Topaz studio review utube pro#

Speed on my MacBook Pro was fine, and of course, there are both Mac and Windows versions of this app. There are small delays as the computation takes place, but I never felt the need to read a web page or get some coffee while it was working. On portraits with wispy hair, Luminar has no solution, and Topaz Mask AI did a very credible job. The AI was an advantage, because even while I roughly outlined people in a photo, the AI could usually figure out the difference between the subject and the background. On non-sky replacement tasks, Mask AI was able to best Photoshop and Luminar. Still, the masking most of us want to do is not just sky replacement. There are a couple of sliders for fine adjustments, but in this example, they were not needed. Frankly, Topaz Mask AI could not compete there. Trying the same image with a beta copy of the upcoming Luminar 4 sky replacement was literally one click. The contrast mode is quicker, but picks up simpler objects for masking. I found AI mode works best with hair, trees, fur, and detailed objects.

Topaz Mask AI also offers a method besides AI, and that's a contrast mode for object detection. Still, the more I needed to refine the mask, the less AI benefit I was getting. I found the process easier than doing something similar in Photoshop, and in most cases, the AI helped. Once you “Update Mask,” you can see a split screen preview window: the left image will preview the colored mask, and the right-side one will show the mask effect on the image after the cut with a transparent background. When I made Mask AI larger, I was all set with no more hidden buttons. Turns out, working on my laptop, I had to scroll the screen to see the button, because it was cut off my the window edge. On many images, you need to help the selection along, painting in what to keep and what to cut.Ĭontrols are pretty straightforward, but it helps to watch a tutorial or two first. In fact, when I started using the app, I could not find the button that computed the mask.

In the auto mode, which is where the AI part comes in, the app will take a look at your image and make some guesses about what to mask and what to cut. There is an auto-compute mode, or you can do more manually. When you are ready, you can replace the background. The interior of an object is defined in green, and you can use the paint bucket tool to quickly fill. Once that is done, there are tools to refine the mask. Then fill the areas to be cut in red, such as a sky in my case. Outline your subject or object edges in blue with a paintbrush. Topaz Mask AI presents a fairly simple interface (with a built-in tutorial). I wanted to look at it for sky masking/replacement since I'm primarily a landscape photographer. We've already had a good preliminary look at Topaz Mask AI from our own Ryan Mense.