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Choosing What to Isolate

This section elaborates on the different choices that are available for isolation and offers tips for what each choice is good for.

Object Mode

Object mode is the easiest choice to make. Essentially, use this mode for any subject that is not a person. Subjects like cars, pets, and food are all good candidates for Object mode. The notable exception to this rule are items of clothing like shirts, hats etc. that are being worn by a human. Worn clothing is much better isolated in Person mode instead.

Drawing positive strokes in Object mode will select areas of similar contrast and color, allowing you to link complex shapes together. Generally you will need more strokes to actively define an object than a person, due to the greater variety of the shapes involved.

Drawing negative strokes in Object mode removes areas from the object that you don’t want to isolate. This can be something simple like removing the wheels of a car from a mask, or more complicated like removing specific books from a mask of a bookshelf.

Person Mode

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When you choose Person, every stroke you draw over someone helps to isolate that person’s entire body, or however much of that person is visible onscreen. This includes all clothes that person is wearing, including their shirt, pants, shorts, dress or skirt, bathing suit, knickers, jumpsuits, hat, shoes, even armor or space suit (yes, we’ve tested both), whatever. Most clothing should be correctly identified as part of the isolation mask you’re creating. However, excessively flowing garments may need an extra stroke or two to identify them in complex visual compositions.

Drawing negative strokes, when in Person mode, will identify everything that’s not the person you’re isolating; this omits both the background and/or other people from the mask being generated.

Drawing negative strokes isn’t mandatory; you only need to draw a negative stroke if you see a problem such as part of the background being included in the isolation mask.

Features Mode

When you choose Features, a drop-down menu appears at the top of the Stroke list. You must first choose the feature you want to isolate from this menu, and then draw strokes over the selected feature (face, hair, etc.) you want to isolate. Each feature’s collection of strokes can be turned on or off to add that feature to the overall mask being created.

 

Object ModePerson ModeFeatures ModeIdentifying More Than One Person