Significantly speed up your masking workflow

Person Mask is a new machine learning-based masking tool for Color Finale 2 Pro, a color grading plugin for Final Cut Pro. It automatically identifies and isolates human figures in your footage enabling precise adjustments and effects without manual masking.

This a free update for all Color Finale 2 Pro users who are within their active support period. Download it from the online license manager or simply click Check for Updates in the ColorFinale.app (from the /Applications folder). If you don’t have the plugin, you can try the free 7-day trial or buy it from the store.

To add a Person Mask, first make sure you have the plugin selected in the inspector so that there is a yellow border around it. Then, like with other mask tools, right click on a layer such as Color Wheels, choose 'Add Mask' from the dropdown menu, and click on the icon to add the mask. Once selected, a neural network automatically detects and masks any prominent people in the shot, including their clothes and other items.

There are several familiar options to refine the mask. Softness, detail, and blur. The quality selector lets you choose between faster processing at the cost of having a slightly rougher mask — useful for a quick edit — or a more accurate result.

You also have the options to select between the full mask, the contour around the person or people, or to use the mask in combination with the contour. Vary the width and set the contour inside, outside, or in the centre.

For an example of how the Person Mask can speed up your workflow, consider the common inside/outside masking technique: now instead of manually rotoscoping the person in the clip for the first layer, you may only need one click to capture the mask in one go, significantly speeding up the process.

You can do a lot of things with this. For example with the inside/outside mask set up you can apply the recently added Bokeh blur filter to the background to further increase the separation between the scene and the subject, simply modify the skin tones to better match the scene, or even make your subject glow!

We hope you find this update containing the AI-powered Person Mask a useful addition to your workflow.