Photoshop CC: The Missing Manual

Making Selections and Masking

As you’ve learned in previous chapters, selecting stuff like hair and fur is really hard. Sure, there are some tricks that make it simpler, but a plug-in specifically designed for that task can make your life a heck of a lot easier and save you tons of time (especially if you do this kind of thing a lot). That said, you’ll need a bit of patience when you start working with masking plug-ins, because they’re not for the faint of heart. But with practice, you can use them to create selections you just can’t make any other way.

Note

Adobe put a lot of work into improving the Refine Edge command back in Photoshop CS5. So before you plunk down cold hard cash on a masking plug-in, make sure you’re up to speed on the enhancements discussed starting on Creating Selections with Channels.

Fluid Mask

This is a powerful plug-in that helps you mask around complex areas like hair and fur. As soon as you open Fluid Mask, it analyzes your image and marks what it thinks are edges with blue lines (see Figure 20-3) so you can decide which edges keep and which ones to zap. Then it creates a cutout of the image you can send back to Photoshop to use as a mask. You can also save your project and return to it later—a nice touch. Fluid Mask costs about $150 (www.vertustech.com).

Figure 20-3. These blue lines mark the edges that Fluid Mask found in this image. You can use the plug-in’s ...