Learn better and faster image masking with Topaz Mask AI

[Music] welcome to mask ai the best way of creating perfect masks in practically no time leveraging the power of topaz labs's proprietary machine learning mask ai will dramatically improve your masking workflow once you've downloaded and installed mask ai you can either launch the standalone application or you can use it as a plugin for photoshop lightroom and topaz studio when you launch mask ai you're welcome to follow along with the three tutorials that are presented by default or let's get started with a simple example click on the open button or drag and drop an image into mask ai and once the image has been loaded in the upper left hand corner click the auto detect subjects button and then once the ai has found your subject all you have to do is on the lower right hand corner click compute mask or hit the enter key on your keyboard and that's it you just created your first mask now let's dive a little deeper into all of the features of mask ai first we'll start out by loading this photograph right here and you'll notice that there is a subject to the photograph and there's also the sky in the background using the latest in ai technology if we were to click on auto detect subject the ai automatically finds the subject of our photo so if we were to now ask for a mask there's our mask now the same applies if i was to reset everything back to the keep but this time instead of asking for the subject we're gonna ask for auto detect sky so when you click on auto detect sky there it is it automatically finds the sky for you and now here is the mask of the sky so now let's take a look at some of the other more manual features that are in mask ai with this example of the dog by default mask ai superimposes a green overlay on top of your screen that's because currently the default asks for green which designates the keep color to be overlaid so we're gonna now learn about the foundation of mask ai which is called a tri-map first green is all the areas that we want to keep next on the left hand side and our toolbar we're going to select the blue brush which is actually called the mask brush so now you notice as you start painting with blue we're going to make sure that we cover all of the hair and the on the edges of our subject with blue blue is going to be the color that the computer is going to calculate all the regions that are in blue are the difficult parts that the computer should work on then finally the last color in the tri-map is the color red which is the cut color now you notice that i can either paint with red or i can change my brush size with the brush size control right here or i can just use the left and right bracket keys on the keyboard as a keyboard shortcut and finally my favorite tool is just the bucket fill for red and we click on the background and our try map has been completed so once again any area of your tri-map which is green designates your subject which is what you want to keep think of it as anything that's solid where light cannot pass through all the green parts of your tri-map blue designates all the areas that the computer should calculate and you basically want to make blue any area that's difficult like the edges hair a veil smoke glass all the difficult parts should be blue that the computer must calculate and then finally red simply designates the background or the area that you want to cut out that you don't want so now that you've created your tri-map you can actually save your try map so under file i can choose save as and you'll notice that by default try map is selected right now you can give your try map a name and just choose save and your try map will be saved now this is a wonderful feature where if you have spent a lot of time creating your tri-map just make sure you save it out so that in case there's something wrong with your mask you can always come back load your tri-map and continue to do your work now keep in mind that you can either create your tri-maps manually or you can use the ai's auto detect subject or auto detect sky to automatically find your tri-map for you this is often a great starting point for making your tri-maps now that we have our tri-map it's time to calculate our mask the mask mode designates how mask ai will calculate your mask by default the ai model is selected because most of the time the ai mode will give you the best results next translucent if you're masking transparent or translucent subjects such as fine hair smoke a veil glass translucent is an ai model that was trained with those characteristics and then finally contrast contrast is from remask five and the mask is calculated simply by the contrast that's between the foreground and the background colors now that we have set up our tri-map i'm gonna choose contrast and click compute mask and that's it our mask has now been computed so now the view that is being presented is what's called the two pane view where we can see our original image on the left hand side with the tri-map superimposed you can always toggle that try map on and off with the toggle button that's right here next to show try map then along the right hand side we can now see what's called the keep image which is showing us exactly the image that was just masked so this is the typical working environment where you'll have two views side by side with your original image on the left and your final results may be on the right now you don't have to necessarily choose this because every one of these views can be changed to be whatever you want to look at so let's say if i want to look at the original here or i want to switch it over to viewing the mask which in this case is really remarkable because we could see all of the fine hair that mask ai has captured in the mask we could switch over to the keep which is what we were looking at just a few seconds ago [Music] and then finally we have our cut view which is essentially the inverse of the mask which is great for sometimes just checking your work and seeing maybe areas that you have not masked so we'll go back to the keep view and finally there is the four pane view with the four pane view you can see all these different views at the same time the original your mask the keep and the cut on the screen and sometimes this view is a great working environment for those of you who need to see these different views together let's go back to just our regular one paint view and look at our keep all right so as we look along the right hand side of our screen first you can see that you can reset your mask environment either to the mask the keep or the cut which is great for just starting from the beginning so if you notice you've made a mistake and you just want to start from scratch the reset buttons are the best way to do it and then along this corner we have undo and redo which are of course in every application where you can use command or control z to undo or redo through the steps you have made as we move further down in the user interface the refine tab is where you refine the edges of your mask so we're going to get a little closer to our mask and actually look at the mask view as we start from the top edge hardness as we move edge harden this up you'll notice that the white area that's inside of your mask is growing out so this is going to create a much harder mask in the interior now in this case we don't want that just because we like the subtle hair and the details that are around the perimeter of the dog so we'll keep the edge hardness down edge strength is for masking subjects which are gonna have a very harsh cut edge to them now once again since the dog has fluffy hair there's no need to manipulate the edge strength edge shift now to see the effects of edge shift we're going to switch back over into our mask view and as we move edge shift over to the left what's happening right now is that we're eating in on our mask switching back over to our mask view we can see that now by manipulating this we can either edge shift so that the mask edges will grow thicker and thicker and will go beyond the edges of your subject or they can shrink in so in times when you need to just eat in on your mask a little bit edge shift is the perfect tool foreground recovery and defringe are one of the most important tools in mask ai and first starting with foreground recovery as we look along the edges where the hair is on our dog we're going to take the foreground recovery all the way down to zero and you'll notice that along along the perimeter some of the greens and the darker colors from the background are bleeding around the edges now for most masking you don't want these dark borders around your edges and that's why foreground recovery actually attempts to find the real colors of the foreground of your subject so in this case if we had foreground recovery all the way down we could see some of those greens and dark colors from the background but as we bring that foreground recovery up we can see that those dark colors just disappear now finally d fringe d fringe is for removing color or chrominance from the edges or the semi-transparent parts of your mask defringe is used often in masking veils so if your background has some color the colors are going to seep through the veil but by simply taking the fringe up you're just going to desaturate the semi-transparent parts of your mask and the veil and smoke will look amazing so that's essentially what the refine tab is all about it allows you to refine the edges of your mask next we're going to look at the background tab by default your background tab starts with none which means that your background is just represented by the classic gray checkered pattern next one of my favorite features in mask ai is blur with the blur tab selected you can now choose how blurry you want your background image to be so your image started out like this and a little bit later on we're going to see how powerful and useful blurring the background of your original image can be next we have color that allows you to select any color that you want to replace your background with so just choose any color that makes sense to you and click ok and then finally image image is great for just replacing the background with any image that you might have on your hard drive so i'll select this image over here which looks beautiful and some of the controls for changing the background and the foreground when you select image for your background you can do more than just loaded image you can either transform the image let's make it a little bit bigger move it over just a little bit we can flip the image horizontally or vertically let's keep it the way it was before and then once you're satisfied click on that transform button one more time because now you'll notice as we look at our keep all of these controls for manipulating or adjusting both your background and your foreground become available so let's say for the background we want to eliminate some of the color that's there so we can just bring down the saturation of the background or for the foreground let's say we need to make the foreground a little brighter then of course we can do that as well so this is a great way of tweaking the different parts of your composition so you can get exactly the balance that feels right to you right inside of mask ai and once you're done making your changes in the lower right hand corner is the save button here when you click save you're presented with a few options you can either save your mask as just a transparency and this can be either a png file or we have a couple of other formats that will give you transparent edges the composite button is great when you just want to save the final image that you had composited so if the image that we're working on right now is what you like and you want that saved you would select composite alpha only is of course if you're interested in just saving out the alpha or the mask channel of your composition and of course at this time i'm going to select composite uh we'll give it a name in this case it's called dog mask composite we'll put it out someplace let's say on our desktop and we click save and that's it the final composition now has been saved as we finish this basic overview under the pull downs when you select preferences you have a few choices allow anonymous data collection will send how you use mask ai back to topaz labs persistent edge refinement settings will make sure that mask ai saves the settings that you had under the refinement tab so if you like for example your foreground recovery to always be up would you like your d fringe to be at a certain level for most of your masking by simply leaving persist edge refinement settings to yes mask ai will always remember how you had your refine edge settings so that when you return again those settings will just be there default save as suffix in this case every time we save an image out it's going to have a dash mask as the suffix tri-map opacity dictates how transparent the tri-map is on your image and you can change that to be any value you want default tri-map color dictates how mask ai will start either defaulting your screen to the green the blue or the red photoshop auto create layer now these next two settings are for when you're using mask ai with photoshop so if you would like mask ai to automatically create a layer for you in photoshop you would turn that on and then for photoshop to save to layer mask is another great option for those of you who are familiar with photoshop's layer masking when you turn that on every time you're done with mask ai the layer mask will be populated in photoshop and then finally under processing under advanced preferences we can either force mask ai to work using the cpu or the gpu now let's examine how easy it is to blur the background of your existing photos now in this photograph the background seems a little too busy just because the subject is too close to the background we want to blur the background and it's as easy as in mask ai select the auto detect subject then here is our try map that's been already created automatically click compute mask once your mask has been computed now you can switch over to a single view and let's look at our mask but more importantly on the background choose blur now by default this blur seems a little too high so i'm gonna bring the blur down just a bit until it makes it seem more natural and if there's little areas that mask ai had left out you can just go in here and touch up those small regions until you get your mask just right all right now since the foreground and the background have been separated from each other feel free to experiment so let's say here in the background we wanted to completely desaturate wow that really separates the foreground from the background or if you just double click on any tab title it will just take your slider back to its default position and that's how you blur the background of any of your images in case you're wondering how this compares with photoshop blurring the background here's an example where photoshop is using a gaussian blur to blur the background and you can see that there is a glow of her headphones that's around her headphones and there's a glow of the green of her shirt that's surrounding her shirt as well that's because photoshop is basically blurring everything and then putting it into the background that's why it includes the colors from the foreground now in contrast when you look at mask ai blur none of those pesky glows are there so the results look a lot more natural nowadays sky replacements are very common mainly because it's so difficult to capture your subject with a beautiful sky in the background now with mask ai it's easy and it's fast so with this photograph here all you want to do is this time select auto detect sky so now the ai automatically finds our sky and if there are little details like the leaves that are around the perimeter that have been left out feel free to use the blue brush or the computation brush to calculate now in this case we also want to fill or bucket fill the interior of our subject our tree and once we get it the way we like here we go with the compute mask using the ai model wow the mask looks amazing especially when you look at the actual mask channel itself every little fine detail has been captured perfectly now let's replace the background with something else i'll go back to our single pane view switch to our mask view and then for background let's select image load image now in my backgrounds tab let's find a nice orange sky there we go click the transform button to change it to the right size now in this case i noticed that the light is coming from the right hand side in the photograph and that's why the clouds in the sky being on the right hand side are going to work out perfectly here the only problem now is that there are some of the colors from the original background are still around the perimeter of the tree and that's where our foreground recovery as we bring that up especially when we zoom in on it we could see that now none of the colors from the original background are contaminating the edges then finally as we go back to our background tab um the only other option that's left here to really make this composite work is fixing the colors the background seems very warm it's a very very orangish yellowish kind of a background and so we want to do the same with the foreground so we can now choose the foreground under the adjustment and take the temperature of the foreground and really crank that up wow and that added just so much realism to this composition and as far as the before and after goes let's put these side by side here is the way that the original photograph came out of the camera on the left and on the right here is our composition and especially when you zoom in on it this becomes really amazing just because as you see the fine details of the small trees across the horizon or the little leaves or the branches that are on the tree every single one of those details has been perfectly captured using the ai masking of mask ai now let's look at another quick example of sky replacement now in this case the eiffel tower seems like it'd be impossible but when you click the auto detect sky button wow it found the eiffel tower and a couple other things we want to do is make sure that we fill in the eiffel tower with the blue just because remember blue is the calculation color and so we want to be able to capture all the scaffolding that holds the eiffel tower in place and finally when it comes to the red here at the bottom of the eiffel tower make sure you fill that in with red so that the ai is going to consider that correctly as the background so once we've got this we can click the compute mask button and here's our mask i usually like to check my mask just to make sure everything's okay and there's a little bit that the ai left out here in the middle of the eiffel tower so if we covered that with just a little bit of blue uh you can see how the ai is gonna once again just fill that in perfectly and i'll even cover this area here with a little bit of green so it's going to solidify that part of the eiffel tower now finally let's replace the background as we look at a single image and as we look at the actual keep channel in background we load an image which is going to be here in my backgrounds folder click the transform button let's make that just a little bit bigger we'll bring in the sun and that is amazing there is our finished composition one of the things that i love about playing with compositions like this is uh if the eiffel tower seems like it's a little too bright right now i can switch over to foreground and darken it up so perhaps this is gonna be a silhouette of the eiffel tower but for this composition let's bring the bring up the exposure just a tad so we can see the eiffel tower's colors a little better and because it's being lit by the blue sky we can cool down our eiffel tower just to make it a little bit more blue with the temperature dial over here and then finally as we go back to refining our brush foreground recovery is going to get rid of any of the original background colors that might have been contaminating your original edges and let's do a quick before and after this is of course on the left hand side the way that the photograph came out of your camera and on the right is sky replacement with mask ai now let's look at how you'll use mask ai in photoshop as we click open here's a project that i had saved from before where we want to mask our bride away from the background you'll notice that i have also included a few other potential backgrounds for our image once the bride has been selected or the layer has been selected under filter pull down our toolpaths labs and select mask ai all right well we already know how amazing auto detect subjects is so we'll start with that and even though the ai has found our bride it doesn't really know where her veil is so by using the blue brush you can easily outline all the areas that are going to be for the veil remember blue dictates what is going to be the areas the computer needs to work on or to think about so that's why we're gonna make the veil blue and the rest of the subject green now that we've got our tri-map done make sure this time we select the translucent model for mask ai because her veil is transparent and so that's where translucent does the best job wow now the mask already looks pretty good but i always like to check my work by looking at the mask view as well i can see that along the left hand side we do need to touch up just a little bit of the left side of our mask so i'll draw blue along the left side that makes the left side look a lot better and then finally check your work by looking at the keep now in this case it seems like as we look on the left on the original background some of the greens and the yellows from the background are still bleeding through the veil now this is where foreground recovery is amazing as you bring up the foreground recovery that's gonna get rid of some of the colors and if you still notice there's a little bit of the color left that's from the original background that's where defringe is going to desaturate any of the colors that are in the semi-transparent parts of your mask and once you're happy with it you click apply and wow there it is here's our final mask now please keep in mind that this is the way that your photograph came out of your camera but now she has been masked perfectly and of course you can put her anywhere you want on any background so to learn more or download your free trial visit topazlabs.com forward slash mask ai

Channel: Topaz Labs

Views: 88,977

Keywords: Topaz Labs, mask ai, masking, mask, photo editing, image editing, image masking

Id: u2UBvsZv954

Length: 27min 17sec (1637 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 19 2020