Most of the digital imaging work I do is in the form of enhancing on what mother nature could have been like, should have been like, were it the perfect day (ie changing a flat, overcast sky into one with some great color and constrast!). So I am very interested in the new masking tools available in Photoshop's version 5.5. Until now, the masking within Photoshop has not been that great for "cutting out" elements with fine detail like tree branches, or wispy hair, and many third party vendors have come out with some excellent tools to help with this task. But Adobe's offerings in this version rival those plug-ins that you have to pay extra for.

Magic Eraser
The new magic eraser tool, located on the tool bar with the standard eraser ( hold the mouse down on the eraser tool for a second to get the other options), erases pixels that are similar in value and adjacent to the exact pixel you touch down on. This is similar to the way the magic wand selection tool works, except that instead of making a selection, it erases those pixels that match. You have the option of choosing the tolerance value, anti-aliased or not, and contiguous or not. If you turn off contiguous, it will "erase" all pixels with the matching value regardless of adjacency. A good application of this tool would be if you have an image with well-defined edges and a fairly solid background.

This primrose was shot with a flash in order to get the depth-of-field needed and still have a motion-stopping shutter speed (it was pretty windy!). But it produced a black background and I don't always want that. With the magic eraser tool, I can "cut out" the flower and place it against a more natural looking background. I used the non-contiguous setting, because there were areas of black background between the stamens.

Background Eraser
If your boundary lines are more intricate, such as in going around tree branches to cut out a bland sky background, the background eraser (also under the standard eraser tool) comes in handy. This is a serious step in making masking easy (Thanks Adobe!). This tool erases the background based on the user-defined tolerance level, amazingly finding the edges of the background versus those pixels you wish to keep. Set the tolerance higher in the large expanses of the sky (so it picks up a larger area faster), and lower when going over the branches (so there are fewer pixels that match the "discard" criteria and leaves the branches and just removes the light sky).

You can choose the sampling mode (continuous, once, or background swatch), I used continuous, which continuously checks to see what is considered the "background". If you have something other than a monotoned background (which you most likely will have with a sky with tones ofwhite, blue and grey), the continuous mode works best. Choose the find edges setting. This one is slower, but the most accurate when going around intricate details, (other options are contiguous or discontiguous which are better for open areas).

From top left: Original image; using the background eraser; final image. This image was taken on an overcast day and the resulting picture has a very washed out sky. Using the background eraser tool, I was able to cut out the sky and leave the branches pretty much intact, then add in another, more pleasing sky. It was a little tricky getting the correct tolerance setting to erase the sky and not the very light branches, but with practice, I think this could be an amazing tool! When you're doing this sort of enhancing, (ie replacing the original sky for a better one), be sure to watch the lighting! You want the lighting of the sky and reflections to match what is in the foreground.

Eraser Masking Gotcha:
Remember that these tools will erase, and not simply make a selection. One thing I often do is "hand color" a black and white image, where I lay down some subtle color. If there is a very tricky selection to be made (like in the photo of the trees), it would be nice to be able to make this selection without removing the background. The way around this ( making the selection without removing the background) is to make a duplicate layer. Keep the bottom layer intact (so you can later "hand-color" the sky) and in the upper layer, using the background eraser, remove the sky.

Extract Image
Here's a quick-and-clean way to extract an image from it's background. With the image that you want to extract from as the active image, go to the Image menu item, and choose Extract (the very last option). This opens up a new window. Select an appropriate brush size (it is best to keep the drawing brush as small as possible), and draw around the object to want to extract. A red line will appear as you draw. When you have finished going around the entire image, choose the paint bucket to fill the area you want to extract. It will then be filled in with a layer of bright green indicating the masked area. Choose Preview to see what your selection will be, and edit it if needed, or choose OK to extract the masked area from the background.

After just a few tries, I was able to pretty acurately draw around my image using this tool. Once extracted, now you can place your image in another setting, but be careful that you keep it looking natural. If you don't, somebody is bound to let you know that they know this is a digitized image because everybody knows crocodiles are not found in Yellowstone, regardless of what your big brother might have told you!

Art History Brush
With this tool, you can turn an ordinary photograph into a piece that looks like a watercolor painting. However, to be honest, I had a hard time liking this tool. As a photographer who is a stickler for sharp images, I just couldn't find a setting that made me say, "hey, this is cool". I tried to look at is a way to spark creativity by trying something new, but I wasn't able to make an image that I liked. I got something acceptable, however by using subtle strokes and a small brush. I was having trouble making the results look like a painting until I slowed down and took small strokes, and resisted the temptation to make large sweeping strokes to do the whole thing at once, (which seemed to do nothing at all on certain settings).

Contact Sheet
This function, which has been improved since the 5.0 version, now lists the file names as captions. I used this tool to create a cover for a CD that holds some of my images. Choose File, then Automate, then Contact Sheet II. Choose the folder where the images reside, and design the page by specifying page size, number of columns and number of rows. Then take a break while the computer puts your page together. I've made many CD covers manually, and it is very time- consuming to open several large files, resize, line them up on the page, etc. The only thing I don't like about the contact sheet is that there's too much white space - I wish the program would give me slightly larger thumbnail images. This, of course can be done manually by increasing the page size and then moving the columns and rows.