Tag: mask ai

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How to quickly mask and replace the background in your photos

How to create stunning composite photos

Replacing the background of an image to create a composite photograph can result in stunning, creative works of art. Whether you want to completely replace the sky to change the mood of your photo, or totally isolate objects for your graphic design projects, your first step will be to create a mask.

What is an image mask?

A mask simply helps you select a portion of your image. After masking your image, you can can easily change background colors, make transparent images, or replace portions of your image without ever deleting a pixel from your original photo. Masking can require a lot of precision skill and effort to carefully refine complicated selections, like hair and fur.

Masking in Adobe Photoshop

If you’ve ever tried to replace the background of an image in Photoshop, you know how tedious this process can be. Even with Photoshop’s magic wand and quick mask tools, you’ll still find yourself zooming in at 1200% and carefully clicking away pixel-by-pixel to get a perfect mask.

The problem with masking in Photoshop is that isolating fine objects is time-consuming. You’ll need to switch through a variety of brushes and ideally use a digital drawing tablet to perfectly fade your brush strokes.

In the image above, you can see what you have to work with when you mask an image in Photoshop. Attempting to isolate the background from the model’s individual strands of hair could take hours to get just right.

Masking with Mask AI by Topaz Labs

Mask AI solves the problem of complicated image masks. Using the power of sophisticated neural networks, Mask AI can identify the content of your photo and make the most accurate masks in mere seconds. Finally, you can let your computer do all the complicated masking work for you, so you can complete your project in less time.

All it takes is a quick application of the trimap to compute a mask. Paint a blue line where you’d like the application to “compute” the mask, and drop a red paint bucket on the area you’d like removed. It’s that simple.

It only takes a moment for Mask AI to compute your mask, and just like that, your background is removed and details are preserved.

If necessary, you can tidy up the brush strokes, or refine the mask using sliders like Edge Strength and Foreground Recovery to get your mask just how you want it.

Mask AI has background replacement built-in, so you can finish your project without ever leaving the app. You can easily apply a solid color background, blur the existing background, or import a new background altogether.

Try Mask AI by Topaz Labs totally free

Try Mask AI totally free for 30-days, no credit card or commitment required. Mask AI works as a standalone application for Mac or PC, or as a Photoshop plugin to help keep your workflow running smoothly.

Buy Mask AI today and get 15% off with coupon code MASKBETTER

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Post-Processing Sliders

Users Guide

Mask AI

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Post-Processing Sliders

Mask AI allows you to create tricky masks in record time thanks to our intuitive machine learning technology and trimap technique.
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  • Slider Overview

Use the post-processing sliders to perfect your mask quickly. The Edge Hardness, Shift or Strength sliders come in handy if you want to add more sharpness to a rocky landscape, or perhaps soften the edges for a portrait.

  • The Edge Hardness makes the edge softer or harder.
  • The Edge Strength shows the edge more sharp or more feathered.
  • The Edge Shift shows the edge more or less.
  • The Foreground Recovery slider revives the color of your foreground in weaker or more transparent areas. This can be a great tool for fur, whiskers, or wispy hair.
  • The Defringe slider desaturates the edges of your mask to help with color contamination and bleeding.
Read below for more information on each of these sliders.
  • Edge hardness
Determines how hard your mask is applied to subject edges in your image. The higher the parameter the harder your edges will be. The lower the parameter, the softer (more feathered) your edges will be.
 

The Edge hardness slider comes in handy if you want to add more sharpness to a rocky landscape, or perhaps soften the edges for a portrait. 

  • Edge Strength

The Edge Strength slider measures the local contrast across the edge and it can offer you a more defined edge or something feathered or slightly out of focus. 

  • Edge Shift
The Edge Shift slider shifts the mask edge in either direction. This could be helpful when wanting to adjust the location of your mask by only a pixel or two. If for any reason the mask is not settling in exactly where you want it to, this slider can help you get the exact masking area you want for your image.
  • Foreground Recovery
Foreground recovery revives the color of your foreground in weaker / more transparent areas after your image has been processed. This can be a great tool for fur, whiskers, or wispy hair, by bringing back more detail in areas of your image that are desaturated by the masking process.
  • Defringe
Sometimes after masking, you may see a stubborn ring of pixels around your initial selection. This is known as an edge halo, fringing or matting. The Defringe slider desaturates the edges of your mask to help with color contamination and bleeding.

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Mask AI Overview

Users Guide

Mask AI

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Mask AI Overview

Mask AI allows you to create tricky masks in record time thanks to our intuitive machine learning technology and trimap technique.
Download Mask AI Now
  • Introduction to Mask AI

What is Mask AI?

Mask AI is an intelligent tool that allows you to create a mask quickly and accurately by using the power of AI technology. Compared to Photoshop, Mask AI doesn’t need tedious brushwork to get a high-quality mask. And there’s no need to learn complicated icons and tools. With Mask AI you only need to roughly outline your subject in blue, one click fills what you want to cut, one click fills what you want to keep, and press “Compute Mask”. It’s really that simple. Our neural network has been trained to distinguish tough edges, so you can get a great mask on the first attempt.

What should I use it for?

You should use Mask AI anytime you need a mask in your workflow especially challenging and detailed masks. It can be a pain to make a good cut-out in Photoshop, and it can take up an entire day’s work. Mask AI’s intuitive color-coded system reduces it to 4 simple steps: keep, cut, compute, and replace.

Is Mask AI a plugin or standalone?

Mask AI functions as a standalone application or as a plugin for Photoshop and Topaz Labs Studio 2

  • What's New?

Mask AI includes machine learning for a more accurate mask with less refining required and less user input (an answer to all photographers’ prayers!). We’ve built Mask AI from the ground up to include our latest technology, so you can power up your workflow. Here are a few things we think you’ll enjoy:

1. The Auto-Trimap tools: Our unique Trimap technology provides you with a quick way to let the program know what you’d like to mask. There is a Auto-Detect Subject and Auto-Detect Sky. Auto-Detect Subject will quickly cut away the background, keep the subject and determine what needs to be computed around the subject. Auto-Detect Sky will cut away the sky for easy sky replacement. 

A word of advice: Be sure to check over the auto-trimap before hitting “Compute”. There may be areas the program missed. Also, please be aware the auto-trimap will not detect every subject.

2. Mask, Translucent and Contrast modes:

The AI mode is the ideal mode for more complex masking tasks, like trees, hair, fur, or any image containing a lot of details. 

The Translucent mode is a special AI mode perfect for fabrics and semi-transparent materials such as veils or mesh. Please note this mode is not meant to work on glass objects because of its reflective qualities. 

The Contrast mode it great for simpler subjects with simpler backgrounds, which have little contrast separation between foreground and background. For example, objects with straight lines and buildings. 

3. Manual Trimap Masking:

MASK (Blue) – Region for AI to draw the mask edge. 

KEEP (Green) – Region you define as the foreground. This is preserved. 

CUT (Red) – Region you define as the background. This is removed. 

4. Refining:

The same tools used to create the Trimap will help you refine your mask! The Red cut brush will help you eliminate areas, the Green keep brush will help you brush back in areas you want to retain, and the Blue compute brush will compute a certain area again. When refining, you’ll have the option to uncheck “Auto-update mask with changes”, and make brush strokes without the program computing after each stroke. Once you’re finished making refinement strokes, you can then select “Update Mask.” This is purely a user preference, so you can select what fits your workflow.

5. Color Range Tool:

The Color Range tool can be used to select the color range you want to Keep or Cut from the image. It can be used to construct your mask or as a refining tool. If you use it to construct your mask you use the Keep or Cut brush and paint over the image after picking a color. If you are going to use it as a refinement tool, once you have computed your mask, you select a color and then use the Keep or Cut to refine the edges of the mask. 

  • System Requirements

Operating System

Windows: Windows 7, 8, 10 (64-bit only) 

*As of Jan 14, 2020, Microsoft has ended its support for Windows 7.

Mac: macOS version 10.12 (Sierra) and above

We currently do not support Linux-based operating systems.

Graphics Drivers and OpenGL

Your system’s graphic drivers need to be fully up to date, which you can accomplish by following this guide:

Updating your GPU

Our apps also require OpenGL version 3.3 or later.

Hardware Requirements

CPU

  Intel AMD
Minimum Intel i5 or equivalent (3.0GHz and above)  Ryzen 5 or equivalent (3.0GHz and above)
Recommended Intel i7 or greater (4GHz and above)  Ryzen 7 or greater (4GHz and above)
A note on openVINO: Topaz Labs apps support Intel’s openVINO toolset for high-speed CPU-based rendering. If you are currently using an Intel CPU, you can enable openVINO in the Preferences menu of any of our apps.

GPU/Graphics Card

 NvidiaAMD
Minimum2GB of dedicated VRAM (GT 740 or greater)2GB of dedicated VRAM (Radeon 5870 or greater)
Recommended 4GB of dedicated VRAM (GTX 970 or greater)  4GB of dedicated VRAM (Radeon RX 460 or greater)
Optimal 8GB of dedicated VRAM (GTX 1080 or greater) 8GB of dedicated VRAM (Radeon RX 580 or greater)
  • Minimum: Requirements for application to function, users should expect slow performance, large files may cause crashing
  • Recommended: Users should experience no performance issues, though slowness may occur with large files
  • Optimal: Users should not experience any performance issues

-We do not support Intel HD Graphics 4600 or lower.

RAM

Minimum: 8GB

Recommended: 16GB

Optimal: 32GB

Monitor

A monitor that outputs at a resolution of at least 1024 x 768 is recommended.

  • Purchasing and Downloading a Trial

Where do I purchase Mask AI?

You can find Mask AI on the Topaz website at topazlabs.com/mask-ai. To purchase, head to the Topaz Store.

How Do I start a trial?

First, if you are new to Topaz Labs, create an account on the Topaz Labs My Account Page. Next simply download Mask AI from the Topaz Labs Downloads Page, login using your account information, and select “Start Trial” to begin your free 30-day trial.

  • Installing Mask AI

Windows

  1. Download from topazlabs.com/downloads
  2. Double-click the download in the bottom left of the screen (Note: You can also find it in your Downloads folder}
  3. Follow the prompts in the installer
  4. Restart your computer (optional, but recommended)
  5. Open the application as a standalone to make sure it is working

Mac

  1. Download from topazlabs.com/downloads
  2. Double-click the download in the bottom left of the screen (Note: You can also find it in your Downloads folder}
  3. Follow the prompts in the installer
  4. Restart your computer (optional, but recommended)
  5. Open the application as a standalone to make sure it is working

Topaz Labs Blog

Find written and video tutorials to guide you through creative processes in Topaz software. Start creating a masterpiece today!

Topaz Help Center

Got a question? We’ve got answers. Find troubleshooting, tips, and more, or contact our Support Team.