Is Refine Edge in CS5 a bust?

Notwithstanding the unprecedented hype from all the PS Gurus about the revised refine edge/refine mask tool in CS5, I have found the "Smart Radius" function of this tool to be a time waster not a time saver. It never seems to work as advertised. Instead of taking my selections and improving them, it usually has the opposite effect. Not once have I ever been able to achieve the finely detailed extraction masks, particularly of hair, that this tool is supposed to help one produce, and using the adjustment tool usually seems to make things worse, creating a smeary mask in areas that I don't wanted masked, and ignoring areas that I do. After my edge is ruined I find myself using the remove tool to try to salvage my ruined edge, and often end up cancelling out all together. How is this an improvement?
I have read a number of different sources and watched several videos on how to use this tool, so I don't think I am doing anything particularly wrong. But then again, I seem to be the only one complaining in this forum. Before I give up on this altogether, I have to know, is this just a tool for studio photographers using green screens? Is anyone having luck using this tool for photographic applications other than studio or staged photography?

"The mask adjusted by Smart Radius? Are you sure that you fully understand what Smart Radius does?"
I think I do . . . but your explanation is certainly clarifying. I guess I might have been more accurate by asking "the resulting mask after using the smart radius to refine your selection."
"It's not supposed to be a new superselection method that provides professional results, it's for when you want to do something quick and dirty or if you want to get a decent start which you can then further refine."
In some sense this gets to the nub of my question. As this tool has been demonstrated, the radius slider, combined with the use of the refine radius tool, can do a pretty nice job (albeit perhaps something less than fully professional) of capturing the detail of the hair, given the right conditions without necessarily having to select individual curls or strands. I am not experiencing anything close to that and I am trying to figure out why. I'm am not able to pull out hair detail with this tool. The "edges" in the hair are a blurry mess -- no use at all as a starting point or otherwise. And, as for edges in general, what I am finding is that using this tool too often appears to override a perfectly good selected area, requiring generous use of the erase refinement tool. I'm not getting "quick and dirty" results, just bad results.
OK ... so stay with me Zeno. I would like to know how much selection work you had to do in the hair before invoking the refine edge dialogue. Where did you draw your selection. Did you just draw a boundary and invoke the radius tool to capture hair details, or something else? Also, where I find areas in my selection that are not perfect but not too far off, e.g., capturing a wee bit of green turf against a leg, shouldn't I be able to expect that the radius function will be able to "refine" that spot?

Similar Messages

Problems with refine edge in CS5-no longer working properly?!

Hi all, just wondered if anyone has experienced this bizarre problem and if so how they went about fixing it or changin the settings! (i may have done something to photoshop for it not to work properly!!!)
Basically, i have got CS5 and was very excited to find the refine edge tool.... made cutting out people real easy and loved it.... however, for some reason the refine edge is not working anymore. Everytime i try to refine the edge using the refine edge tool it isnt selecting any fine details of the cut. It seems to be erasing the image with a low opacity making the selection very blurred?!
Hopefully you can see from the very quickly put together example that the refine edge tool is taking pixels out if her nose, chin, jumper neck and jumper! Any one know how to prevent this from happening?
Thanks! Matt

I am having the same problem with the refine edge tool. It seems to work the exact opposite of what I was expecting.
The above two images are before and after using the tool to refine the edge. As you can see from the picture without the mask view, the selection actually got smaller after I tried to add to it. When I use the other tool to erase an edge, as soon as I release the mouse button, the portion I tried to remove reappears as it was before. This has never worked properly for me. Also, I have tried outputting in several different ways.
As for the questions posed: The app and OS are up to date. I am the only user on my computer, so I'm not sure what using another user would accomplish. I will mention that I'm using Windows 7, not Mac. I'm really hoping there is a setting I have wrong somewhere.

Refine edge tool (CS5) producing bad quality selections?

I am having troubles where whenever I use the refine edge tool, the selection it produces is horrible quality. What's weird is on my old computer, running the same software and using the same images, I could get much better results. I was runnign Vista on a laptop and now I'm running Windows 7 on a desktop, so It's confusing that I am getting bad quality selections with a much better computer adn the saem images in the same program Suite.
anyone know what's up?

Looking at the screenshot I assume you mean the artifiacts/blockiness? Have you checked disabling OpenGL to see if that's the culprit? From the help file:
1. Turn off OpenGL.
Choose Edit > Preferences (Windows) or Photoshop > Preferences (Mac OS).
In the Performance panel, deselect Enable OpenGL Drawing. Click OK.
Restart Photoshop, and perform the same function.

Adjusting settings in Refine Edge after outputting new layer mask?

After using Refine Edge in CS5.5 and removing the background from an image, I set it to output as a new layer mask. Next I place the image on top of a background and see that it needs some additional adjustments. How do I now get back to the Refine Edge window where I can see the changes I made previously and modify some of the settings? When I reopen the Refine Edge window the settings from before are no longer there.
Thanks.

You need to select the layer mask, and use refine Mask rather that Refine edge. There is an excellent tutorial by Martin Evening here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssJRkbkHAa4

CS5 Refine Edge Tool

I'm experiencing a problem with the refine edge tool in CS5. For no obvious reason I am now getting an error message stating "Could not complete the Refine Edge command because of a programme error". this appears after I have adjusted the refine edge settings and clicked ok. The process was working fine until a copule of days ago. I wonder if anyone else has experienced this problem and can offer a solution. I've already downloaded the most recent updates. My OS is Windows XP.
BriRonS

Try resetting the photoshop preferences and see if that helps:
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/375776?tstart=0
MTSTUNER

Is Refine Edge better in CS6 than CS5.5 than CS5

Is refine edge better in CS6 than CS5.5 than CS5 - have there been continual improvements
Thx

The CS5.5 code is no different than CS5. I can't say from personal experience whether the newest code is better; I've been able to get good results from both.
-Noel

Extract Filter v Refine Edge CS5

I hear a lot of people talking blithely about how superior Refine Edge is to the previous Extract Filter.
If you look at the two sample files called "Auto Align 1" and "Auto Align 2" in the tutorials folder a couple of versions back you'll find 2 children with sharp outlines against the background and frothy hair around the girl. Can someone please explain to me how refine edge can - in 1 fell swoop - eliminate the clearly defined background around the shoulders AND leave the frothiness of the girls' hair? Until then I stand resolute that REFINE EDGE is NOT a substitute for the EXTRACT FILTER at all!

Based on my experience, I suggest the following, when using Refine Edge:
1. Foremost: Work on as high resolution an image as you can.
2. As I mentioned, listen carefully to what Russell Brown says in his video. Less is more when it comes to selection, then add areas of transition.
3. Take the time, as you might with the old extract filter, to brush carefully over the areas of transition to make sure you get all the strands.
4. Check your results against the white and black backgrounds using W and B shortcut keys to make sure you've got all the areas of transition you need.
5. Don't be afraid to use the Decontaminate Colors feature - possibly even cranked all the way up.
6. Understand that if you're masking someone Photographed in a light studio, that hair highlights and other visual cues might not look right against a dark background, and you may need to use the Burn tool or other techniques to help hide that. The eye/brain are great at picking up inconsistencies in the lighting, and that has little to do with masking.
As with anything, it takes some getting used to and practice, but the results can be quite good.
-Noel

Refine Edge CS5 question

Hi,
I'm wondering if there is any way that I can get a work path and/or clipping path after using the refine edge tool.
I've tried to find a way to save the changes / result after using it so that I can save the image with a transparent background, but no luck.
//S

As long as you don't use the decontaminate colors option in the
refine edge dialog, you could output to a selection and make a work path
from the selection or output to a layer mask or new layer with layer mask
and load the layer mask selection and make a workpath from that.
You can save images with transparency in several formats including psd,
tif, pdf and png.
When using the decontaminate colors option, photoshop thinks you want to blend the
selection with a background so the resulting output is not good for just transparent images
without a background.
MTSTUNER

Refine Edge - Curly Hair (CS5) - Help

Hello
I am trying to remove the backround from this image to have the girl appear on a white backround. I am having trouble using Refine edge to select the girls curly hair and remove all the backround color from behind the hair. I cant seem to get the color behind her hair to dissapear, and I also get a blurry result around the head. Any suggestions? Thanks.
Jason
ORIGINAL IMAGE
SETTINGS IN REFINE EDGE
IMAGE ON WHITE BACKROUND

I have tried tweaking all the settings, I am still getting that blurred edge around the hair, and a bit of the grey backround is still behind the curly hair. The shadow of her head in the original picture is the problem I think. I have checked out all those other tutorials and you really cant compare them to this picture im trying to do, as the backround color is pretty close to the color of her hair. Any other suggestions ? Topaz Remask?

Refine Edge

Hi all,
I'm trying the Refine Edge command to extract objects from images, Here's what I'm using:
As you can see I've made the selection without any major problems, using the quick selection tool.
The problem starts when I'm using the Refine Edge command, I can't get an acceptable result. Can you guys help me?
Here's the original image;
Thanks
Luís

You've posted the image at far too small a size to do effective high quality hair masking. You should be working with a MUCH larger image.
That said, the image does lend itself to Refine Edge if you use the tools adeptly...
Try Russell Brown's "Less is More" strategy and don't select so much of the hair to begin with... This video is WELL worth watching:
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/the-russell-brown-show/masking-basics-in-photoshop-cs5/
-Noel

Refine edge contamination I think!!!

It is hard to explain but here goes....if I display an image and i take quick selection tool and make a circle or some formation and if I paint on either side of the selection I get a very distict line of where I have paint and it is seperated perfectly where the selection is. In other words where I painted it is pure and only the color I painted. and this the way it should be and the brush is 100% opacity. OK this is the easy part............if I take the same selection and do a refine edge on it and make a adjustment in refine edge...ie...move the radius slider or any other control that moves the selection and we will say the selection get larger or smaller does not make any difference and I say OK and then I get back my image and I go to paint it there is always some discoloration within the painted surface it is not even the color is discolored or contaminated...even when I give the command remove contaminated colors it is still there and even on a layer you can see the little square in varying shades of grey...it makes no differece if say get rid of the contaminated colors....I still get that discoloration...I hope this explanation is clear and someone else has had this problem and there is a fix for it
Capt M
I have spent many hours trying find a solution

Capt, have you seen this video by Russell Brown? His "less is more" philosophy can help with Refine Edges.
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/the-russell-brown-show/masking-basics-in-photoshop-cs5/
Perhaps you're expecting "Refine Edge" to do different things than it does. Used adeptly, it can work quite well. It works best on high quality imagery and at high resolution. And you may well have to do some masking work afterward, but it gets you close in a hurry.
-Noel

Anyone have a refine edge/mask 'program error' failure?

Refine mask or edge constantly fails and reports a 'program error' dialog box after the OK button is pressed.
The file is small and my computer has the horsepower to handle it - Win7 64bit, I720, 12GB ram, and 100GB scratch disk space. Saphire ATI 4850 video 1GB ram. Tried disabling GUI acceleration no luck.
This has started after I did a reinstall of CS5 last week.
Searched Google and narry a mention of it.
And this was my most desired new feature in CS5. Everything else seems to be running fine with the exception of certain modified f keys (such a shift - f?) not working properly but this has been reported by others.
Larry

Chris,
My memory is a little fuzzy right now as to exactly what was causing the
problem. Anyway I don't encounter it much anymore.
If I remember correctly I had the mask attached to curves adjustment
layer and ran refine edges from there. Example I wanted to darken the
sky so I made a selection of the sky. The horizon had lots of trees
which needed the refine edge command to clean up. I ended up applying
the mask to the pixel based image and clipped the curves layer to it.
Same result as far as the adjustment goes but the refine edge command
worked with the mask attached to the pixel based image. So, if I
remember correctly, it was a non-pixel layer with the mask attached that
caused the problem. Maybe I was using Decontaminate colors which could
cause the problem on a non-pixel layer. Could be that it worked
sometimes because I did not use Decontaminate and failed when used.
Anyway, I avoid attaching mask to non-pixel layers if I am going to use
refine edge. Have not run into errors since, but then it could have been
fixed in 12.0.1 update. Or maybe the stars are aligned properly now. Who
knows?
Win 7 64 bit, 12GB ram, I720
Larry

Refine edge troubleshotting

My refine edge comes up with a cricle with a line through it. The brush doesn't show in is just this circle with the line. I was working with a few days ago and it was fine now I get nothing. Help please need my refine edge tool. Thanks in advance for your help with this matter
Dorothy Lynn

Sorry about that, I was really frustrated when I worte that question. Anyway my Photoshop is CS5. I was just trying to fix a photo that I had put on a new backround, smooth out the edges and the funny thing about it is I used it the day before to do the same thing. Hopefully this is enough information if not I will try to ive you what ever you need for me to get this fixed. I hope you all can see what I was doing.

Refine Edge Problem

After doing some google searches, I've decided to bring the question a new.
I am using Adobe CS5 on Windows Vista (32-bit).
My refine edge tool has stopped working properly. Rather than refining my edge selection, it sort of blends my selection into transparency, making the final product look extremely sloppy (the point to be made here is that the tool does not funciton as it does on tutorials and examples).
I have already tried:
1.) Setting up a new user account on my computer
2.) Resetting tool presets
3.) installing updates
The problem remains. Any wisdom on this issue?

Charles,
Let me first take the time to thank you. I very much appreciate your efforts to help me. At the very least, you're helping me to refine my issue.
I have another set of pics to show the problem better in light of your comments.
Starting picture (the stark black background seems like I should be able to get a decent selection):
First, a picture of the general selection made using quick select in refine edge (note no settings are applied at the moment):
Second, the same selection with radius set to 30.0 (smart radius applied):
Note already there are colors taken away from the original selection and an odd transparency going on with the edges (I know the "decontaminate color" is checked here, but that made no difference to the photo.
Here is the same screen zoomed in to show the problem more clearly:
The problem continues (and intensifies) when I attempt to apply the refine radius tool. Here is a close of the original with the radius at 30.0:
Here is after I applied the refine radius tool:
Not only does it not help, it makes the thing look worse.
Finally, here is the selection when I adjust shift edge and contrast:
I just seems to me like something is wrong with the program/tool. I'm going to connect with Adobe tomorrow and try to work through this issue. I hate not being able to get the results that I know are supposed to be acheivable with the program.

Using Refine edge with Quick Selection......

I think I'm doing something wrong, because I can do a quick selection, but when I hit the "Refine Edge" button and make a change to the selection, my change doesn't "take"...
I have an image, one layer (background), absolutely normal, boring image (for example, a white swan sitting in the blue water). I go in with Quick Select and select PART OF
the swan. I have areas that aren't selected, and areas that are selected and shouldn't be. So, I need to refine my selection. I subtract and add bits of selection with the
Quick Select tool, but leave a big piece of the swan's body NOT selected, and a bit of water SELECTED. So, I need to go in with a tool and refine the edge of my selection...
SO, I hit "Refine Edge" from the tool bar and select "Overlay" for my view mode. I can now see what's selected, and know what I'd like to change. And, I have a red overlay
so I have a visual guide to changing things....
Go to the "Refine Radius Tool" and paint over an area I want ADDED to my selection (a piece of swan immediately adjacent to my original selection)... It runs red, like I'd expect.
I release the mouse and a second later, the red goes away, but the selection has NOT been changed. I've tried this directly from the Quick Select tool. I've double-clicked the
background layer and changed it so it's not background any more - made no difference. I've created a layer mask on the no-longer background layer (the mask contains my
Quick Selection just fine). I've then used the Mask panel to specify "Mask Edge" and again tried the "Refine Radius Tool" to add an area to my selection. Again, it turns red
while selecting, then stops being red when I let go, and the area I selected is NOT added to the selection...
I watched a presentation by a Photoshop person who DEMONSTRATED exactly what I'm doing, and it worked. I looked at Martin Evening's CS5 book, and as near as I can tell,
I did exactly what he described... He got a selection, added to the selection, and it worked fine...
I figure I've got something configured wrong, or something else goofed up. What am I missing here?

It's not my intention (intent?) to beat up on the "Refine Edge". I figured when I couldn't get the same pristine results as all the demos that I was doing something wrong, and kept watching more people doing this 'cause I figured I was doing something dumb...
Mostly, I've been trying this on different images over the last couple weeks just to see if I could figure out how to get it to work.
From the responses in here I suspect I'm doing it correctly, but the images I'm trying it on just don't lend themselves to perfect edges without some additional work..... The Quick Select and a bit of edge cleanup is still faster than the "good old days", so its definitely a step forward.
As far as the swans, yes, no matter what I did, I was getting a lot of extraneous selections and wonky edges and stuff. One of these days I'll try pulling an eagle or a great egret out of a clear sky and see how that goes. I suspect it'll work a lot better...
I only fiddled with the rodeo image 'cause I figured it was "like" hair. But my background is pretty busy. With a little additional work I DID get a very, very good selection, and was able to soften the background, and do a gradient so the ground under the horse is sharp, gradually blurring as it moves to the grandstands...
Thanks for all the replies...

Is Refine Edge in CS5 a bust?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for