Mask AI by Topaz

[Rajan Parrikar]

I just received an email from Topaz announcing Mask AI. If you own their earlier ReMask product the upgrade price is $49.99.

[Redcrown]

Got it, tried it. As usual with Topaz its not ready for prime time, but as usual with Topaz watch for many updates over the next month as users debug it for them.

On my Win10 system:

Bug1: Run the Photoshop plugin once and you can't run it again without closing and relaunching Photoshop.

Bug2: Can't save a trimap, can't load old trimaps made by Remask 5. It does offer a save/trimap after you compute mask, but that save goes into the bit bucket (can't find it anywhere) and the program exits with nothing passed back to Photoshop.

Bug3: Can't adjust brush size with keyboard [ ] shortcuts UNTIL you tick the slider once. Then keyboard keys work.

Bug4: Can't zoom with keyboard shortcut crtl+, but strangely you can shrink with keyboard ctrl-. So, no way to zoom more than 100%

Quick comparison - it is a little better in a few places, but much worse in many places. Most bothersome, it leaves a distinct halo around clean hard edges.

[snowrs]

Ahh, phooey!  Hate to hear this.  I have waited for this upgrade for years.  Hope they debug it in short order.  Sounds good on paper anyway.  I tried to download it earlier today, and their servers must be overloaded...long delays loading pages.  No discount offered on purchase, so I just backed out for now.

Thanks for the update...

bob snow

[Redcrown]

Mini-update:

Bug1 went away after I booted the whole computer. Now I can run it repeatedly.

I can't find a way to pass back a mask to Photoshop. When I run Mask AI on a full pixel layer it erases the "cut" portion on that layer, leaving the transparent checkerboard. Not a big deal because you can ctrl-click on that and get a selection that can be saved as a mask. That used to be an option in Remask5, now appears to be the one and only default. Nothing in preferences to address that. Not good because you can't fine tune by adding back portions. There's nothing there to add back!

And with a bit more testing on several other images I see it always adding parts to the mask you don't want, and in a strange way that does not seem very "intelligent."

[earlybird]

I have had some complicated masking tasks on my "too do someday" list. I usually make a mask by hand on a dedicated layer with Photoshop paint brushes, and for this project, wildflower still life compositions photographed against against a black background, each mask can take several days to complete.

Mask AI seemed to do a pretty good job, until I zoomed in and saw that I will still be doing these masks by hand.

It usually takes me longer to inspect and clean up an automated half masked mask's randomly placed issues than it takes me to start painting a mask from scratch and work my way across the image methodically.



Having said that, It seems if you were working with studio lighting, shooting against a chroma screen, and keying out a mask, then this new AI could offer an improvement in processing.

[Martin Kristiansen]

I send my images to Bangladesh for masking or deep etching. Costs a couple of dollars. Sometimes need some adjustments but if it’s bad you send it back and explain. Try do that with AI software.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

I have had some complicated masking tasks on my "too do someday" list. I usually make a mask by hand on a dedicated layer with Photoshop paint brushes, and for this project, wildflower still life compositions photographed against against a black background, each image can take several days to complete the mask.

Mask AI seemed to do a pretty good job, until I zoomed in and saw that I will still be doing these masks by hand.

It usually takes me longer to inspect and clean up an automated half masked mask's randomly spaced issues than it takes me to start painting a mask from scratch and working my way across the image methodically.



Having said that, It seems if you were working with studio lighting, shooting against a chroma screen, and keying out a mask, then this new AI could offer be an improvement in processing.

I agree, masking is a very difficult task, and nothing beats human vision in detecting/correcting issues. But there is a promise ahead that we will be able to achieve a reasonable result sooner if the AI is trained to discriminate like human vision.

But this is a first attempt, and it's not bad. It does need a bit of tweaking and some more of the correction tools that are part of the predecessor Topaz Remask.

Cheers,
Bart

[govindvkumar]

I have tried the standalone free trial version on my MAcBook Air.

Runs smoothly. Only issue is the irritating Auto mask update processing time for minor changes, which needs to be turned off to finish all touch ups.
Overall good. But, comes at a price of $69, for a limited time.

You can see few Before/After images with my review here: Topaz Mask AI review

[plugsnpixels]

...comes at a price of $69, for a limited time.

Be aware that even if Topaz is not having a sale, you can always save 15%. When they are having a sale, you can save an additional 15%.