EZ Mask 3 by L. Davenport

Have you ever tried to extract a person/animal/item from one photo so that you can superimpose it over another photo to make it look like it/you were someplace that you never were? What a pain! Trying to select all of those uneven edges. Well that’s where EZ Mask becomes an invaluable tool. It simplifies the selection and masking process for both simple or complex images including ones that contain sheer material or smoke (see figure 7).

User interfaceEZ Mask is a plug-in for Photoshop and Photoshop Elements or is an

external editor for Lightroom. I will be testing it with Photoshop CS6. Once you bring in one or two (for a composite) images into Photoshop

and apply the EZ Mask filter, EZ Mask’s work window appears (see Figure 4).

EZ Mask has several color-coded pens: red lines (that you draw) tells EZ Mask what is the background (that will be cut/masked away). The Green lines tells EZ Mask what is the foreground (that you want to keep), and the purple lines from the “Missing” brush, is used to add back fine foreground details that might have been lost in the masking process (like strands of hair). There is even a “Refine Mode” brush that changes the behavior of the Fore-ground, Background, Unknown and Missing brushes so that they are inter-active. As you paint a stroke, the Refine mode automatically updates the mask or composite.

Once you have drawn your foreground and background lines, you can save this “Trimap” so that you can reapply it at a later date.

Across the top of the EZ Mask window are several “View” buttons that you can use to bounce back and forth between the different views. This way

you can tell whether your mask needs additional fine-tuning. The Views are for:•Foreground and •Background LAYERS views (not to be confused with the foreground and background of the single image that you are masking). These two layer Views are for the times when you compos-ite two images together. You can view each layer separately.•The “Mask” view shows the black and white mask (like shown in Figure 1’s top right pict). You can use this view to see if there are any grey (transparent) areas still in the white or black parts of your mask.•The Composite view marries all of the layers together so you can see what the final output will look like before sending your image back to Photoshop. BTW: if there is no background layer, EZ Mask places the the foreground layer over a solid grey color (as seen in Figure 4’s bottomleft pict).

Figure 1: This series of picts shows: The foreground (green) and background (red) lines I drew, the resulting mask, the background removed, and finally the place-ment of the foreground image (the head), on top of an-other background.

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Figure 2: To help learn to use EZ Mask, I followed one of the provided tutorials that had me bring in (composite) two picts, one of a llama standing in front of steps and another back-ground with a rock fence. With only a few strokes, I was able to cut away the steps (of the top layer), etc. which in-turn revealed the fence and backdrop of the underlying background layer.

In addition to the View buttons, there are also Zoom and Comparison buttons lining the top of the EZ Mask window. The Comparison buttons let you split the views (horizontally or vertically) which lets you see two different views at the same time (see Figure 6).

Edge Color Estimation OptionThe Edge Color Estimation Option estimates the color of the

foreground in unknown and semi-transparent areas. It prevents fringing to create a seamless composite.

Color CorrectionEZ Mask includes Color Correction tools that you can apply to

your image. These include the standard Hue, Saturation, Brightness, Contrast, Gamma, and Temperature tools. It can also add Cyan or Magenta to your image, plus add or subtract red, green, and blue from the image. You can see the Color Correction sliders in Figure 4.

Green/Blue-screen Spill SuppressorSometimes after removing a blue or green-screen background,

there is still a blue or green color spill on your object or person (see Figure 4’s top right image). EZ Mask’s “Spill Suppression” tools (found below the Color Correction sliders) automatically remove the green/blue spill. If some residual color remains, you can use the Amount, Range, and Edge tools (in conjunction with the Color Correction tools) to fine-tune the removal.

DVEThe DVE tools let you transform your image using Position,

Scale, Rotation, and Corner Pins controls. In addition to the slide controls, there are also on-screen controls that let you position, scale, rotate, or corner-pin the object.

Testing processIf you look at the Figure 1’s top left image, you will see that I drew

several red lines and one green line around and inside the girl’s face, plus a few purple lines to bring back the missing strands of hair. The second image shows the resulting mask. This is a good way to fine-tune your mask. Everything that’s black will be removed/masked, and everything that’s white will be left/extracted. But if you see any

Figure 3: EZ Mask can be also used on inorganic items with hard edges, such as with this life-sized replica of a Transformer (that was standing in a restaurant window). After removing the background, I used EZ Mask’s Color Correction tools to make the yellow of its suit more vivid.

Figure 4: Sometimes when you photograph something in front of a green-screen, the green color spills over onto the object or person (as can be seen in this lady’s face). After removing the green background, I used EZ Mask’s “Spill Suppression” tools to remove the green spill. I then used several of EZ Mask’s Color Correction tools to finish tweaking her skin tones. She was then ready to be composited with a new background.

grey remaining (whether in the black or white areas) you simply need to draw a few more lines over those areas to fine-tune the selections.

Since Figure 1 was a single image, when EZ Mask proc-essed the mask and returned me to Photoshop, Pho-toshop’s default/empty checkerboard background appeared. I next imported (as a second layer) a new back-ground image. This process was fairly quick and easy to complete.

The process in Figure 2 was identical to the steps taken in Figure 1 with the exception that it was al-ready a composite image. So when EZ Mask re-moved the background, the replacement back-ground layer automatically appeared.

The SkinnyEvaluation: EZ Mask’s name is apropos - it is easy to use. I was impressed with how well it handled hair and semitransparent items like smoke.Requires: Adobe Photoshop CS5 and up (64 Bit Only)

Adobe Photoshop Elements 13 and up (Non-app store version)Apple Photoshop Lightroom 3 and upMacintosh Multicore Intel® processorMac OSX 10.8.x and upInternet access required for software activation / deactivation / trials

Company: Digital Film Tools, LLCPrice: $150Available 15 day trial copy

Figure 5: I wanted to see how effective EZ Mask would be at removing a very busy background that contained some of the same colors as the foreground object that I wanted to extract - I was quite pleased with the out-come. BTW: I got a kick out of placing this cheep oriental knickknack next to King Rudolf II’s priceless crown.

Figure 7: EZ Mask is very efficient at extracting semi-transparent items like smoke. No-tice that you can still see through the thiner smoke around its edges (after compositing it onto another photo). BTW: Notice, there’s no green spill remained in the smoke.

Figure 6: The sliding Split-screen views let you compare your mask to the original to be sure every little wisp of hair, etc. is extracted.