Lets have a look at the new features in ACR 2025 aka ACR 17. Camera Raw comes with Photoshop and is accessablw either through Bridge or as a filter in Lightroom. There is a slight difference between the 2 and we will see what that is in a sec. Other thing, Lightroom Classic uses ACR as its processing engine. In this case, we have a couple of beta features in ACR that haven’t found their way into lightroom yet.

How to update Camera RAW

Let’s update to the latest version.

Launch the Creative Cloud app.

To update ACR, you update Photoshop. The latest version is part of the Photoshop installation.

When you update Photoshop, its a good idea to NOT remove old versions. I would make sure everything works first, and then uninstall the old version after a week or 2 when you are sure you don’t need it any more. Yes, you can have multiple versions installed at one.

You can Launch ACR as. filter in Photoshop. Filer>Camera Raw filter

But notice the crop tool and geometry are missing. So are the image sizing options at the bottom.
This is intentional, because as a filter, ACR can be run on a layer and you wouldn’t want to mess up your entire document, by resizing a layer.

If you want to run the “full” version of Camera Raw, either open a raw file from File open.. or you can launch a jpg, RAW, Tiff or png from Adobe Bridge. Right-Click  and choose Open in ACR.

Enabling the Beta Features

Some of the new features are turned off, lets enable them.

Launch the full ACR. Click on the gear in the top Right.

Go to Technology Previews>Turn on New features from Technology Previews

Denoise

The ai denoise may be the best feature in ACR.

Here is an image at 25,000 ISO and its very noisy (grainy).

In the detail tab there is a Denoise option.

It removes the noise really well. Whats new about this and  Raw Detail and Super Resolution, they are non destructive and a new file isn’t created any more. They work on the original file.

Its still limited support for file types, but more RAW formats are included now including Apple Pro Raw (iPhone) and google Pixel raw.

Adaptive Profiles

The new Adaptive profiles are great, especially for HDR images. This is an unedited, but merged HDR image.

Here you can see its using the default Adobe Color.

Change it to adaptive.

Immediately, the image looks better, this is before we have applied any adjustments yet.

Profiles arwe appl;ied before image adjustments, more about ACR / Lightroom Profiles here

Generative Expand

Normally, when you straighten a photo, it crops in to the photo and you lose some content around the edges.

If you turn on Enable Expand..

Now you can outcrop

Click on Generative Expand

All the transparent areas a filled with generated content. Now you can straighter or an image without losing and of the content.

Lets try it on a larger image. This is a stitched panorama.

As you can see, it can generate large areas with ai.  Be careful with this though, because the generated pixels are lower resolution, so this doesn’t match too well on a large image. You can see the grain mismatch around the edges. Hopefully this improves in the future.

Extending an image. We are adding more to the left and top of this image.

In this case, it looks pretty good. It helps when the extended area is smaller and less detailed.

Generative Remove

Gen Remove isn’t brand new in ACR, but it got some updates.

Turn the options on, like before

Now you can circle select

It will detect the object

And it nicely removes the back sign.

For the front one, we will use the other new feature, scribble select

It detects it nicely

And ai removes it.

You have 3 variations to choose from. You can see in the video.

Ok, thats our ACR updates this time around. There are also some new Adaptive Presets and a couple of other little things.

Hopefully you found this tutorial useful

Colin

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This tutorial shows how to add a loo to any object is a hyperrealistic way.

Start with a leather bag in this case. This will work on any surface.

If you have the logo in your Library, drag it into your document.

If the logo isn’t in the library, choose File>Place and find it. Or choose FIle>open and then Combine the images in your object document. 

They will now be on 2 layers.

If the Logo is a Smart Object, as indicated by the Smart Object Badge; Right-Click and Choose Rasterize layer

Press Ctrl/Cmd+T for Free Transform

Drag the corner handles to resize the logo and position it. Don’t press Enter yet.

Right-Click and choose Distort

Drag the corners to match the perspective of your object.

Right-Click and Choose Warp (If right-Click doesn’t work, make sure to Press Ctrl/Cmd+T Again)

Drag to match the roundness and bends of your object

We need to hide the black. Don’t select it, here’s a faster way.Where it says Normal in the layers panel, change it to Lighten. Changing the layer blending mode hides black.

Now we want to make the logo wrap to fit all the contours and wrinkles.

We will make a Displacement Map

Hide the Top layer

Choose the Channels Panel

Click on the Blue channel (Has the most contrast)

Right-Click and choose Duplicate Channel

Under Destination>Document choose new

This will copy the channel to a brand new document

Click ok

We now have a new document.

Save it as a .psd to your desktop. File>Save as

I called it dmap.psd

Clse the document, you no longer need to edit it.

Choose your original document with the bag.Click on RGB in the channels Panel to show all the channels again

Return to the layers panel and turn on the logo layer again.

Make sure the logo layer is selected

Choose Filter>Distort>Displace

Keep the default settings and click ok

You will now see the finder.

Navigate to your dmap.psd file and click ok

You will notice the log warps to match the contours on the bag. (Or whatever object you are working with).

Make the logo look worn

Let’s add some milage to the logo, so it doesn’t look brand new.

In the Layers Panel, click on the fx button and choose Blending Options

Choose the left black slider on Underlying Layer

Hold Alt/Option to split the triangle and drag to the right.

This will fade the logo in the shadow and midtone areas.

If you drag the left part of the triangle it will break up the type and make it look distressed.

Here is the final result.

Its a few steps, but look how realistic it looks compared to just dropping the logo and changing a blend mode.

Thanks for checking this out. Drop a comment and let me know what tutorials you would like me to create in the future.

Thanks

Colin

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The selection brush tool, is a tool that makes selections. Unlike the other selection tools, you just brush this on like a paintbrush, it’s very easy to use. If you have used the selection brush and know Photoshop fairly well, you will notice it’s similar to Quick Mask. If you have never used the selection brush, it’s ok, we will go through ti here along with all its features. We will also look at quick mask and suggest which is the best way to go for different tasks.

How to use the Selection Brush Tool

Choose the tool from the toolbar.

Paint. You will see a colored brush stroke.

When you choose a different tool, the colored stroke will turn into a selection.

If you choose the Selection tool again, the selection will turn into the brush stoke once again.

When the selection is active, it’s the same as any selection. You can combine it with other selection tools.

Hold Shift to add to the selection. Hold Alt/Option to remove from the selection.

When you are in the Brush tool, also

Size Hold Alt/Option to remove from the selection.

When you choose the setection tool, the selection will turn back to the colored strokes.

Shortcuts or hotkeys help. (L-key), chooses the selection tool, choose another tool, like move tool (V-Key) to toggle a selection.

There are 2 brush settings

Size ( [ or ] bracket keys)

Hardness (Shift + [ or] brackets)

Being able to create a soft edges selection is unique to this tool. (and Quick Mask, we will discuss soon)

Using the Selection Brush Tool

Lets remove a distraction from the photo.

You can paint freehand to make a selection. Or use this trick to paint straight lines quickly.

With the tool selection, click at the start point.

Release

Hold Down Shift

(Still holding Shift), Click at the end of the line

A line will be drawn between the 2 points.

I used that trick to select the steel girder.

Click on Generative Fill in the Contextual Task Bar.

Leave it blank and click Generate.

The distraction has been removed.

Using the Selection Brush tool with Density

Let’s make a little art using the density art trick. Learn how to make art with ai and density in Photoshop here

Lower the brush Opacity to around 20%

Choose a different overlay color. Here we chose Green.

Paint over the portion of the image you want to change.

In the task bar, click Generate and then enter something like oil painting, or watercolor in the prompt and click on Generate.

You get an oil painting effect

Lower the Opacity of the layer to make the effect more subtle.

Cutting Out tress with Selection Brush and Quick Mask

A difficult task for many people is cutting out trees. I have tutorials on removing background from trees. 

Without going through all the steps. They are on the video at the top.

Choose Select>Color Range

Use the eyedropper to select the sky.

Use the + eyedropper to add to the selection

Move fuzziness to get the best isolation of the selected area.

Click ok

You get a selection of the sky.

Cmd+Shift+I to inverse the selection.

Choose the selection Brush. See the overlay.

Paint on the areas that got missed.

Go back to a selection.

You may notice, it’s really hard to see the tiny areas that are missed in the field.

Ok, here’s a better way. Continuing where we are.

Using Quick Mask to refine selections

With the marching ants selection active, Click on the Quick Mask tool, to press the Q key.

You will see a similar overlay, but probably a different color than Selection Brush.

If you double click the Quick Mask tool, you will see you can choose any color and also opacity.

Now with 100% opacity, it’s easier to see the missed areas than with the Selection Brush.

But, it gets even better.

Open the Channels and notice the Quick Mask channel has been created.

Turn off the visibility eye from RGB

Now you can see a black and white mask.

Paint with black and white to clean up the mask. Much easier now. You can also combine other selection tools inside Quick mask.

Press the Q key to go back to a selection. Just like the Selection Brush, you toggle between a selection and painting.

The Quick Mask tool also lets you use any brush you like as well as supporting Pen Pressure.

Quick Mask is more powerful, and is my choice. If you are newer, you may find the Selection Brush easier. So you have options. The selection brush is sometimes quicker for quick fixes and selecting things to use with generative fill.

I have a few tutorials on How to use Quick Mask, here is one. 

Just to finish our task. If you click the mask icon to hide the background we can see the quality of our selection.

I dropped a blue solid behind it to let you see the quality of the cutout.

This is the same image, but using Select Sky. As you can see the other method is more work, but a better result.

I hope you found this week’s free tutorial useful.Thanks

Colin

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There’s a cool hack that allows you to convert photos to paintings and a lot more using Generative Fill and a 20% selection.

It was a well known hack, but I took it further.  I encourage you to look at the tutorial as it shows a lot of detail and options not in this tutorial. 

This stopped working somewhere with Photoshop 2024. The reason, density was broken in Generative Fill. The good news is, it’s working again in the Main Version of Photoshop (It currently does not work with Photoshop Beta). But there are some new features that work with this trick, that weren’t available before.

Set up Photoshop.

First thing, let’s get our settings right.

Double click the Quick Mask button

This Brings up the options. Choose Selected areas.

Click ok

Converting to a Painting using Quick Mask.

Let’s do an overall adjustment. We will start with Quick mask. If you can, read or watch ENTIRE tutorial. There is important info I don’t want you to miss and we are covering multiple techniques, it’s important for you to see it all.

Open your picture.

Choose Quick Mask. Q key

Click on Foreground Color.

Choose the (B) Option, this is Brightness. Enter 80. 80% White will give us 20% Black. This is the Density we are choosing: 20%.

Click OK

Fill with the Foreground color. Option+Delete on Mac, or Alt+Backspace on Windows

You will see a pink color.

Exit Quick Mask mode by tapping the Q key once again.

You probably won’t see the selection, Marching Ants because it’s less than 50% selected and they don’t show up, but the selection is active.

Click on Generative Fill in the Task Bar

Enter Painting (You could use other things, such as sketch, oil painting, watercolor etc.)

Click Generate

You will see we now have an art look over the photo.

Converting a Photo to art with the Selection Brush

Let’s look at the 2nd method, which will work fine for this simple example, but when we need more control later, I’ll point something out to you.

Choose the Selection Brush. Change the Opacity to 20.

Make the brush size really large. (Its the setting to the right of the Opacity.)

Paint over the entire image

Type in Painting to the Generative Fill and press enter.

As you can see, it’s really easy and quick using the Selection Brush, but only for a simple conversion.

Partial Adjustment

Now we are going to do a partial adjustment. We want to change the background to a Watercolor. We will start with the Selection Brush. You need to see what happens to learn something, then we will use the Quick Mask for this example and you will see why its better in this more complex adjustment.

Choose the Selection Brush and choose 20% for opacity and paint over the background.

Lets clean up the edges where we have gone over.

Choose the Subtract option for the brush and a smaller size.

Also increase the Amount to 100% because his is the cleanup brush.

Paint away the edges and clean up the mask.

Type watercolor in the Generative Fill box in the Taskbar.

Click Generate

The result looks good, but..

You may wonder why I didn’t use Select Subject, or any other selection tools to help?

When you use other selections tools, you need to first turn on those tools to make the selection, ok, Captain Obvious.

When you choose the Selection Brush, it converts the selected area into a Mask. Perfect.. BUT..

No matter what you set the Brush Opacity to, an active selection will always be 100% when you click on the Selection Brush. So, only selections painted with the Selection Brush can be a different opacity. Yeah, that sucks.

If you want to use other selections tools, you need to use the Quick Mask. (This is one reason, I’m not a huge fan of the Selection Brush. It’s better to use Quick Masks for anything but the most basic selections with the Selection Brush.

Using Quick Mask to do a Partial Effect

The Good news, its not hard to do this with the Quick Mask, Learn this and you will be set.

The First thing you need to do is ENABLE Quick mask, Either tap the Q key, or click the button in the toolbar.

We can use selections in the Quick Mask mode.

Choose the Object Selection Tool.

Click Select Subject.

It now selects our person.

If select subject can’t find a subject, do this: Open the Channels Panel. Click on RGB at the top. Now use object selection. When the selection is made, click on Quick Mask in the Channels again and continue.

We need to Inverse the selection and choose everything but the Person AKA our Background.

Press Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+I to Inverse (swap) the selection.

Choose a Foreground color.

Under the (B) set it to 80% like we did before.

Click ok.

Fill with Foreground color.  Option+Delete / Alt+Backspace on Windows.

Notice the pink color fills the background, but not our person, because of the selection we made.

Turn off the selection by Pressing The Ctrl/Cmd+D key.

Leave Quick Mask Mode, tap the Q key.

In the task Bar, enter watercolor under Generate

Click Generate and now we have just the background converted to a water color, while our person remains a photo.

For the more complex tasks that require additional selections, use the Quick mask method.

The Selection Brush works fine for the simple tasks. (To be honest, I don’t see myself using the Selection Brush all that often, but we will see.)

I hope you found this tutorial useful!

Check out the New Photoshop features (July 2024)

Colin

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In some cases, these features have already appeared in the beta version of Photoshop and I have already made tutorials on them. In those cases, I’ll provide a brief overview of the feature here, so this tutorial is complete. I will also provide a link to th more in-depth tutorial, so you can learn the feature in more detail.

Selection Brush Tool

This feature is entirely new(ish). While it’s a new feature, the Selection Brush is just basically a dumbed down version of Quick Mask.

You use the selection Brush, to paint on a selection. When you choose another tool, the painted area will be turned into a section. What makes this tool unique, is its ability to create a soft edged selection, and also with a different level of transparency. (This can also be done with Quick Mask, but with more control). The selection brush has no edge detection and works like a paintbrush.

The Selection Brush is nested with the lasso tool.

At the top, you can chan choose transparency as well as brush softness.

Paint on the image where you want to make a selection.

If you choose a different tool, the pink area will turn into a section.

In this case, lets do something more interesting to highlight the soft edges selection.

Click on new layer mask

A mask is created with a soft edge and also semi transparent.

You can see this makes in interesting looking mask.

Let’s inverse the mask, Click on the layer masks

Ctrl/Cmd+I to invert it.

Choose another image and drag it into the tab on the image we are working on.

This enables us to combine images into a collage. See how the soft edges selection works in this case.

Here is a basic tutorial on combining images and making collages in photoshop if you don’t know how to do this.

Using the Selection Brush with Generative Fill

Here is a more useful way to use the selection brush.

Lower the opacity to 20%

Paint in the area you want to generate a shark.

In the Contextual Task Bar, type in Shark and click Generate.

Because the Brush opacity was reduced to 20% it generates a low density, making the shark appear underwater.

In my opinion, this tool is a bit redundant and you are better off learning how to use Quick mask Tool. But it’s easy for beginners, who may get some use out of it.

Adjustment Brush updates

I have made tutorials on the Photoshop Adjustment Brush before. But is has some updates here.

First, it’s been places into its own slot in the toolbar. It used to be nested with the Brush tool. The problem with the nesting, when you tap the B key for Brush, you would get the Adjustment brush instead of the paintbrush and this messed up workflows, as well as actions.

Now you have options in the Taskbar including Brush hardness and size. (I’m still hoping for pen pressure).

Paint on your photo to apply the adjustment.

To be a little blunt, I sort of Group this tool with the Selection brush, a bit redundant for users other than new users, as the Adjustment Layer Masks can do the same thing with more control.

But here is a different way the Adjustment Brush works that is useful.

If you want to extend the adjustment, choose the Object selection tool and make a selection.(You can see this on the video at the top).

The adjustment is automatically extended to the selected area.

Shapes, strokes and fill

The shape tools have a boost and the features are available in the Task Bar, making this once-annoying floating bar a little more useful and endearing itself with more users. Let me know in the comments, do you like the task bar?

Grab the rectangular shape tool. Make sure you have shape as the option at the top left of the top toolbar.

Make a selection.

Notice you can change the fill and stoke colors, as well as change the roundness by dragging on the dots in the corners.

Tap the curve in the task bar and notice you can also change the corner roundness here.

If you desire, you can change the roundness of individual corners.

Bullets and Numbering

This simple feature appears to be the favorite of a lot of people, myself included.

When you make text lists, you had to manually create bullets with the circle tool and align them to the image. No longer!

With the type tool active, Click the tool options.

Look at the bottom left corner of the Paragraph panel.

Make sure you select your type first.

Click on Bullets and lookie!

It’s small, but huge at the same time and long overdue.

If you chose numbers, it will add a numbered list, or convert the bullets to numbers.

Enhance image on Generative Fill

When you use Generative fill, you get a maximum resolution of 1024px x 1024px stretched out over the Generated area. This tool is added from Photoshop beta and now in shipping version.

If the generated area is larger than 1k, you will see an icon in the variation Thumbnail. Click this to enhance the appearance of the generated pixels.

I have created and entire tutorial on Enhancing resolution on Generative Fill, where I show you exactly what this does and how it works, as well as tips to boost the resolution in any generated image.

Text To image, Generate Image

This next feature, is also moved over from Photoshop Beta, aka the real Version of Photoshop (Shipping? They don’t actually ship) or whatever we are calling the regular version of Photoshop.

At the bottom of the toolbar you will see a new icon. If the icon is missing, here’s the fix

The new icon is for Generate Image, or Text to Image. You have to have a document open for this to work. If it’s grayed out, create a new document first, or open an existing one.

Here you can generate images from text prompts and they are using Adobe Firefly version 3.

I’m not going Ito this as I show how it works on the video, and I have previously made an in-detail tutorial on Photoshop Generative Image/ Text to Image. 

Hopefully this article was useful and helped you get up to date on the newest Photoshop Features. In case you didn’t know, I have an archive of ALL the Photoshop and Lightroom features as they were added in the Superguide. See what features you may have missed.

Great to see you at the CAFE

Colin

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Adobe Photoshop mini masterclass on Select and Mask. The video and written steps explain how every tool in Select and Mask work, so you can fix all the common problems we get with cutouts. Eliminate Jaggies, blockies, smudgies and halos.

Part 1/2 Hair and Fur is here.

When you make selections to cut out images, often you will have problems with the edges. You’ll see halos, jaggies, blockies, smudgies and other problems. (I just coined the phrases Smudgies and blockies, you’ll know them when you see them.) Photoshop contains a number of tools to address these edge problems. Many people aren’t using all these tools because they often don’t know what each tool does. That’s my goal here, to explain these tools and demonstrate when to use them. I wanted to make a comprehensive walk-through of every feature in Select and Mask and how it works. Here is Part 2 of this tutorial, dealing with Smooth Edges. Part 1 is here

This tutorial is made in Photoshop 2024. It will work with Photoshop CC and newer.

We will use a car because it has nice smooth hard edges. We will focus on these types of edges in this tutorial. Often I will use the Pen tool to get a very accurate selection on this kind of task if I’m going high resolution or print. See how to use Photoshop Pen Tool here

For a faster and easier way to cut out these objects, please watch the first 3 steps of this tutorial.

Select and Mask can be used on all selections, no matter what tool you use to make the selection.

Lets make a selection

Choose the Object Selection or Quick Selection tool

Look for Select Subject at the top toolbar

Choose Cloud for a better quality selection

Tip: Cloud gives the best quality, but you have to be connected to the internet for it to work. Otherwise use device.

You can change the preferences to choose Cloud all the time

Photoshop Settings>Image Processing>Select Subject Processing, choose Cloud.

You will now see a selection

Notice an extra bit got selected at the back

Use Object selection

Hold down Alt/Option for the subtract option and draw around the selection boundaries you want to remove

Photoshop will remove that portion and snap to the object.

Finish making the selection off you need to. I have many tutorials on making selections, there are many ways to do it using the magic tools, quick mask, pen tool, color range, marquee tools and more. I have tutorials on those here as well as a course on Photoshop Selection Secrets.

If you used the steps above or a different selection tool, let’s refine the edges now.

Choose Select and Mask (If it doesn’t show, choose a selection tool for the toolbox on the left of Photoshop).

Select and Mask Workspace Tools.

Let’s look at the tools on the left.

Refine Tool is for soft and semi transparent areas. We covered this in part 1 of this tutorial

Then we have the brush tool.

The brush tool lets us paint wherever we like without any algorithm working. It’s fully manual

If we paint with the brush tool we can add areas to the selection.

Hold down Alt/Option to remove areas. This tool allows us the freedom to manually choose edges and areas that got missed.

In this case, we are painting away the extra bit on the back. We are in Black and White viewing mode which lets us view the mask. (This was covered in part 1).

The object selection tool is the same Object Selection in Photoshop and uses ai to detect edges and objects

We can add the car in the garage with a single click when using the object selection in Select and Mask.

The Lasso tool uses a lasso to add or remove from the selection, Like the brush, but it’s selection based.

Make a selection and that areas shows

Hold Alt/Option and make a selection to remove from that area.

We don’t have to fill when using the lasso tool, it does it automatically.

If we use the polygon Lasso tool, we can edit with straight lines. This is a very useful option.

Using Global Refinements in Select and Mask

Let’s explore the global refinements. These tools are designed to help with smooth edges such as skin or hard surface objects.

Look at the Jaggie edge

Adjust smooth to smoothen out the bumpy edge

How Global Refinements Work

Let’s look at Photoshop for a second, so I can show you what’s happening with the Global Refinement tools. Don’t follow these steps, but just observe for a second. (You can watch it on the video at the top).

Here is a rough edge, we are looking direct at the mask. (Photoshop layer Masks for beginners here)

If we choose Filter>Blur, we can soften the edge of the mask,

This is exactly what the feather slider does.

The edge is soft and removed the bumps and unevenness,  but we need to make it a sharp edge.

Choose Ctrl/Cmd+L for Levels. (we are adjusting the mask, but viewing the image, so you can see the result, don’t worry, you don’t have to do this).

As we pull the triangles together it sharpens the edge, This is the same as using the contrast slider in Select and Mask.

Before Select and Mask, we used to use blur and Levels all the time, because that way the only way to do it.

Back to Select and Mask

Add some feather to soften the edge and even it out

Add contrast to make the edge sharper.

Shift Edge

There is another setting that allows you to expand or shrink the edge. This lets use show more of the edge, or choke out the edge fringes.

Move it to the right to expand and widen the edge.

Move it to the left to contract the edge.

How Shift Edge works (demonstration, you don’t have to do this).

If we go back to that mask in Photoshop

Remember when we added a feather and then pulled the triangle together in Levels to sharpen that edge?

If we move all the triangles in levels to the right it contracts the edge

Move all the triangles to the left to expand the edge of the selection.

Shifting Edges in Select and Mask

Back to select and Mask

Be careful when shifting the edges in Select and Mask, because this affects the entire image.

Often its useful to Turn on decontaminate colors because this can remove the edge halos by itself.

Only after you apply decontaminate colors. move the Shift edge a very minimum amount.

This is the fastest and easiest way to fix the edges.

There are a number of ways to fix edges and I have made several tutorials here at PhotoshopCAFE. Here is another way to clean up the edges of selections in Photoshop 

Choose New Layer with Layer Mask on “output”

Click OK to apply the changes.

The layer open with a layer mask in Photoshop.

If you paint on the Layer mask with a black brush, you can remove areas of the cutout.

If you paint on the Layer mask with a white brush, you can add areas of the cutout.

This way you can use brushes to finish the cutout and get it absolutely prefect.

There are other tools and many other techniques to working with cut outs and edges in Photoshop. My course covers many of them, and there are lots of free tutorials here at the CAFE

I hope this 2-part tutorial has helped you understand the Select and Mask tool in Photoshop better.

Thanks

Colin

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This tutorial focuses on the Tone adjustments in Lightroom and ACR. These are the most important settings to begin editing your images.

This simple tutorial shows you an effective way to prepare your photos for further enhancement. It gives you a solid base of quality image details. (In many cases this is all you will need).

This tutorial works with Lightroom Classic, Lightroom and Adobe Camera RAW

A quick tip to start.

If you are using Lightroom, drag the develop panel to the left to widern the panel and elongate the sliders. See the red )original length) thia gives u almost 2x the amount of control.

Recover details

Here is the original image showing a loss of detail in the bight areas in the sky and on the left of the image.

We will use the Tone panel and this is the order I use it.

First, we want to reveal as much detail in the highlights and shadows as we need.

Drag the highlight slider to the left to reveal details in the sky. (Dehaze also reveals the details, but it also increases contrast, so it shouldn’t be used yet.)

If you still need more details, (depends on the image) reduce the exposure slightly.

I like to slightly reduce the contrast slider to open up more detail (See this tutorial on Contrast to see why)

Lets reveal detail in the shadows (lower right of the image)

Slide the Shadow slider to the right.

Use the Shadow and the highlight sliders as recovery sliders. Always more the Shadows to the right

And always push the highlights to the left.

Note: The amount you move these will vary from image to image and from camera to camera. These are shot on a drone with low dynamic range files, so they are pushed more aggressively that I would need to move them on camera like the Sony A1 for example.

Now we have opened up the details in the image. Next we want to add some punch.

The Whites and Blacks are used to add the contrast back into the image with minimum loss of details.

Lets do the whites first.

Hold down the Alt/Option key as you move the whites. You will see clipping indications on the screen. This lets us know if we have gone too far and lost highlight details.

Move the whites to the right to clean up milky areas in the highlights. This image is already bright, so it doesn’t need much.

Move the blacks to the left to add punch to the shadows. (Hold down alt/Option to see clipping too).

At this point, you can go on and use other tools including curves and Presence. This tutorial is focusing on the tone adjustments and I hope this helps you get to a good start point in getting better edits!

Check out this companion tutorial on Contrast vs Whites/Blacks that fits right in with this tutorial.

Great to see you at the CAFE

Colin

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In this tutorial, we will look at how Object Selection differs from Select subject. Then we will do a comparison between the two tools and I’ll provide some tips and a workflow to get the best results. Check out the video to get more details.

How Object Finder and Select Subject differ

For either of the tools, you will want to choose the Object Selection Tool first.

At the top, choose the drop down menu and select Cloud. This will always give a better result than Device. (You can permanently change it in preferences).

Click on Select Subject and a Marching Ants selection will appear around the main subject(s).

In this case it selected the three woman.

Ctrl/Cmd+D to deselect.

Let’s try the Object finder. With the Object Selection tool still active, make sure Object Finder is on

As you roll lover selectable objects in the photo, they will appear highlighted.

To select them, click and the selection will be created.

The main difference from Select Subject, is the ability to select different objects individually and isolate them. In the past, the quality of the selection was inferior to the selection quality of the Select subject. As you will see, this is no longer the case.

Using Object Selection, manually

Another function of the Object selection, is the ability to tell Photoshop what objects you want to select, these can be large or tiny, simple or complex.

Turn off Object Finder and use rectangle mode.

Draw a box around the object to select.

The ai will make its best selection around the object.

Combination selections

Make a box around part of an object, the box doesn’t even have to be accurate, just good enough to tell Photoshop what you want to select.

The selection will be made.

To add to a selection, hold down the Shift key and make a box around another object

Both are selected.

What if we want to add the shape in between?

For odd shaped selections, choose the Lasso mode.

Hold down Shift and make a selection

Notice it added to the selection nicely. We need to remove the empty area inside the shape.

Hold down Alt/Option to remove from the selection.

Drag inside the shape to remove the center.

And the ai does it’s thing.

If I add a layer mask, you can see how the selection looks. Not bad, for nat making any modifications.

Select Subject vs Object Finder

Ok, the moment of truth. Let’s compare the quality of selections between the 2 ai powered out selection tools.

We will start with Select subject and a subject that has a lot of hair. Yes, it’s a simple background, but the point here is to compare the two tools and the quality of the edges, not compete in a difficult selection challenge.

Here is the selection. I won’t make any refinements or modifications in this test, just a single click only. At the end of the tutorial, I’ll show how to refine the edges.

Lets click the layer mask button to mask this Select subject.

Onto Object finder.

Make sure Object Finder is on.

Click to select

I added a mask to this too. and put the 2 different selections next to each other for you to look at. We have Object Finder on the left and Select Subject on the right.

We will look at different colored backgrounds. The first thing that struck me, is this tool is now usable, the selection isn’t bad at all. Its not perfect, but remember, we haven’t worked it yet and all selection tools, just give you a starting place.

closer up, you can see things like the eyelash.

Here it is on white

and on black, I notice the Object finder (on the left) seems to do a better job with the fine details on the hair.

Here is a different selection. Select subject is doing better with the smooth details on the back of the skater, however its missing part of the board (all of these are easy fixes).

Object Finder Special features

Lets look at some of the settings

If you click this icon, you can show all selectable objects at once.

Each of the highlighted areas can be clicked on to automatically load the selections.

Click the gear to see the settings (these are all covered in the video)

The main ones are the ability to change the way the overlay is displayed.

Refresh is useful when you are compositing. As you work on the image, Photoshop will constantly analyze and update the overlays. If you choose Manual Refresh, the analysis will stop. Click the rounded arrow to manually update (refresh) when you are ready.

Refine the selection

Whichever tool you use, you will still have to refine the selection for production-level selections. I’ll briefly show you the main steps here. I have many tutorials here at the CAFE that show how to refine the edges of selections and they are all still valid. The ai tools, add more tools to make quick selections, but they don’t replace the other tools, which in many cases, can still yield better results with a little more effort.

5 ways to fix selection edges in Photoshop

Make the selection with Object Finder (or any selection tool).

Click on Select and Mask

Now we enter the select and Mask workspace. (Maybe I should do a deeper tutorial on this tool and explain all the options sometime?)

The main settings are here.

First, move transparency to 100%, so you can clearly see what you are working on.

If you have hard edges that are a little uneven, try these settings.

Radius to 1px.

Tiny amount of feather and contrast. Only use smooth if there are objections jaggies, using smooth makes it almost impossible to get good hair edges, but you could work in 2 passes. Beyond the scope of this tutorial.

His jacket it looking really good, but the hair on his temples are semi-transparent.

grab the refine brush from the left panel.

paint over the hair edges

This is a great tool for hair, fur, smoke and glass.

Choose decontaminate colors to remove edge halos

The best way to output is New Layer with Layer mask.

And the Final Cut out. These are good tools to remove the background in a photo in Photoshop.

I hope you found this tutorial useful. Tune in for a new tutorial each week and browse the hundreds of tutorials here at the CAFE (at least bookmark, as PhotoshopCAFE will be a valuable resource for you, as it is for millions of other users.)

Thanks

Colin

Also follow me on Instagram, Tik Tik, Threads and Twitter.  for shorts and reels.

My new course on Generative Fill in Photoshop: https://photoshopcafe.com/shop/generative-fill-in-photoshop-introduction-course/

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In this Photoshop tutorial, I will show you the newest features in Photoshop 2023 selections. We will also look at Object Selection in a bit more depth, revealing some of the hidden options that you will find useful. Make sure to watch the video because it contains a number of tips and details that aren’t in these written steps. Also check out my new feature overview for Photoshop 2023 and Lightroom 12 aka Lightroom Classic 2023.

Choose the object selection tool, it’s under the magic wand. (If you don’t see the object selections tool, make sure you aren’t using an old workspace)

When you roll over different parts of your image, you will see that object or parts of objects will appear highlighted.

Click to make a selection

Drag on any object in your image to select it. At the top there are 2 options, the marquee or lasso options.

The ai does the rest of the work in making a selection.

Choose Select and mask to refine the selection. The object selection tool is now available in Select and Mask.

Some newer option with Object Selections are the ability to select a sky with a single click.

As you roll over your image, you have the option to select the foreground, just click to select.

Here I switched out the foreground using the initial selection to show how good it is.  You can refine the selections of course, but with the updated algorithms its pretty good.

Working with Layered Images

Here is a composite with many layers.

The flower layer is currently active.

Its easy enough to select the flower because the pixels are on the current layer.

If you try to select other objects tha are on other layers, you will get an error message, because no pixels are selected.

Turn on the Stack icon in the options bar to look at the full composite.

Now you can easily select anything in the composite from any layer.

I hope you found these new additions to the Photoshop Object Selection tool useful. Watch the video for more of a walkthrough and more tips.

Thanks for checking it out

Colin

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