AUTOMATED ITERATIVE IMAGE-MASKING BASED ON IMPORTED DEPTH INFORMATION

A method, process, and associated systems for automatically selecting and masking areas of a still image or frame of a video clip as a function of depth-information metadata embedded into the image or frame. An image-editing or video-editing workstation receives an image or frame into which has been embedded a set of depth values. Each depth value identifies a distance from the camera position of an object depicted by a pixel of the image or frame. When a user directs the workstation to automatically select or mask a region of the image or frame, the workstation uses the depth values, optionally in conjunction with other graphical properties of each pixel, to automatically select which pixels to include in the selection or mask such that the selection or mask identifies an approximate area of the image or frame that represents a three-dimensional object.