I'm a big fan of Select and Mask but I miss 2 tools in it: - Dodge (set on Highlights) to clean up quickly by lightening the white "dust" of the mask - Burn (set on Shadows) to clean up quickly by darkening the black "dust" of the mask
The ideal integration will be to have a non-destructive local adjustment like with the Lightroom local Adjustment Brush (pin).
They could even just give us blend modes for the Paintbrush, as we have in PS proper. We don't really need extra tools if we have that feature, no? Just trying to keep it real, real simple for them.<G>
Now that's a technique I've never used to modify a mask. I think I can follow using Median, although I'm not sure what Denoise does, apart from blur together closely related tones. Would that act on just the edges? Would you mind describing this in more detail? I'm always willing to learn a new trick.
I do think Select and Mask is going to need to have enough tools in the dialog we don't "start" there and then finish or clean up the results somewhere else. That kind of defeats the purpose, imo, of having a separate module for masking. In fact, it might work to have Color Range inside S&M as well.
Agree about that we don't need to have all the tools available in Select and Mask! But I know a lot of expert using for decades this quick and precise dodge/burn technic.
I'll admit I don't understand the working method that uses Select and Mask twice. Currently I use it once, then go into ReMask to finish, preferring tedious but successful, to quick but dirty.<G> Unless, of course, painting with blend modes to assist is all that's needed for the clean up. It seems to me, too, that as much as I'd like to rely upon the Refine Edge brush because I like not thinking as often as possible, it's not really working yet to throw out Calculations and Apply Image as mask-making helpers.
Mind, there are situations where what I'm compositing doesn't really require all that great a mask—or I'm not compositing at all, so it's not going into a new environment—but for those many times that do, I need to know as many techniques as I can master to get there. Some are bound to be more successful and less tedious than others. A quick video that shows why and how you use it twice would be educational.
I'll look forward to it. Ideally, we'll get D&B tools, Brush blend modes, Color Range tools inside S&M, and I'm sure others can come up with other must-haves, and having to run it twice every time will become a thing of the past, but in the meantime. . . every trick helps.
yeah, the median trick i've been using since the mid 90's to clean up all the specks left over from magic wanding... i had created a series of actions that were basically an early incarnation of the refine edge workflow. Then when the actual tool was released, i kept wishing (and making feature requests) that they add a median-type tool or denoise/despleckler of some sort to smooth out any artifacts... something more refined than the smoothing slider, which would preserve the integrity of corners and edges.
Unfortunately, as you and i both know, S+M is very much dead in the water.
> to clean up all the specks left over from magic wanding...>
Oh, that's clever! Why don't I ever think of these things? <BG>
> Unfortunately, as you and i both know, S+M is very much dead in the water.>
Well, the idea is good, so I like to think comatose, but not quite yet totally dead. They could do this, but they have to rethink the modal dialog that still says to me, "okay, start here if you like, but finish someplace else. "
I know that extractions are the holy grail, but the creators of the S&M dialog seems to be in denial, thinking they can somehow make it "easy," with a minimal number of tools. The QS tool IS easy to use on the right subject, once you get used to it's foibles, but it's hardly going to ever be enough in and of itself. Add the Refine Edge brush into the mix and all I see is disaster. It's supposed to be easy, which means it basically has no modifying features, so they give us a lasso (I do better with the Pen tool) and a paintbrush with no blending options.
I understand they get a lot of complaints that Photoshop is "too hard." But honestly, what's more difficult than not being able to get a usable mask and not having enough assistance to manage that within the main area designated for masking? It may be more a matter of pulling all the features together than counting on algorithms to do the work, and the thinking, for us.
Part of the problem may be that by creating the whole big dialog, they raised our expectations of what something with that much significance should be able to do. Not just that they didn't improve the tools within it, and seem to have removed some of the ease the old dialog had. And as you say, they've not gone forward from there to make the S&M dialog a "hub" of selecting and masking.
An excellent tutorial. I now understand using S&M twice. I accepted that I couldn't get good results from the current crop of tools, OR from the global refinements, but splitting up the work between edges that are solid from edges like hair, glass, smoke, etc, now makes sense. I was trying to do it all in one pass, failing, so going elsewhere. Obviously we all feel there's a lot still missing, such as D&B, Brush Blend modes, or any other method of cleaning up the mask inside S&M.
The other day I used Affinity with a rather difficult hair extraction (a snapshot against a bad background) — I'm only just getting used to the app — but using their Refine Dialog, I noticed a similarity to Topaz ReMask in that their equivalent of the Refine Edge tool has a background/foreground counterpart. You can use their Refine Edge tool to refine the edge in Matte mode (ReMask uses a special transparency mode), where you'd deal with hair, but you can also use it to just fill out the foreground or remove the background. I think it performs better than using the QS tool and then the Refine Edge tool in PS, and basically eliminates the need to paint with the paintbrush—not that I'm averse to having a paintbrush as sometimes it's the easiest to work with. I simply dislike having to do most of my edge cleanup with it.
None of these apps are perfect. But both Affinity and ReMask seem to do a better job than the Refine Brush in Select and Mask. S&M, if they'll listen to you and the rest of us, could become a valuable space for masking, but I despair if they stick to just the tools they've given us thus far. Masking anything is never going to get easy. There's too much translucency, too much color spill, too many images where there's little color or tonal contrast between the background and subject to make it "easy." So the sooner they acknowledge that and give us a working space that offers enough tools we can make the choice whether or not to live with the results from quick and easy methods or take it further, the sooner we'll have a masking arena we can really function in. IMO, of course. Maybe they know there's really magic out there that make all the masking decisions for us, but until I see it . . .
They've done an excellent job of giving us the initial selection. When I remember the old days of lassos and pen tools and magic wands, or channel chops, they've really given us a bit of "magic." But when it comes to refining the selection, the magic still isn't happening.
Photoshop CC2020 v. has released the fantastic new object selection tool, and it embedded it inside "select & mask" to help refine masks. Still, "select & mask" doesn't embed the tools Burn and Dodge, so in terms of productivity, we still need to use that outside of "select & mask" in order to finish mask refinement. Not so practical nither fast to do. 😞
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