Image Masking Services

Image Masking is a process of removing the background from the image which has irregular or blurred edges. It is a creative technique used to remove or separate an object from the image. Image masking is a challenging and time consuming work. It requires a good level of attention to the details. It can be used with other image editing techniques such as clipping path technique , photo retouching etc. to obtain the desired level of accuracy for the output image.

What type of images require masking?
There are many complex images or photos which may have soft or hard edges, outlines, curvy images with hair or fur, transparent or translucent images, images with inappropriate lighting in the background etc. are subject to image masking technique.

How Image Masking is done?
Adobe Photoshop is the most popular tool to do image masking. A pen tool is used to draw a path around the desired area. Then path selection is done and layer mask is applied to remove the object from its background.

Types of Image Masking Techniques:
There are different type of masking services such as alpha channel masking, layer mask, clipping mask or flesh masking, transparent image masking and collage masking services.

Categories of Image Masking Service

There are different types of masking services namely hair or flesh masking, alpha channel masking, transparent or translucent image masking, collage masking and so on. Let’s have a brief overview of various photo masking process.

1) Hair masking (Flesh Masking)
This technique is applied on images which has more hair or fur with soft edges and curves, It usually takes more time to accomplish the task using clipping mask technique. So, Hair or Flesh mask is performed to attain a perfect image.

2) Alpha Channel masking
To save a portion of an image permanently, it can be stored as an alpha channel. The alpha channel will store the selected image as an editable grayscale mask in the Channels panel.Alpha channel masking is a pixel based masking.It has 256 levels of gray color because it is an 8-bit channel. In alpha channel white color represents the visibility, the black color represents invisibility and the quantity of gray color tells how much portion of image will be visible, for example, 50% gray means 50% visibility. The alpha image is also referred as RGBA, where A stands for alpha channel.

3) Transparent Image Masking
Objects like glass, water, spectacles etc. require this kind of masking. In this process, the opacity level is adjusted so that the resultant image is clearly visible in such a way that transparency is retained.

4) Collage Masking
Collage Masking is used to place a combination of images on a new customised background.Collage Masking is used to ads and media industry as well as for making marketing brochures, magazine cover and e-commerce websites.

5) Layer Mask
Layer Mask is a technique in which different portions of image are selected and masking is applied to hide certain layers and reveal the layers below.It can also be used to change the opacity of various portions of the image. It can be used to completely hide a layer.

6) Clipping Mask
Clipping mask technique, one layer will control the visibility of another layer. For clipping mask we keep a layer at the bottom of the layer we want to apply the transparency. Base layer will control the visibility of its upper layer.

Benefits of Image Masking Service:
Image masking is a non-destructive technology
We can combine several images to form a collage using this technique
It can be used to hide and reveal certain portions of the image
Remove or Replace backgrounds from images