG showing through in a couple spots.

I'm not putting down Topaz plugins. They do some great things, though I think there is quite a learning curve, but what difference to people who have climbed their way up the PS ladder of learning . . .

Just my two cents for Photoshop basics. Learn 'em first, then tackle the ancillaries.

I for one cannot afford Topaz BUT....if it is as good as Tom showed, my time and frustration levels might tell me otherwise. I use RE a lot, and tried RM but have better luck with my tablet and brush and just work on better masks

You Clair know exactly what I mean....y'now you just keep finding small bits to refine....IF Topaz ALONG with RE give me noticeably better masks in far less time, then IMHO it is dollars well spent!

The cost of just this one is 69.00....

 

[Tom Mann]

"...If you look at the render I made, it does not have all the imperfections you are pointing out Tom..."

Clare, what are you talking about? I didn't point out a single imperfection in your version. I thought it was great. In fact, the only comment I made about your version was:

"Clare's understanding, approach and end result is absolutely masterful, but, FWIW, sometimes money *can* buy you love. :mrgreen: "

---------

WRT using commercial, 3rd party plugins (like Topaz) vs. learning to do as much as possible with native PS tools, I couldn't agree more. I could find and cite many examples where I suggested exactly the same thing in other threads. In fact, I have often said that it is virtually impossible to use commercial plugins effectively until you are very experienced with Photoshop's concepts, organization, and native tools.

That being said, for my work and hobby-related processing, I need speed. For years (decades), I learned and used many of the native tools, but now, if something speeds up my workflow and saves me time, I'll use it without a moment's hesitation.

A different question is what to use in post processing examples / tutorials on this forum.

In most cases, I figure that you or someone else will give the OP an approach based on "native tools". OTOH, I know that some people are interested in commercial plugins, so, to satisfy these folks, and to save myself time, since the "native tools" approach will likely always be covered, I will often use and then write-up a plugin approach, thereby giving a mini-review / introduction to that particular plugin.

I hope this at least partially clarifies my POV on plugins.

Best regards,

Tom

 

[MikeMc]

just grabbed a trial copy of Remask Tom. I am now lost....I see how you can mask with it, but do not see any reason to choose it over RE. So I must be missing something here..Help Tom ?

 

[Tom Mann]

Mike, are you not getting good cutouts, or what's the exact problem?

T

 

[egosbar]

i like plugins , and i agree with tom you really cant use them unless you have the basics covered , im having a go at remask now and its good but so is re , as far as how much better it is ill hold my opinion for a few weeks

 

[MikeMc]

I seem to degrade my mask I made with RE...for example, the green by the lower arm..None with RE, if I re do with Topaz, my mask is lousy...I must be the issue.

 

[ALB68]

Since this was first posted, I set out to make a small study of the issue. I, of course, cannot, did not nor do I have the inclination to go as far as Tom did. However, the more I used the Topaz ReMask filter I realized that I don't think you can get by with masks from it that are done in one pass unless they are pretty simple. It will do the job but it is NOT a no-brainer. The tool is not hard to use, but if your trying to produce a mask worthy of submission to Tom or Clare, your going to have to work more that just a quickie. However, I found that some things really need Topaz and work well, such as people with wooded backgrounds and the like. However images of things like trees and bushes with leaves and branches etc on a light background, I don't think you can beat a channel mask for that, especially if time is a factor. I found I could do those images better and faster than with ReMask.
Clare is exactly right when she says to learn what PS can do first, and it can do a lot with just the native tools. If you can use all the PS tools and Refine Edge, you can accomplish the same things as the plug-ins can. Just takes some work and a bit of innovation at times.