Photoshop masking

Michael Batten

Michael Batten

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Name
Michael
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Morning,

When I am masking an object and refining the edge the edges become "milky" that's the only way I can explain it. When I change the view to white on black some of the image shows through the white and I have to manually paint in the mask i.e I can still see texture through the white. Hope this makes sense so far.

Is there anything I can change to help mask properly?

Thanks
 
From your description it sounds like you have a degree of 'feathering' occurring at the mask edge.You can alter the degree/effect of the feathering.
 
chuckles said:
From your description it sounds like you have a degree of 'feathering' occurring at the mask edge.You can alter the degree/effect of the feathering.
Click to expand...

Those options are all nil, smart radius, feathering etc. I've tried adjusting them and it doesn't seem to affect the mask. The tolerance is set to 7, from memory, I'm at work so can't check. Could that be part of the problem?
 
Michael Batten said:
I'm at work so can't check. Could that be part of the problem?
Click to expand...

That will always be part of the problem :)

Also, have you tried changing the Blending mode in the layer? Maybe as well, altering the saturation?
 
Using either the magic wand or quick selection tool

selecting what to mask

inverse selection

then create mask

try to refine edge with the tool

click ok once mask is completed and create layer mask.

I follow what PHlearn did on a youtube video to the letter.
 
chuckles said:
That will always be part of the problem :)

Also, have you tried changing the Blending mode in the layer? Maybe as well, altering the saturation?
Click to expand...

I'll give that a go tonight :)
 
If you're referring to the phLearn tutorial on Refining edges I think the guy has the same problem you're witnessing.... he's just talking his way around it.

Intrinsically, he's trying to refine an 'edge' which has a degree of fringing associated with it.... something that will happen (as in his example) with a bright background and fine detail. The common reason for this is poor chromatic aberration correction and digital imaging. Correct this defect first and then move into edge refinement.

His final example looks really good because his under-lying text background colour is close to the fringed colour after refinement and therefore gets lost! I really don't think you're doing anything wrong

All in my humble opinion of course. :)
 
I've not seen the tutorial you guys are talking about.

To really help it would be great to see an example image of what you are trying to mask, so I may suggest a different approach in the first place. (There is more than one way to skin a cat - especially in PS!) Colour selection tool is pretty good, channels are awesome.

However, working with an existing mask there are a couple of good ways of modifying it;

1. Correcting fringing by globally feathering the mask, a very small amount, then shift the edge negatively to shrink it inwards and add contrast to replace the sharpness that feathering removed.

2. Local adjustments by using the lasso tool to select roughly the problem areas, then use filter - other - minimum to pull the mask inwards, this works nicely with the preserve roundness checked.

Another one, although I doubt is your problem is when you want a straighter edge and magic wand or whatever has gone a bit jagged. Use the lasso tool as above but use filter - noise - median to average out the line, adjusting the radius to the sweet spot.
 
Thanks guys that's a great help. I've never masked in channels so I'll have to look that up.

I'll post a pic if it happens again to try and show what happens.
 
Ive seen a lot of YouTube tutors reverting back to the old refine edge, saying it does a better job.
 
IMG_1963.JPG
 
Not a great pic but it shows the "milky" appearance when I try and refine the edge. Everything in the edge detection is nilled out.
 
A few ways of sorting that out in seconds Michael.

One is curves, not an adjustment layer but and actual curve on the mask (ctrl + M). Then you move the black and white points in on the histogram to reduce the anti aliasing from your original selection. I would not want to do this to the hair though I don't think, so I may duplicate the mask in channels, do this curve, then grab a selection from it and paint through just where I wanted it on the original mask. (You could further tidy this up by getting a hard edged paint brush set to white and where the ear is slightly grey for example paint it through.

Screen Shot 2017-07-20 at 22.29.07 by Craig Hollis, on Flickr

Another is the refine edge tool, have a look at these settings, hitting 'p' flips to a preview of the original when you are doing this so you can compare your progress.

Screen Shot 2017-07-20 at 22.32.42 by Craig Hollis, on Flickr

How are you creating the selection in the first place?

If you want to know how others on here may go about it perhaps you could pop up a reasonable resolution of the original shot.
 
Thanks craig. I'll have a go at that tomorrow.
 
It's a little beyond my level of expertise, but I found this tutorial pretty interesting, and it may be of help.
 
IMO, the best way of dealing with that is to paint on the mask with a brush set to overlay blend mode. Black will darken darker areas and white will lighten lighter areas.

How hard edged the brush is, and the contrast setting will both affect how "far into" the area it will select stuff.
 
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