Making masks -- warning double nerd alert

[rutt]

Warning, this is only for the most serious kind of nerds.

Does anyone know this work: http://grail.cs.washington.edu/projects/digital-matting/image-matting/

I've seen the results in the paper and other results in a digital photography course I'm auditing at MIT (http://groups.csail.mit.edu/graphics/classes/CompPhoto06/). Amazingly good.

Now I want the thing. It solves what I consider to be the absolute most frustrating, time consuming problem in image post processing. I've used Knockout. This technique could power a Knockout that would actually work.

Anyone want to whip up a Photoshop plugin overnight?

[JoshBowers]

This suppose to be an automatic masking tool?

Only time I ever got frustrated doing masks was when I used a mouse... Once I got my tablet it was easy, and super accurate.

[dzstudios]

What is IT??? I can't even understand the ENGLISH - could you translate??

I would be very interested....


Using paths, layer masks and matting myself. The 'old fashioned' way.

[jj1987]

these look pretty good. Duplicate the layer, and run the filter on the top one. Then control click it, and click the original layer, then make a layer mask on that so that the selection is blocked. Then you can hand cover the error areas.

[rutt]

The paper I cited describes an algorithm which can make very accurate masks with very little help from the user. The user selects a some areas of the photo and designates them to be either a part of the foreground or background. Then the algorithm generates the mask. The selections don't have to trace the edges at all. It's more important that the areas they contain are 100% foreground or background and don't contain anything else. The wispy fine hairs, that gets taken care of automatically.

I saw a music video that a graduate student made using this technique. As you can imagine, it's not feasible to use manual methods for a video. The quality of the matting was stunning; it made the best Hollywood special effects look crude.

What I'm really looking for is someone who really gets the math...

[JoshBowers]

Sounds good as long as you have a solid color background. I can see it being used for video more than photography though.

[rutt]

Look at the paper. Works very well without a solid background as well. That's called the natural matting problem. The solid background is chroma key.

Sounds good as long as you have a solid color background. I can see it being used for video more than photography though.

[jfrancho]

I can see it being used for video more than photography though.Think about the application to stock photography. I can see it being very useful.

[rutt]

Indeed it is useful for video because there is just no way to cut the mask for each frame manually or even semi automatically. But if you've ever slaved to cut a mat for an image with fine hairs or fur or interesting light, this could make a huge difference. I find those situations so frustrating and time consuming that I've been known to outsource them.

The results look better than I can do by hand. Much better.

[PhotosGuy]

Seen this? Tutorial - Create a layer mask from image detail
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=100077

[RAitch]

Thanks for pimpin' Frank!! I was going to add that. ;)

[PhotosGuy]

:D I steal links from everyone!