Have you ever wanted to extract something from a photo to either add to another photo or to change the background? Have you spent hours trying to use one of the lasso tools in Adobe Photoshop only to quit in frustration because of all the complex curves? Let me tell you, you do not have to feel frustrated any longer.

Fluid Mask is a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop version CS2 and CS3. There are versions for Microsoft Windows Vista and XP as well as Apple Mac Intel and Power PC 10.2.8 and up. Fluid Mask also works with Photoshop Elements as well as working in standalone mode for image formats that accept transitions to transparency, but only in 8-bit RGB Color; such as TIFF and PNG.

Fluid Mask is a set of advanced paint tools that cut out highly complex images with absolute precision. For most of your cut-outs it is just paint the area that you don't want and push a button and it's gone. If you need to be more selective, it works similar to painting by numbers. For more background read my review of Fluid Mask 2.0.

So what's new with Fluid Mask 3.0? Well, to start with, it is much faster. With the size of images increasing, Vertus felt the need to increase the speed of Fluid Mask. With the right configuration; multi processing system, it can be as much as 40 percent faster. On my non-multi processing machine, I noticed the speed difference immediately.

Next is the Localized edge detection and blending. When cutting out object from their background, it is still hard to get a difficult edge to blend just right. Fluid Mask now has a set of tools to isolate a difficult area and apply alternative edge finding and blending techniques. This makes the tricky parts of image cutting much easier.