fingham1, this is nothing on you. We are just coming from different places. Your post just gave me a place to jump from not on.
Mask AI product is essentially ReMask.
Mask AI being a professional tool, that really depends on your use-case.
At $49.99/upgrade, they would need to sell 12-24K worth of upgrades to break even.
As a long time Topaz customer I am very disappointed with AI Mask. I did contribute my 49.99 to beta test their product, which is not ready for professional use. ReMask is a much better product, and I will not be fooled again by Topaz to buy on notification vs. a very critical overview of the forums and complaints. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me.
I will be attending the Live Webinar on Nov30. Hopefully I will learn a new skill which will put this SW in a different light. I am hesitant though because if you look closely even at Topaz’s website the results from AIMask are not prime time, good enough for mom’s refrigerator, but not the art market.
In fact, I would like to have a refund. It is not my position as a consumer to be worried about the bottom line of Topaz Labs. Haven’t we all seen the commercial on TV by Flonase: Flonase says “you would never accept an incomplete job , like a half - finished doghouse or a half -washed car, so why accept it from your allergy pills?” So why accept it from Topaz Labs with a half finished SW App?
Topaz does not hire reviewers that are want to be professionals, or non picky professionals. Topaz touts their reviewers using their products as top rated professional photographers, internationally known for their work, presumably using Topaz products.
I feel that as consumers we all need to hold product producers, no matter what the product, feet to the fire to put out real value for real money.
Did you know that most software producers, including Topaz, offer limited time free trials of the software to ‘kick the tires’ before purchase. Each new product is a new product to be judged on its own merits. So they give you the option to explore whether the specs meet your needs…
Any software should not need to be perfected after being released to the public. It should be tested and perfected as much as possible and to the satisfaction of the beta testers.
To release such software early with so many faults, not only adds to the disappointment of customers, it means that to prospective customers who download the trial version and find it lacking, that when the 30 days runs out, that is the end of it. Your new improved product will never be trialled again or purchased, because the trial on the unperfected product has been tested - trial period elapsed - and found lacking.
There is a webinar tomorrow (10.30.2019) that will demonstrate Mask AI by Joel Wolfson . I hope you can join in, it might clear up some miss understandings
He is a very good webinar presenter & typically has very helpful & clear tips about how to use the various products.
But, again (not to put too fine a point on it), viewers must remember that when someone preps to deliver a class like that they aren’t winging it. They have picked optimal images to present with and have tested which settings will produce desired results in the allotted time. Users should learn insightful usage tips then test their own images with the free trial to see what’s what in their own context.
@Seabreeze: Yes. But true of any product that could morph over time to become desirable for purchase; pre-mature or not.
I also agree with the comments above on Mask AI and the lack of a free upgrade. Free lifetime upgrades has been a cornerstone of Topaz for many years. I long for the old Topaz business principles. Has Topaz sold the company and replaced management?
I have tried it using what are admittedly some difficult images. The borders of the sky that I am trying to remove are full of leafy and palm trees and the results have not been particularly spectacular, however they are better than I generally get from ReMask, and with far less work, so it is not too bad for me. The problem is that I can find no way to effectively get rid of pieces of the old sky that have not been removed. Using the Edge adjustment fixes one part of the image and ruins another part. Foreground adjustment does the same. Fixes some part of the image and ruins another part of the image.
I assume that I am not using the software in the best way and that it would be helpful to have a really good video tutorial but I have not seen any of those from Topaz.
Not sure what your point is. I’m well aware that Mask AI isn’t problem free - and I didn’t say it was. I posted my image simply as an example of something that the Pen Tool is no use for in response to your assertion that the Pen Tool is unbeatable for precision and is therefore the only usable tool for “professionals”. It no doubt is the best for precision cutouts - but it’s pretty useless for selecting objects with soft edges, fur, feathers, flyaway hair etc. Or even sharp but intricate fine detail as in my example. Nothing to do with “professional” versus “amateur” - it’s to do with the detail required. Not all “professional” work requires scalpel-like precision - and the Pen Tool won’t help in those cases where it doesn’t.
@PaulM, for hair cutting (and hair-like objects), Mask AI is a good tool, it is not perfect but it is better than others wich I have found until now. But only that!
It should be kept in mind, however, that an image cannot contain ONLY PEOPLE and that even if in an image there are people we want to cut, there may be something else in the image and we would like to keep! And those objects that we want to keep in the image, can have straight lines! And in the area of straight lines, Mask AI does not cut correctly!
Regarding the automatic identification of the subject: the “Select subject” function in Photoshop works 100 times better, without having to claim “artificial intelligence”! In this sense, I expected the automatic selection in Mask AI to work better than the usual “Select subject” in Photoshop …
And the paradox is this: The “Select subject” function is just one of the hundreds of functions/tools available in Photosop, while Mask AI is a program specially designed ONLY for such things (object identification and cutting)!!! As a result, I expected a dedicated program for such cuts (like Mask AI), to work better than a banal function in Photoshop …
I agree on what you say about “auto detect objects” not working proper yet.
We have reported this during beta testing and I’m sure the developers are working on it!
We also noticed that humans, animals and faces are less problematic then: landscapes with a clear noticeable horizon, all kind of objects (like your flower) that you can easily recognize as a separate part to include or exclude.
Think you need a partly hybride (AI + common sense programming like in Photoshop or Affinity Photo, contrast differences detection) design to make it work.
This on A Mac.
