Photoshop and Lightroom masking just keeps getting better. The recent update to both programs was significant; now we can mask people and even have some presets to make adjustments (more on that is an a few days).
But what really caught my attention, both in PS and LR masking, was the new Background and Object Selection tools. First notice besides Sky and Subject selection there is now Background selection. Just like you would imagine, hit this button when you are trying to select the background, which might include some sky too.
Take a look above…this is what I got when I hit Background selection. I could have also hit Subject selection and then inverted it to get a similar selection. Once you have your selection chosen, you get all the slider control you have seen before. It is hard to imagine just a few years ago we were teaching extensive subject selection in photoshop online…now just click a button.
There is another tool that I am even more excited about. Take a look at Object selection (see red arrow). Select this tool, brush over an object you want to select, and let AI powered computing do the rest. Being able to quickly, and accurately, select a specific area in an image is huge. No more trying to narrow down selections by inverting or intersecting, let’s just paint over the thing and get right to it…my kind of editiing! I think this tool will be incredibly helpful with my masking/editing down the road.
Here I just painted over the back iceberg to select it…worked perfectly.
If you haven’t updated your PS/LR, do it now. You won’t want to miss out on these new masking features!