A picture might be worth a thousand words, but one that has a distracting background isn't even worth talking about. You've probably quickly clicked past such images on eBay. With some, it's like finding a needle in a haystack: the photo was taken in a room so cluttered you can't even pick out the item of interest. With others, it's like finding a white rabbit in a snowstorm: the color of the merchandise being sold is so similar to the background color that it's almost invisible.
Enter Vertus Fluid Mask, a program (for Macs and PCs) that promises to eliminate bad background with just a few mouse clicks.
First you need to outline the part of the image that you want to keep. Normally such outlining is a laborious process, especially when your object has a complex shape (think about a photo of a teenager with spiky hair). But Fluid Mask claims that you'll be able to do it quickly and automatically.
The next step is to delete the existing background and add a better one. This might be a solid color that contrasts with the item you're selling, or a background scene that reflects the purpose of your object (you might place an antique weather vane against a blue sky dotted with fluffy white clouds, for instance). But keep in mind that a solid, non-intrusive background puts your sales items in their best light and makes them "pop" out of the eBay listing, instead of getting lost in it.
If you're the type of person who wants to try before you buy, you can download the program from the Vertus Web site (http://www.vertustech.com) and use it for 30 days for free. After that, you can purchase the program for $239. Fluid Mask can be used as a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop CS or Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0. Or you can download it as a standalone program for the Mac OS X or for Windows XP or Vista.
But enough about lights and cameras . . . let's proceed with some action. I downloaded the standalone version for Windows and found the application easy to install. I took some test photos with a purposely busy background and loaded them into my computer. Not being a guy who does things the easy way, my goal was to create an image that would be difficult to fix. I came up with the one shown below of three candlesticks atop an oak table.
Okay, so maybe I overdid it by trying to test the program on something way too complicated. When you first open an image in Fluid Mask, the program draws a complex web of vector lines all around the shapes in your photo. My oak table got plenty of lines, as did the hutch in the background. Next time I'll be more sensible and put my objects on a tablecloth.
Nonetheless, I set about the task of masking the parts of the image I wanted to delete and marking the ones I wanted to keep using the various brushes provided by the application. This turned out to be time-consuming, but I'm sure I'll pick up speed with practice . . . especially if I avail myself of the wide variety of tutorials that Fluid Mask provides to guide you through the process (http://www.vertustech.com/fm_tutorials.htm).
Even if you're not an artist or have never before used a computer graphics program, you'll find the theory behind Fluid Mask easy to comprehend: you just choose a "brush" to "paint" areas of the image that you want Fluid Mask to handle in a particular way. With one virtual paint brush, you paint areas that you want to cut out (or mask). With another, you paint areas you want to keep. With a third, you mark any areas you want to blend together.
At first I was excited by the prospect of doing something similar to the color-by-number paintings I loved when I was a kid. But I must admit that my first attempt at creating a "cut-out" (an image with the background deleted) wouldn't have won me a prize at the county fair. I cut out the background all right, but parts of the candlesticks I wanted to preserve also went missing. I was gradually able to improve the image by more clearly defining the boundaries between the mask and the parts of the image I wanted to keep, using the Blend Brush. Luckily, I didn't have to draw the boundaries perfectly; the application filled them in based on the vectors it had drawn earlier. I appreciated how intuitive Fluid Mask was at "knowing" where the boundaries of various objects are. The result below is not perfect, but with a little more work it would be eBay-worthy
To see what can be done once you are proficient, you can peruse a gallery of before and after photographs (http://www.vertustech.com/fm_gallery.htm). Here's one of an object on a background the same color - notice that when the green background is removed, the green frog then pops against the white background.
I'm a writer who lives by the power of words, but no matter how my text sings I know I won't get far on eBay without fantastic photos. eBay is doing its part to make it easier for sellers to add photos to their auction descriptions. For example, now you can embed your images right into your description. But that shouldn't tempt you to carelessly tack up images with distracting backgrounds, even if you don't have a photo studio at home or are photographing items that just can't be captured indoors. Claims of "quick" and "automatic" might be a bit overstated by Fluid Mask but, if you pick a simple image and develop your skills, eventually your merchandise will jump to life and grab the attention of shoppers.
