For the record on topaz, I tried Remask, I think it was 1.02, and it kept erroring out. Also, in PS, it was complaining that there was no layer mask, and that it needed a layer mask to continue. (1st it said the layer was locked, so I duplicated it in PS and then it got to the second roadblock mentioned above).

So I guess any plugin looking for-- and requiring-- layer masks is a nogo in xara.

I wonder what the best cutout program is that works fine in xara.