Hi Jerry and thanks for the heads-up. I have updated the article thanks to your insight and test it myself on my iMac. I noticed that there is a lot of discussions online with the newer M1 chip Macs having issues with some plugins. Hopefully, Adobe and Apple resolve this soon. Cheers. G

With the new masking built into photoshop, a plugin for masking is rarely necessary anymore. Once you get used to refining masks on your own, you can do far better, far faster, in the native interface. I used Fluid Mask back when it was version 2. Still great, but it did then what photoshop does now. It seeks the most probable edge within a simple selection, then makes a guessed selection, and allows you to adjust that to fit a little better. For holes inside the mask, you still have to select those, and the selection is usually close, but with a few adjustments to make in a few small areas. Once I have a selection of an object, I use the “select and mask button” to make my first pass refinement. I usually copy the selection and paste to a new layer, then make a second pass of refinement by painting in the edge a little from the back layer, with a very light brush, which not only smooths out the edge, but is easily undone where mistakes happen. Then the entirety is snapshotted to a new layer. This method gives me all the transition info of the edge where I need it, and when I move objects between backgrounds, I can snapshot the background layer, do some color adjustment to match the new background, and apply it to the cutout with a fitting layer blending mode. When I have to adjust only the object in the background, I do the same thing, but I apply the adjustments to the transition layer at a low opacity. It keeps the transition layer in both parts of the image, and allows the object cutout to look natural.
Fluid mask was great, but I found that it made me lazy in my masking. I eventually added my transition technique even while using the plugin. It’s far to easy to get lazy when using plugins like Fluid Mask. I still use plugins for masking when time is longer, since the photoshop AI selection is faster in most respects, and when I have difficult hair or detail to cut. Try TOPAZ. They get close to what Fluid Mask was.
Occasionally, I’ll start with the basic selection, paste that in a new layer, then use a masking plugin for the detail areas and repeat the procedure. In these instances, there are sometimes shifts in the pixelage (the algorithm for the copy shifts things slightly). This can be fixed with a move by tapping arrow keys, and afterward, an edge detail smoothing like I described above. It’s fast and it works. There are other masking plugins; I suggest testing out several until you find one that feels comfortable, and if you get it as part of a package, they usually have some other plugins that can be helpful in a pinch when time is a factor. Personally, I build in some time every couple of weeks, several hours, for just playing with what I’ve got. Sometimes the images come out great and they are art-worthy.