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In this tutorial you'll find out how to remove images from the background with the Photopaint Cutout Lab. This will allow you to take the object, turn it into a mask and use the object in a variety of compositions.

In this tutorial you'll find out how to remove images from the background with the Photopaint Cutout Lab. This will allow you to take the object, turn it into a mask and use the object in a variety of compositions.

In this tutorial, I've preloaded some images into the workspace. When you look at the Objects docker on the right you'll see 3 images. The image on the bottom is the background. The image above that is a green high contrast Object and finally, there's a copy of the background above that which will be used for our working Object.

The purpose of the green layer is for when we finish the masking process and we've exited the Cutout Lab. What I do at this point is I zoom into the image and look at the edges of the mask, which I check against this high contrast background, to make sure that there are no artifacts, or holes in the image. Once that's done I've completed the masking process.

At this point I'll turn the top background object (layer) on and make sure it's activated. And now we're ready to access the Cutout Lab. One last point, when cutting out an image, you can use a mouse, but it's unwieldy and clumsy, a bit like painting with a baseball bat. I recommend that you use a drawing tablet instead. I use the Wacom 6x8 Intuos 3 tablet.

To get started, go to the menu and choose Image: Cutout Lab. In the Cutout Lab dialog box, the first thing to do is to zoom into the image to see the edge in more detail. To do so, use the Zoom tool to move in closer on the cactus.

Once there, I use the Highlight tool and use it to define the edge around the cactus. Since the default tip is too small, I make it a bit larger and use it to highlight the edge, making sure to color both the edge of the cactus and the background. At times, going around the edge, this tool tip will be a bit too large, so I dial the tip down to get into the tighter areas. Note that if you make a mistake, click on the Eraser tool and erase the error.

To work your way around the cactus, use the Pan tool or the scrolling bars.Once we've defined the edge of the mask, we're ready to zoom out and apply the fill, in preparation for previewing. To do so, zoom out to see the entire image and click on the paint bucket. The fill color is blue, which is the default, but it could be any other color. Now, click on the center of the cactus to fill it.

Now we're ready to create an image preview. At this point the background is set to None which will give us a checkerboard pattern when I click on Preview. Now we want to zoom into the image and start cleaning up the edge. In some cases this checkerboard pattern might be a bit difficult to work with, so we can choose from one of several options: gray matte, black matte or white matte. In this case we'll start off with grayscale matte and I'll zoom into the image.

Using gray matte, I can see some artifacts around the edge and that parts of the mask have holes, which need to be fixed. To fix this, I use the touch up tools to add detail or remove it. And of course, I need to check the entire image. If the image looks ragged on the edges, I click on the Add Detail tool to fil in the gaps. It's much easier to do this now, than after the fact.

This completes the cleaning up of the image and it's ready to be cut out. There are three options: Cutout, Cutout and Original Image or Cutout as click mask.Here, I chose Cutout and Original image, which gives me a new Object in the docker, the image which has been cut out and the original below that.

This is where my acid test comes into play. We turn off the object below the new cutout and now we see straight through to my green high contrast object. We can look at it in more detail and see if it needs further retouching. To do so, zoom in to the edge and see what's happening. In this case the edge is still a bit ragged, which we can improve by using the eraser tool. And we slowly work our way around the image, erasing those bits as necessary.

This gives us a cleaner edge. To go further, you would need to use feathering, and that's the subject of another tutorial.