A few months ago, while strolling the tradeshow floor at Photoshop World, I happened upon a demonstration that mesmerized me to the point of not being able to walk away. In fact I was so amazed that I watched the demo three times in a row. It was just that cool. The product that fixed my normally short attention span was called Fluid Mask 3 by a company called Vertus. So what was it about this product that fascinated me so? It was the speed and accuracy with which the operator was making selection masks to remove foreground objects from backgrounds. This had special interest to me because I suck at this. When it comes to removing backgrounds, I have tried most of the Photoshop methods, including Extract and channels and, of course, the selection tools. All of them seem clunky and not very accurate, especially when it comes to trees or hair. This is why I was so impressed with Fluid Mask.
Fluid Mask is a plug-in but it seems more like its own separate program. When you select it from the menu, it automatically detects edges and puts these amazing segments all over your image, breaking it up into smaller patches.
The tools then allow you to start defining areas to remove and keep but with different levels of accuracy. The Delete and Keep tools are broken into Exact, Local, and Global brushes which allow you varied levels of accuracy when defining your image. Just start painting with the Delete brushes on those areas that you want to remove and then you can use the Keep tools or just Auto-Fill the Keep areas. For those more difficult areas there are special tools, like the color selection tools that allow you to define your areas by color and tonal properties. This is extremely helpful for trees with sky peeking through. You can also draw a rectangular patch around your trouble areas to keep your selections confined to those areas. I just can’t begin to tell you how amazing this program is.
Along with these tools, you can also define how the program defines edges. There are sliders to control the pixel width of minimum edges, how finely the image is to be broken into edge segments, the thicknesses of the auto blend masks, and the ratio of feathering across an edge. Now I don’t know exactly how all of these tools function because I haven’t had to use them as of yet. The program does such a great job with the default settings that I haven’t felt the need to have to start tweeking them.
All-in-all, the program is fairly intuitive to begin using but to really squeeze all of the power from this amazing tool, I would suggest reviewing the online tutorials at the Vertus site (click here). And here is a little insider scoop, go download the trial version and then hop online for a free web-i-nar being held for the next two weeks. These are live sessions that will help you grasp some of the more involved functions that you can perform with Fluid Mask. Be sure to check out the schedule for dates and times (click here).
Here are a couple of before and after examples I made using Fluid Mask (click to see larger).
Fluid Mask is available for a free trial or you can purchase it for the retail price of $239. Here’s another little tip, you can snag a copy over at Amazon for just $187.99.
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Daniel 
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I agree that Vertus FluidMask has a place in the tool bag but it has a learning curve that equals or even exceeds the Selection tools in Photoshop. I have found it much easier to use Channel masks enhanced with either the Calculations or Apply Image commands. There are a lot of little tricks to unleashing the full power of the Selection tools that are only learned through frequent practice.