{"id":57,"date":"2011-08-11T07:25:19","date_gmt":"2011-08-11T14:25:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/?p=57"},"modified":"2011-10-30T21:26:12","modified_gmt":"2011-10-31T04:26:12","slug":"the-mask-of-zero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/?p=57","title":{"rendered":"The Mask of Zero!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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This episode originally appeared on What They Think<\/a> in February, 2011.<\/em><\/p>\n

In my continuing effort to make masking easier (nearly impossible), I have come to the conclusion that masking technique must be selected on an image-by-image basis. There is no single tool for making a successful mask. Instead, it is a combination of tools such as Mask Pro (described in my previous blog on the subject) and the Refine Mask tool in Adobe Photoshop that make the best masks. <\/em><\/p>\n

Those tools, and a lot of hand work, make a perfect mask.<\/p>\n

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For today\u2019s episode I decided to make a mask by hand, using the brush tool. My only \u201cspecial\u201d consideration was the hair, on which I used Photoshop\u2019s Refine Mask tool to improve a bit on my work. It added a bit of realism to the hair, and I am happy with the result. The rest of the mask was made the hard way, which is to say I painted around the figure to remove it from the background.<\/p>\n

I never do this on the photo itself; instead I paint on a Layer Mask, which can be added to any unlocked layer in Photoshop. Then it\u2019s just a matter of choosing the painting tools and investing an hour or more to the task.<\/p>\n

In this example I spent about 65 minutes, which if I were charging for my services, would be a charge of about $130.00, and that\u2019s a lot to charge to mask an image \u2013 especially one that appears so simple. I could have done it faster (see my earlier blog on using a modified channel to accomplish a similar effect). But on this one I didn\u2019t want to do it faster, so I did it the hard way and I timed myself. <\/em><\/p>\n

The hardest part, after the hair, was the zipper. That took a little more time than just pushing the brush along the edge of the image. I used a hard-edge pencil tool and drew every gap between the teeth, then I used the same tool to paint along the outer edge to complete that section of the mask.<\/p>\n

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\n<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Here you can see the effect of my mask through the edge of the eyeglasses.<\/em><\/p>\n

The next-hardest part was the eyeglasses. A mask on eyeglasses must be partially-opaque, as the glass lenses in the frames have imagery in them. For that I painted with a light brush on the mask, allowing part of the original image to show-through, but also masking it. It\u2019s tricky to get the frames to appear realistic, but I seem to have succeeded there.<\/p>\n

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This is the detail of the eyeglasses in the mask. Notice that the translucent part is represented by gray, while the masked part is represented by black.<\/em><\/p>\n

The mask is successful, very clean, and commercially acceptable. Putting the model on top of an alternative background proves its real quality; it looks very convincing.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is the complete mask. The zipper that caused the difficulty is on the left side of the jacket.<\/em><\/p>\n


\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This episode originally appeared on What They Think in February, 2011. In my continuing effort to make masking easier (nearly impossible), I have come to the conclusion that masking technique must be selected on an image-by-image basis. There is no … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":318,"href":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions\/318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelawlers.com\/Blognosticator\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}