Lifting the Veil

Mike McNamee looks under the veil

Beware of Snake-oil Salesmen

One of the reviewer’s favourite expressions for lecturers demonstrating software for cutouts is that of the headline above – he also includes himself in the warning by-theway! We are all guilty of preparing a demonstration file and swishing the mouse over the area to produce a perfect cutout to the acclaim of our audience. The reality is rarely this good and so we approach magazine reviews with a little more circumspection. Cutting out hair is one of the most frequently requested techniques at Photoshop demonstrations and sadly it is one that the beginner often tries too early in their Photoshop career with disastrous results. Any help is thus grasped with enthusiasm, soon to be tempered by the reality. The message at the head of this review should therefore be thus – bespoke cut-out software can help, but a grounding in the basics of mask-making and adjusting the edges can still be vital to a truly professional, seamless result. With that proviso read on!

Mask Pro 4 from OnOne is a specialist program which acts as a Photoshop Plug-in specifically for the cutting out of objects or the making of masks to perform the same task via a layer mask. It is particularly good at handling transparency such as bridal veils and we therefore concentrate on this, the most difficult task.

Figure [1] shows the start, an image we have used before, styled by Dawn Sinclair. The background has a near-black colour, measuring around 34-RGB points. The front of the dress has a value around 230-points, but the veil itself varies from 35-RGB points (that is effectively totally transparent) to 82- RGB points for double layers of lace and up to 180-RGB points for multiple layers of lace – it is always darker than the dress because the black background is contaminating the white. Move the veil with even a small amount of contamination and the veil looks distinctly dirty.

One solution to the ‘dirty’ problem is shown in [2]. The original is to the left. In the middle shot a duplicate layer has been placed on top of the background and set to ‘Screen Mode’. This lightens the veil, but washes out the face. On the right-hand side a soft mask has been applied to show the original bride but allowing the veil to be lightened.

We now go one stage further and move our bride, Jill, to a completely different location.

In Mask Pro 4 you may work to create either a direct ‘cutout’ or create a selection from which an alpha channel may be made for use as a Layer Mask. The decontamination check-box is only available for the direct ‘cutout’ method which erases the contaminating pixels, a less sophisticated option than having a mask because a mask may be carefully tuned using levels, opacity, blurring, etc. So bear in mind as you start to try out the software that Mask Pro 4 does not work directly on a background, Mask Pro Select will.

Method 1

When using Mask Pro, the user first uses eyedroppers to pick ‘keep’ colours (eg the skin of the model) and ‘drop’ colours (in our example the black of the background). When Save/Apply is clicked, the software returns you to Photoshop with a selection active (middle shot of [3] which may then be saved as a channel right-hand image in [3]. As figure [4] shows, the veil to the model’s upper right remains contaminated with the black background.

In figure [5], the black background has been extracted but at some cost to the density of the veil. However, with dark backgrounds behind the dress, it creates a reasonable illusion of reality. Activating the layer mask by Ctrl-clicking it, then focusing the image layer itself, then clicking Ctrl-J to duplicate the veil, strengthens the detail in the veil [6].

In Figure [6] the qualities of the mask have been adjusted using levels to bring back some of the depth.

Method 2

If the Background of the image is duplicated (as a layer), it is possible to use Mask Pro4 rather then Mask Pro Select. Working by this method allows colour decontamination to be checked and this, in turn, removes contaminating pixels (in our case the black background) [7].

In our example, more detailed and separate work is needed to attend to the model’s dark hair which was not well differentiated from the background but the stage at which the cut-out is shown was accomplished in a couple of minutes – you cannot get to this stage this quickly by any other methods using only Photoshop. (see the opening spread for a time-trialled cutout)

Summary

Mask Pro 4 is quite an asset if you have to remove difficult backgrounds from through a bridal veil and for this type of work it certainly brings the impossible within the reach of the less experienced Photoshop user. The best advice for the beginner is to ignore what you saw the snake-oil salesman doing, real life is rarely that simple. Take your time to learn to use the program and exploit the ‘keep’ and ‘drop’ sets around different parts of the image. If you are already skilled in the use of mask adjustments then use Mask Pro to start you off and break the back of the task before refining the mask using dodging, burning, opacity adjustments, levels and blurring to refine your edges.

Photo Quote: It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter, because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the ordinary. - David Bailey