P: Is there an optimal setting for Select and Mask? I can never get it to work efficiently :-(

Report · Jan 23, 2018

Ever since Select and Mask had been released, I've never managed to get it to work smoothly. Actually, when it was first launched, it probably worked the "best" but it still was a waiting game and was never quick. Is there an optimal setting? The quick selection tool is almost instant. I have a decent system but it struggles in Select and Mask. Please see video for demo of my experience. Also, see comments for system spec. Does anyone actually use it effectively? Or do you still use the "old method"(refine edge). This is excruciatingly painful - over 5 mins and I've still not manage to make a basic cutout

Report · Jan 23, 2018

Adobe Photoshop Version: 19.1.0 20180116.r.238 2018/01/16: 1153018 x64
Number of Launches: 382
Operating System: Windows 10 64-bit
Version: 10 or greater 10.0.16299.15
System architecture: Intel CPU Family:6, Model:14, Stepping:3 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, AVX, AVX2, HyperThreading
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Serial number: 96040551486488759224
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   Wavefront|OBJ 19.1.0 (20180116.r.238 2018/01/16: 1153018) - from the file “U3D.8bi”
   WIA Support 19.1.0 (20180116.r.238 2018/01/16: 1153018) - from the file “WIASupport.8li”
   Wind 19.1.0 - from the file “Standard MultiPlugin.8bf”
   Wireless Bitmap 19.1.0 (20180116.r.238 2018/01/16: 1153018) - from the file “WBMP.8bi”
   ZigZag 19.1.0 - from the file “Standard MultiPlugin.8bf”
Optional and third party plug-ins: NONE

Duplicate and Disabled plug-ins: NONE

Plug-ins that failed to load: NONE
Extensions:
   com.adobe.inapp.purchase 2.11.27 - from the file “C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CC 2018\Required\CEP\extensions\com.adobe.DesignLibraryPanel.html\purchase.html”
   com.adobe.Butler.backend 2.0.0 - from the file “C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CC 2018\Required\CEP\extensions\com.adobe.Butler.backend\index.html”
   New Document 2.1.0 - from the file “C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CC 2018\Required\CEP\extensions\com.adobe.ccx.fnft\fnft.html”
   Libraries 2.11.27 - from the file “C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CC 2018\Required\CEP\extensions\com.adobe.DesignLibraryPanel.html\index.html”
   InstaMask 1.0 1.0.0 - from the file “C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\CEP\extensions\com.JM.InstaMask\index.html”
   Start 2.1.0 - from the file “C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CC 2018\Required\CEP\extensions\com.adobe.ccx.start\index.html”
   Adobe Color Themes 6.1.0 - from the file “C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CC 2018\Required\CEP\extensions\com.adobe.KulerPanel.html\index.html”
   Export As 3.1.2 - from the file “C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CC 2018\Required\CEP\extensions\com.adobe.photoshop.crema\PSPanel\dialog.html”
   Raya Pro 2.0 2.0.0 - from the file “C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\CEP\extensions\RP - Manual Install\index.html”
   Export As 3.1.2 - from the file “C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CC 2018\Required\CEP\extensions\com.adobe.photoshop.crema\PSPanel\dialog.html”
Installed TWAIN devices: NONE

Report · Jan 23, 2018

I must admit, I have the same problem as you. It's so painful that I always cancel and go back to the old method.

Rosa

Report · Jan 23, 2018

I must admit, I have the same problem as you. It's so painful that I always cancel and go back to the old method.

Rosa

Report · Jan 23, 2018

And that's what I just did after trying for minutes - cancelled and went back to the old 😞

Report · Jan 23, 2018

Try changing PS Preferences> Performance> Advanced Settings as shown below and Restart PS. Also try using the Quick Selection Tool on the even toned background then click on 'Invert' and use the Refine Edge brush at the hair line.

Report · Jan 23, 2018

Jerry,
that ́s terrible 😞
On my system it ́s nearly realtime. You could try a bigger radius for the QS tool. Is it as slow as this, if you use other preview modes (on black, on white etc.)?

Report · Jan 23, 2018

It's much more responsive for me (though I have a powerful machine - but it has always been fast), even on high res images. But I often experience that you need to plan how you mask nonetheless. For an image like you show in the video, the best would be to first select the outside area which is a flat color (much easier for photoshop to calculate) then invert the selection and start to finetune after. Also using magic wand or even lasso in the beginning and then move on to quick selection tool for the minor details and then enter "select and mask" mode screen for fine tuning. Usually this way I have masked an image perfectly within a few seconds. there's really no point to use the quick selection to mask out every inside detail.

Report · Jan 23, 2018

Ouch, that looks painfully slow. Do you have any setting active in S&M though? It's always better with that tool to have everything zero'd out when making the initial selections...

Report · Jan 23, 2018

Cheers Todd. It was not much of a difference I'm afraid. In fact, it took about 5 mins again before I gave up. Anything else i can try? Also, yes, starting with the Quick Select on the background is quicker initially but once you get into Select and Mask, the problem persist when using the refine edge brush.

Report · Jan 23, 2018

Thanks Stefan, I am afraid it is still as slow as this

Report · Jan 23, 2018

And here I am thinking I have a "decent" machine. I agree with you, there is no point to use quick select on the detailed stuff on an image like this and that's the approach I would usually take, too. I just thought I'd do it all in Select and Mask and also start from selecting what I want to keep to show the extent of the issue. Before replying, I thought I'd use QS first and go through that process, starting with the Quick Select on the background, then invert but once I got into Select and Mask, the problem persisted when using the refine edge brush. I also think that Quick Select should be faster i.e. no spinning ball. To be honest, I use a much lower spec machine at times and it's all quicker on there

Report · Jan 23, 2018

Adobe just released PS 19.1 with changes made to the Select & Mask tools to add a Decontamination control. Perhaps the changes may improve performance. Give it a try and let us know. BTW- No issues on my similar Windows 7 system with a low-performance Quadro 600 GPU and 2.8GHz i7-860 quad-core CPU.

Report · Jan 23, 2018

The only thing really is a bit of contrast for when I'm doing refine edge(as her hair clashes with the background a bit) and a tiny bit of feathering. I tested it with everything zeroed out(after the second recording I just made) and it's marginally quicker but as I bump the contrast for to do refine edge, I get that spinning ball again.

Report · Jan 23, 2018

That's the version I'm running, 19.1. I also use a low performance machine at times with no issues.

Report · Jan 24, 2018

Try using the refine tool in single strokes just on on the actual edges that you want to refine. From the video, it looks as though you are dragging it over a large area of her hair and then making lots of drags on an area you want to capture fly-aways in. Each stroke of the tool appears to make photoshop try to reevaluate the edges in the area you have stroked over, so one can end up queuing lots of edge detection if you shake the mouse around a lot.

For hair fly-aways, I tend to find using a 0 contrast with a brush that is a little wider than the flyaway is most efficient. Once they are all selected I may narrow the brush and bump the contrast up to refine individual fly-aways.

It seems pretty sensitive to brush size and the number of strokes you use, performance-wise and I have had to change my technique from the old Refine Selection, where I did more as you seem to do in the video.

There does seem to be a bit of a performance issue overall though, particularly with complex edges or large images. I also get the spinning wheel then from time to time,even on a single stroke over a complex or low-contrasting area. (I get it on two different Macs, both of which are well-spec'd).

I've tried using Affinity on the same image for comparison, but although it is faster, it doesn't seem to be as good as Photoshop in terms of precision for edge refinement.

All in all though, I think the tool needs a coat of looking at from Adobe - it is slower, sometimes to the point of being not really fit for purpose.

Report · Jan 24, 2018

Hi Jerry- sorry to hear about this! This sounds like something that might be machine specific, since it appears that your lower powered machines are handling the same image with better performance.

One more thing to check- it could be that your GPU or driver is having some sort of issue. Can you verify that your drivers are all up to date?

Report · Jan 24, 2018

Thank you Paddy, great tips here. I will give your tips a go. You are right though - all in all, the tool does need a coat of looking at! Let's see how it goes

Report · Jan 24, 2018

Hi Joel, thanks for getting in touch. It does seem a bit machine specific indeed. All my drivers are up to date, including the nvidia driver. Is there anything else I can try?

Report · Jan 24, 2018

Jerry,

does it make any difference, if you switch OpenCL off or if you maybe switch GPU acceleration totally off? DId you try the 3 different GPU seeings (basic, advanced etc.)?
Did you try different cache settings?

Report · Jan 25, 2018

Hey Stefan. So I thought, let me try. I tried with OpenCL on/ off, GPU off/on(basic, normal, advanced) and it's still the same. I also experimented with the different cache settings, too. As a last resort, I would reinstall with clean preferences and see if that does anything. Just have to reapply all my shortcuts etc. after I guess.

Report · Jan 25, 2018

Hi Jerry,
did you ever try "Onionskin mode"? In the past this was faster than the other modes.
If you want to try to reset the prefs, you could just remove the prefs file from its directory (and save it for later use) and start PS. Then it builds a new prefs file anyway. In case that it doesn ́t help, you could use the old prefs again.
I addition you could save all your shortcuts etc.and reload them later.

Report · Jan 26, 2018

Hi Jerry,

Looking again at what you are doing - have you tried Select Subject ? - I am not sure when it came in to CC, but it is in CC19.1.

You just open your image and then click Select Subject under the Select menu - it will automatically find all the edges and select the image subject and then you just need to use Select and Mask to refine things. It works pretty well and a lot of the edge refinement seems to be done by it. On my slower Mac, a MacBook Pro, using a similar image of a girl on a relatively simple background, it takes about 3 seconds to find the subject and do the selection. You might want to give it a try.

Report · Jan 26, 2018

Hey Paddy, yea it came in 19.1 and I have tried it. I go through the same struggle when refining the edges though. Select Subject only gets you part the way. I have given it a try, too but there is something definitely wrong otherwise. I have used photoshop for some years and it's the first time I've experienced this kind of performance when selecting. I still haven't tried re-installing with fresh preferences so keen to see what this would bring, if anything.

Report · Jan 27, 2018

Jerry,

I tried this on my iMac and on my Windows rig, which is way inferior to yours:

Adobe Photoshop Version: 19.0 20171103.r.190 2017/11/03: 1143799 x64Number of Launches: 4
Operating System: Windows 10 64-bit
Version: 10 or greater 10.0.16299.15
System architecture: Intel CPU Family:6, Model:10, Stepping:9 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, AVX, HyperThreading
Physical processor count: 4
Logical processor count: 8
Processor speed: 2295 MHz
Built-in memory: 16354 MB
Free memory: 9425 MB
Memory available to Photoshop: 14420 MB
Memory used by Photoshop: 70 %

I didn't get any delay at all on the iMac and sometimes a 1 second spinning wheel on the Windows machine, but eminently useable.

What is different about both of these to my MacBook Pro, where I get the same problem as you, is that I have two scratch disks configured on the Windows machine and three on the iMac.

Looking at the spec above, I think you only have 1 configured, as I do on the MacBook.

By rights, your Windows system should be a lot faster than mine - you have twice the memory I do and your CPU is somewhat faster as well

The other difference on the first test I did with the Windows machine is that I was accessing it remotely via RDP at the from the MacBook, so OpenGL was disabled, because it causes graphics conflicts on RDP connections. I thought that might be making a difference. So I just tried again, using Jump to access the Windows machine, which doesn't disable the OpenGL. It did make a slight difference, but in the wrong direction for the theory about OpenGL, as there are no spinning wheels at all when I use it via Jump and the OpenGL is active.

That really only seems to me to leave the scratch disks as the main difference, between my config and yours, so you could try configuring a second scratch disk and see if that helps at all. It may not, but it might be worth a try.

Report · Jan 28, 2020

Two years later and we're still dealing with the same issue here. Using Select and Mask with any sliders set to anything other than zero is barely usable with images larger than 10mpx.
Just tested again and nothing has changed.

My machine is massive: i7 9700, Nvidia 2070, NVMe scratch at 3GB/s.