EZ Mask

Whether you’re a photographer or a graphics designer, at one point or another you need a good tool that can extract objects from images.

This can be done manually using a brush and a layer mask but it is time consuming and tedious work. It does deliver great results but there are tools that you can use to obtain the same results in less time.

Such a tool is EZ Mask. It’s a plugin designed for Adobe Photoshop that enables you to create a contour around the object you want to extract and the application does it automatically for you. It displays a user-friendly interface with all the tools in plain sight, making it accessible to all kinds of people.

To deliver a precise cut out, the plugin creates a mask as you brush over the areas you want to extract. It estimates the transparency for all the pixels between the foreground (which is your selection) and the background. This process of masking isn’t that much different from the one you would normally used except that with EZ Mask you only brush over the rough contour of the object, letting the plugin figure you the exact margins of the element you want to grab. This in turn proves to be great time saver especially since you can also do this for complex contours such as those given by hair.

With EZ Mask you also get a Refine mode that keeps track if the mask as you brush over the image. This further minimizes your effort of creating the perfect mask. The time it takes the application to process the contour and extract the object greatly depends on the complexity of the contour and the resolution of the image.

In closing, EZ Mask is by all means a great tool to have around when you need to cut out a person from a photo and insert it into a different environment.