Digital Photographer's Software Guide - Bertemes - Net

Description
Recomposit is a specialist masking and recomposing package that allows you to isolate
difficult subjects from their background. It uses traditional chroma key (“bluescreen”)
technology to separate foreground from background by their difference in the hue
(chroma) channel. It supports inside/outside matting for when bluescreen matting is
not feasible, such as in real-life images captured outdoors. Recomposit can also simulate
lens blur in the background and has painting and retouching facilities.
Comments
If you do a lot of masking, download this software for a month’s free trial. Its inside/
outside matting, in particular, is highly effective. Many photographers will love the
“background blur” feature, which makes the matted foreground object stand out from
the background. With its combination of two advanced matting methods, Recomposit
is exceptional value, although it lacks most of the fine-tuning tools of fully professional
masking products.
Version: Recomposit 1.8 (2008)
Plugs into: Adobe Photoshop 3.0 and above (with extended edition)
OS: Windows 2000, XP, and above
RAM: 128MB
Supported file formats: JPEG, TIFF, and BMP
Price level: Approx. $40; (Extended edition) $80
Address: No.89 ShuTongJie, JiNiu Qu, Chengdu, Sichuan, People’s Republic of China, 610036
www.stepok.net
Snap
Vendor: Digital Film Tools
Purpose: Interactive selection tool for extracting solid or opaque objects
Chapter 11 ■ Masking Tools 151
Description
Snap is designed to separate solid or opaque objects from a background. It works effectively
when there is a clean edge between object and background but is not suitable for
separating fine hair detail, for which the vendor has another solution called EZ Mask.
There are also manual path-creation facilities in Snap using X-Splines.
Comments
Snap is so called because it snaps an editable curve to an object’s boundary. The software
differs from the vendor’s EZ Mask tool in not creating any changes in the foreground
object, making it useful for product shots where the background needs to be changed.