Vertus Fluid Mask 3 Software Review
Introduction
Vertus Fluid Mask promises to be the fastest, best, and possibly the easiest cut out tool for photographers and image artists. I put it through its paces to see just what this tool can do. I would consider myself to be an experienced Photoshop user, and have often manually cut out images using the pen tool, layer masks, edge masks, and other complex methods. It’s not surprising that sometimes such cut outs take several hours to complete – and I would perform them over the course of many days. So, anything that promises to ease my workload and make it quicker is definitely worth more than a passing look!
Licensing
One thing to be aware of is that the license allows for use “on one computer”. You may have been used to Adobe allowing use on a main computer, plus your laptop (as long as both are not used at the same time). Vertus operates a one license for one machine policy. So it looks like your cut outs are going to have to be on your main computer, unless you want to buy an extra license for the laptop!
Installation
Installation under Windows was an absolute breeze. Unlike some plugins this tool correctly located my Photoshop CS2 installation, even though it is not installed in the regular location. If only all plugin tools would install that easily! Once installed, there is a stand alone application as well as a filter plug in (under “Filters / Vertus / Fluid Mask” in Photoshop). Since Fluid Mask only works with CS2 and CS3 you may find you need the stand alone tool. It will export to PNG format (including all the transparency) so you can use the image tool of your choice.
First Impressions
The first thing that caught me entirely by surprise is when Fluid Mask is fired up from Photoshop, the whole Photoshop application disappears (that’s the first tool I’ve seen that does that). That feature is probably a good idea so that the workspace is cleared up, ready to work on the cut out (and as I later found out from the Vertus site – it’s to reduce memory). In my case, with dual monitors, it was more of a shock than anything else - so don’t worry when it happens to you! The user interface is extremely well designed – uncluttered, clear and very usable. You are presented with a set of tools down the left side, the image in the centre, and navigator, extra controls and tips on the right side. As soon as Fluid Mask is given an image to work with it sets about locating all the edges in the image. Although you can start to perform masking selection before this process is complete, it’s a good idea to let this finish – especially if you’re new to the process. Once complete, you’ll see your image as a lattice work of thin blue lines – denoting all the edges found. Now comes the fun part - you help Fluid Mask by showing it what you want to keep, and what you want to throw away!
Tutorials
Like me you may plunge straight in without reading any manuals. You’ll find you can get some things working straight away. However, it’s not until you take the time to read the supplied help file and the quick tutorials that you’ll really start to understand how this tool works. Additionally, Vertus provide some very fine video tutorials on their website that are definitely worth watching and downloading for future reference. Some of the example cut outs just blew me away!
Stop, Go, and In Between
Fluid Mask uses an intuitive “green for keep”, “red for delete” method to define what’s required in the image. Blue is used for a blend mask – the transition area between the keep and delete mask. Each of these keep, delete, and blend brushes are available in three forms. There’s “Exact”, “Local”, and “Global”. For most masking you’ll probably need the “Local” versions first. You only have to sweep a rough line across the area you want and the edge boundaries are used – a bit like “painting with numbers”. There’s absolutely no need to be precise (unlike other masking tools I’ve tried). If you have an image of an object that’s pretty much on a clean background, you’ll probably start by defining the “Delete” areas. Once done, you can tell Fluid Mask to “Auto-Fill with keep” and it’ll do the work of filling the rest in green. What’s really neat about this process is that Fluid Mask will also assign the blend mask – working out how wide that should be, depending on the characteristics of the edge. On one of my test images the edge detection took about 30 seconds, while the selection process took about 10 seconds and produced a nearly usable mask with no background colours left on the edge at all! Amazing!
Control
Thankfully Fluid Mask uses the pressure sensitivity from my Wacom tablet – which makes mask creation much easier still. There are also key-bindings for all controls. Most of the key strokes are Photoshop compatible (such as holding Space down to drag the image), and are quickly learned.
Tidying Up
Some parts of the image may go a little awry, and this is where Fluid Mask is loaded with features to fine-tune the problem areas. For example, in my product cut out, I had some little edges left over – so I picked the “Exact Delete” brush and carefully brushed a few pixels of the offending spot. Fluid Mask dynamically picked up what I wanted to erase and adjusted the mask around that. Finally, a careful paint of the “Exact Blend” to repair the now hard edge and the job was done. As performing the full cut out may be quite time-consuming, there is an excellent tool – the “Preview Cut-out” tool - where you can just outline a rectangle and see the results almost instantaneously. This tool alone accelerates your workflow as you can work in detail on a problem area and see the results as you go. As the tutorials and videos show, the tidying up process may require a little input from you – especially in situations where there is hair, or a lattice (like a tree against the sky). Rather than painstakingly painting every tiny hole you can create a “Patch”.
Patching it up
The patch mechanism allows for a fine degree of control over those problem edge areas. For example, with the colour control you can select by colour, hue, saturation, lightness, red, green, or blue and tell Fluid Mask what you want to keep. Apart from a regular histogram type selection there is a “grid” that allows very accurate selection of pixels based on colour – and from there you can assign the pixels to be “keep”, “delete”, or “blend”. Very nifty!
If pixel selection isn’t what’s required, you can choose from alternative edge-detection mechanisms for the patch. For example, if you have a glass object that blends with the background you can fine tune the patch to help identify the edges – and from there you can choose what to keep. Using the patches means you can, for instance, apply very complex and computationally intensive algorithms to just a small part of the image, rather than slowing down the overall process.
The learning Process
Although the interface looks simple – the algorithms and tools within Fluid Mask are incredibly powerful. As I quickly found out, while throwing more and more complex images at Fluid Mask, there is a fair amount of learning required.
Some of my complex cut outs were a slightly frustrating experience at first. Getting the bulk of the cut out was simple, but I found my inexperience made it hard to decide what method to use for problem edges. What I found most useful is going back to the tutorial and videos to refresh my memory on the tools again. Once I had the worked out the best approach the cut out was simple and clean. I can imagine that a first time user, especially one who hasn’t seriously tried manual cut outs within Photoshop alone, may give up when faced with these decisions within Fluid Mask. It’s definitely worth the effort of learning though! For example, I revisited an old image that I had manually cut out in Photoshop. I seem to recall putting hours of painstaking effort into creating a complex mask. It involved wisps of thread on a very old chair, a long-haired cat, and a cluttered background. At the time I was very pleased to receive an online award for the finished image. However, trying the same cut out exercise in Fluid Mask was, in comparison, like a walk in the park. I took around 15 minutes to perform the cut out in one sitting. I should have looked at Fluid Mask a lot earlier!
Conclusion
I can only rate Fluid Mask very, very highly. It is a polished product that produces superb results much faster than with Photoshop only methods. If you are a graphic artist who regularly cuts out items, e.g. product shots for catalogues, then this product will pay for itself in no time at all. It’s a “must-have” as far as I can see.
Even for the occasional cut-out you may find that Fluid Mask makes good business sense. It’ll certainly make the process a lot less stressful and produce an excellent result. What is fascinating is that I’ve started looking at images I wouldn’t previously have considered cutting out. It’s like going back to school where you first had the excitement of getting to work with scissors on all kinds of magazine and scrapbook images and building a collage. Be prepared to spend a lot of time with Fluid Mask and Photoshop having a great deal of creative fun!
Vertus Fluid Mask promises to be the fastest, best, and possibly the easiest cut out tool for photographers and image artists. I put it through its paces to see just what this tool can do. I would consider myself to be an experienced Photoshop user, and have often manually cut out images using the pen tool, layer masks, edge masks, and other complex methods. It’s not surprising that sometimes such cut outs take several hours to complete – and I would perform them over the course of many days. So, anything that promises to ease my workload and make it quicker is definitely worth more than a passing look!
Licensing
One thing to be aware of is that the license allows for use “on one computer”. You may have been used to Adobe allowing use on a main computer, plus your laptop (as long as both are not used at the same time). Vertus operates a one license for one machine policy. So it looks like your cut outs are going to have to be on your main computer, unless you want to buy an extra license for the laptop!
Installation
Installation under Windows was an absolute breeze. Unlike some plugins this tool correctly located my Photoshop CS2 installation, even though it is not installed in the regular location. If only all plugin tools would install that easily! Once installed, there is a stand alone application as well as a filter plug in (under “Filters / Vertus / Fluid Mask” in Photoshop). Since Fluid Mask only works with CS2 and CS3 you may find you need the stand alone tool. It will export to PNG format (including all the transparency) so you can use the image tool of your choice.
First Impressions
The first thing that caught me entirely by surprise is when Fluid Mask is fired up from Photoshop, the whole Photoshop application disappears (that’s the first tool I’ve seen that does that). That feature is probably a good idea so that the workspace is cleared up, ready to work on the cut out (and as I later found out from the Vertus site – it’s to reduce memory). In my case, with dual monitors, it was more of a shock than anything else - so don’t worry when it happens to you! The user interface is extremely well designed – uncluttered, clear and very usable. You are presented with a set of tools down the left side, the image in the centre, and navigator, extra controls and tips on the right side. As soon as Fluid Mask is given an image to work with it sets about locating all the edges in the image. Although you can start to perform masking selection before this process is complete, it’s a good idea to let this finish – especially if you’re new to the process. Once complete, you’ll see your image as a lattice work of thin blue lines – denoting all the edges found. Now comes the fun part - you help Fluid Mask by showing it what you want to keep, and what you want to throw away!
Tutorials
Like me you may plunge straight in without reading any manuals. You’ll find you can get some things working straight away. However, it’s not until you take the time to read the supplied help file and the quick tutorials that you’ll really start to understand how this tool works. Additionally, Vertus provide some very fine video tutorials on their website that are definitely worth watching and downloading for future reference. Some of the example cut outs just blew me away!
Stop, Go, and In Between
Fluid Mask uses an intuitive “green for keep”, “red for delete” method to define what’s required in the image. Blue is used for a blend mask – the transition area between the keep and delete mask. Each of these keep, delete, and blend brushes are available in three forms. There’s “Exact”, “Local”, and “Global”. For most masking you’ll probably need the “Local” versions first. You only have to sweep a rough line across the area you want and the edge boundaries are used – a bit like “painting with numbers”. There’s absolutely no need to be precise (unlike other masking tools I’ve tried). If you have an image of an object that’s pretty much on a clean background, you’ll probably start by defining the “Delete” areas. Once done, you can tell Fluid Mask to “Auto-Fill with keep” and it’ll do the work of filling the rest in green. What’s really neat about this process is that Fluid Mask will also assign the blend mask – working out how wide that should be, depending on the characteristics of the edge. On one of my test images the edge detection took about 30 seconds, while the selection process took about 10 seconds and produced a nearly usable mask with no background colours left on the edge at all! Amazing!
Control
Thankfully Fluid Mask uses the pressure sensitivity from my Wacom tablet – which makes mask creation much easier still. There are also key-bindings for all controls. Most of the key strokes are Photoshop compatible (such as holding Space down to drag the image), and are quickly learned.
Tidying Up
Some parts of the image may go a little awry, and this is where Fluid Mask is loaded with features to fine-tune the problem areas. For example, in my product cut out, I had some little edges left over – so I picked the “Exact Delete” brush and carefully brushed a few pixels of the offending spot. Fluid Mask dynamically picked up what I wanted to erase and adjusted the mask around that. Finally, a careful paint of the “Exact Blend” to repair the now hard edge and the job was done. As performing the full cut out may be quite time-consuming, there is an excellent tool – the “Preview Cut-out” tool - where you can just outline a rectangle and see the results almost instantaneously. This tool alone accelerates your workflow as you can work in detail on a problem area and see the results as you go. As the tutorials and videos show, the tidying up process may require a little input from you – especially in situations where there is hair, or a lattice (like a tree against the sky). Rather than painstakingly painting every tiny hole you can create a “Patch”.
Patching it up
The patch mechanism allows for a fine degree of control over those problem edge areas. For example, with the colour control you can select by colour, hue, saturation, lightness, red, green, or blue and tell Fluid Mask what you want to keep. Apart from a regular histogram type selection there is a “grid” that allows very accurate selection of pixels based on colour – and from there you can assign the pixels to be “keep”, “delete”, or “blend”. Very nifty!
If pixel selection isn’t what’s required, you can choose from alternative edge-detection mechanisms for the patch. For example, if you have a glass object that blends with the background you can fine tune the patch to help identify the edges – and from there you can choose what to keep. Using the patches means you can, for instance, apply very complex and computationally intensive algorithms to just a small part of the image, rather than slowing down the overall process.
The learning Process
Although the interface looks simple – the algorithms and tools within Fluid Mask are incredibly powerful. As I quickly found out, while throwing more and more complex images at Fluid Mask, there is a fair amount of learning required.
Some of my complex cut outs were a slightly frustrating experience at first. Getting the bulk of the cut out was simple, but I found my inexperience made it hard to decide what method to use for problem edges. What I found most useful is going back to the tutorial and videos to refresh my memory on the tools again. Once I had the worked out the best approach the cut out was simple and clean. I can imagine that a first time user, especially one who hasn’t seriously tried manual cut outs within Photoshop alone, may give up when faced with these decisions within Fluid Mask. It’s definitely worth the effort of learning though! For example, I revisited an old image that I had manually cut out in Photoshop. I seem to recall putting hours of painstaking effort into creating a complex mask. It involved wisps of thread on a very old chair, a long-haired cat, and a cluttered background. At the time I was very pleased to receive an online award for the finished image. However, trying the same cut out exercise in Fluid Mask was, in comparison, like a walk in the park. I took around 15 minutes to perform the cut out in one sitting. I should have looked at Fluid Mask a lot earlier!
Conclusion
I can only rate Fluid Mask very, very highly. It is a polished product that produces superb results much faster than with Photoshop only methods. If you are a graphic artist who regularly cuts out items, e.g. product shots for catalogues, then this product will pay for itself in no time at all. It’s a “must-have” as far as I can see.
Even for the occasional cut-out you may find that Fluid Mask makes good business sense. It’ll certainly make the process a lot less stressful and produce an excellent result. What is fascinating is that I’ve started looking at images I wouldn’t previously have considered cutting out. It’s like going back to school where you first had the excitement of getting to work with scissors on all kinds of magazine and scrapbook images and building a collage. Be prepared to spend a lot of time with Fluid Mask and Photoshop having a great deal of creative fun!