Customer Reviews

FLUID MASK 3 - VERTUS (WIN XP,VISTA/MAC 10.3.9 OR LATER,UB)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

After a week's trial of this program, why didn't I buy it?
Let's see:
* Because it didn't live up to its hype.
* Over 3/4 of the time it couldn't adequately extract the subject from its background.
* Photoshop masking and extracting tools are about as good and no extra cost.
* Help and tutorials too brief.

That's about it I guess.

Removing the background from a photo is often very time consuming. Several plug-ins have come along over the years claiming to make the task easier and faster. This one is no exception.
With a plain, uncluttered, high contrast background the job is fairly easy and can be done with tools in many photo editing programs at no additional cost. However with typical real world pics with normal backgrounds, the job of extracting the subject, especially with hair, becomes wildly more difficult.
This program is often described as having a steep learning curve. Perhaps to deflect criticism when it fails to produce satisfactory results. How much of a learning curve can there be when the entire Help section and all the online tutorials can be read and viewed in less than 2 hours? To me a steep learning curve is a 100 page DSLR camera manual or Photoshop itself. Not this.

Sorry Vertus, this one doesn't cut it. Save your money.

Fluid Mask is going into the trash can. The software does what it says it will do - finds edges and helps you isolate a mask. There are tutorials that are somewhat useful. I was never able to isolate hair and most mask had some left-over problems. Note: if you reload a copy of your hard drive using Norton Ghost (A really great program) or a back up copy from a hard drive storage device Fluid Mask will lock out your registration. The registration process is overkill and a mess from the begining and the re-registration of software you bought and own requires e-mails, wait time and even more frustration. Look at OnOne software.

Once you've got the mask defined properly, the extraction produces excellent results. Not sure why it has such a hard time identifying edges though. If I had it to do over again, I'd look more closely at Mask Pro by onOneSoftware before buying.

First of all, let me emphasize that I have only one computer and I have installed this software only on one single computer.
After I purchased a license, I installed the software on my computer at work. At work, my computer was connected to the Internet via LAN, and the registration went smoothly. When I went home, I could no longer use the software. At home, I had my computer connected to the Internet via wireless (EVDO). The license could not be activated because "the license number [...] has already been used on another computer".
When I went back to work the next day, I found another major problem. I realized that I must be connected to the Internet every time I wanted to use the software. If I had known that, I would not have purchased the license.

I didn't buy Fluid Mask from Amazon, but people who are considering it need to be aware of their stringent, unpredictable, and unstable licensing protocol. Every time you open Fluid Mask, it checks your license against their server. Don't happen to be online? Tough luck: you can't use the product. I mean YOU CAN'T USE IT--you can't even open a photo.

It gets worse. As A Richards pointed out in his review, if VertusTech's license server thinks you are using a different machine, it will lock you out. A month ago, when I got the most recent upgrade, this is exactly what happened to me. I have not changed desktop computers, I have not loaded it onto my laptop--I have played by their rules completely. But I can't even open a photo because on startup I get a nonsensical error message from their server, and then all menu options except Exit are disabled.

Despite many e-mails back and forth to Vertus Tech--many of mine unanswered, by the way--despite uninstalling and reinstalling five or six times, and despite uploading a diagnostic dump to VertusTech (God knows what personal information I wound up sending them), the problem is still not fixed one month later. When Vertus Tech bothers to answer my e-mail inquiries, they assure me that they're working on the problem. It's clearly not a priority for them at all--either that or the latest release is so screwed up, and they have received so many complaints, that they simply don't know which way to turn by now.

Either way, skip this product. When it works, it's not bad. But my projects have been dead in the water for an inexcusablly long time now, and I'm going on to Corel PhotoPaint, which appears to have a much nicer extraction and masking tool.

Even if it's not nicer, it will be an improvement if it's at all usable.

Although this product can be used as a stand alone, it works far better as a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop CS3. Fluid Mask 3 makes the task for developing "masks" on photos a lot simpler; it is reminiscent of the old "paint by number" idea that was very popular in the 1950s. This product is well worth the price in terms of time saved and frustration avoided.

This software is excellent and easy to use for masking, especially difficult areas like hair. It has saved hours of tedious masking using just Photoshop for me.