The following settings and parameters are available in matting-mode for cropping, using stroke-based-matting and inside/outside edge matting:

The polygon-tool was already explained in chapter 3.1. Here is a short summary: Start with the polygon-tool for the outer selection (blue) by clicking on your image. Moving and clicking continues the selection. A right-click removes the last point and a double click-ends the selection. Then, use the polygon-tool for the inner selection . With the mouse-wheel and the lateral sliders you can adjust the angle.

Lasso-tool : The lasso-tool works similarly to the polygon-tool and is used to freely select the background or foreground. You start the selection by clicking. Keep the mouse button pressed and outline the desired area.

When you release the mouse button, the selection is completed automatically. With the mouse-wheel and the lateral sliders you can adjust the angle. In the example, the mouse button was released before the object was completely surrounded. The tool automatically completed the selection with the shortest distance between the start and end point.

 Inject-tool : You can add individual pixels to the inner or outer selection using the inject-tool. For example, select the inject-tool for the outer selection (blue) after you have defined the inner and outer selection. Then, click on individual pixels in the image that you do not think belong to the foreground object. In our example image, we will try to remove the white streaks around the hair strands.

Since a pixel is selected with each click you can work very precisely. When you have finished your selection, click "Apply" again to get an updated matting result. The white veil around the worked hair strand has now been visibly thinned. The more pixels you set, the stronger the result will be. The inject-tool for the inner selection works in the same way as the inject-tool for the Outer Selection: Click pixel by pixel on the areas of the image that are to be assigned to the inner selection and then click "Apply" again to see the result.

Note: Since the changes made by the inject-tool are small details, you must zoom in close enough to see the difference. This is the only way to perform an exact analysis.

The segmentation-tool was already explained in chapter 3.3. Here is a short summary: After you have defined the inner and outer selection with another tool, you can adjust the outer and inner area via segments. Areas that do not cleary belong to either foreground or background are displayed in red. Use the outer selection segmentation-tool to click on the red areas that belong to the background and the inner selection segmentation tool to click on the areas that belong to the foreground.

 Brush-tool : You can also use the brush-tool to customize the exterior and interior. After using another tool to specify the inner and outer selection, click on the outer selection brush tool (blue). By holding down the mouse button and moving the cursor over your image, you can adjust the background. You can use the inner selection brush-tool (green) to assign areas to the foreground: At the upper edge you can set the brush properties.

Contour-tool: With the help of a contour-tool, you can roughly trace the edges of the inside and outside area and CutOut 9 professional automatically detects in which area the separation should take place. You can then adjust the separation area.

You will find these contour-tools among the well-known polygon-tools for the inner and outer selection. In contrast to the polygon-tool, with the contour-tool you only have to roughly outline the inner and outer area of the object to be cut out and do not need to be exact, which saves a lot of working time. When you select the contour-tool, you can define the brush properties at the top of the screen before you start to draw the contours.
Then, your first step is to outline the outer area of the object with the contour-tool for the outer selection (blue). Then, you switch to the contour-tool for the inner selection (green) and outline the inner area. The procedure is the same as for the polygon-, brush- or lasso-tool.

CutOut 9 professional recognizes from these roughly selected areas which areas belong to the interior and which to the exterior. With the contour-tool, which is located between the background and the object selection, you can adjust the intermediate area, called the unknown area:

This makes sense in places where the calculation might be difficult when assigning areas to interior or exterior areas. In this case, the hair of the cheetah would be such an area. After moving the contour-tool over the intermediate area, the intermediate area expands from the diameter of the lower red arrow to that of the upper red arrow: At first glance, the contour-tool delivers a professional result just like the polygon-tool, but in a significantly shorter amount of time.

Simply outlining the edges with the help of the edge-tool is always useful if the object that is to be cropped out has particularly clear edges. If this is not the case, the polygon-tool may be more suitable.