Photoshop Releases its Largest Set of Features Since Adobe MAX

by Pam Clark

Get Photoshop on desktop here

Get Photoshop on iPad here

I am thrilled to announce that today Photoshop launches a great set of new features across the desktop and iPad versions, continuing to deliver on our promise to constantly improve the product for our customers on all surfaces. This is the largest batch of features since the Adobe MAX conference in November, 2019. New features range from the Sensei AI machine learning magic you expect from us…to great performance improvements that will reduce steps and increase productivity on your top workflows. We hope you enjoy them all.

I will draw your attention, in particular, to the improved Select Subject feature where our researchers have invented completely new Sensei AI and machine learning tech to deliver incredible automatic selection results—the double bonus of fantastic magic and workflow improvements wrapped into one experience. This Sensei innovation is on the forefront of imaging science. We are just at the dawn of artificial intelligence in the world of imaging and creativity, which is a very exciting place to be.

Here’s what we have for you today:

Photoshop on Desktop

Get Photoshop on desktop here

Select Subject with Portrait Power

When I first saw the new Select Subject demo’d with this image above, I was blown away. This update is a huge leap forward for selections of people and tricky elements like hair.

Here’s what’s changed. Select subject has been improved with a whole set of additional new algorithms that make one-click selections of portraits, which happen to be the most-selected subject in Photoshop, better than ever before. Now you get even better results with the same single-click, with a deep emphasis on hair.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/YO2xy0lPuKs

I talked with Morteza Safdarnejad, one of the brains behind the magic of this release. Thanks to him, there is even more power hiding behind that one select subject button than there was just yesterday. Here’s a little artificial intelligence 101 for us all:

There are two main changes in this release—

  1. Select subject is now content aware, and applies new custom algorithms if it detects a person is in the scene.
  2. Hair and treatment around hair has been vastly improved.

We first introduced Select Subject with just a few algorithms powering the feature. Then we added a few more and chained them together, with each algorithm performing a different important task (find the object, make the selection, remove shadows, clean the edges, etc). With this release, we added even more brain-power to first detect the type of object you’re selecting and then apply new specialised selection techniques per the needs of the content, with a lot of extra focus on getting hair right. All this is still packed behind the same single Select Subject button, and even though we’ve injected way more “wow” behind the one click, Morteza and team have tuned the performance to produce these great new results in seconds.

Hopefully, from this you can see how we are using Sensei AI machine learning to constantly improve the results you get and improve the speed at which you’re able to achieve better results, without unnecessarily changing the user experience or your workflows.

If you like what you see with this feature, I’ve seen even more of the incredible AI innovations we are cooking in the labs and I can assure you, this is just the beginning!

Go here for more info about Better, faster Select Subject for portraits.

Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) User Experience Improvements

Today we ship a major interface overhaul that provides efficiency and productivity when adjusting your photos. This modern UI echos Lightroom and will feel familiar to any Lightroom user.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/MwUKyeJQicU

Image adjustments and batch processing is more intuitive and simpler to navigate. Sliders now look and feel more like Lightroom. New Crop tool improvements consolidate functionality into more convenient options. The Curves UI is updated and simpler to use and to visualise changes. In addition, the controls can now be stacked vertically to reduce the number of clicks required to find the functions you need.

So many improvements have been made that it’s difficult to list them all here. We recommend trying out the new space to see them all for yourself.

More about ACR updates.

Adobe Fonts Auto-Activation

Adobe Fonts are now automatically activated when you open a Photoshop document.

We’ve all been there, ready to get to work on an existing file. You open up your .psd, and BAM—you are greeted by a grumpy message about missing fonts.

No longer!

If your file uses fonts from our Adobe Fonts service, Photoshop will now seamlessly download them, completely behind-the-scenes. If you use fonts from other sources, we’ve also made it easier for you to get working sooner—missing fonts messaging will now only appear when you edit the respective type layer. In short, when inspiration strikes (or deadlines loom) you can now jump right in and get to work.

More about Auto-activate Adobe Fonts.

Rotatable Patterns

Any pattern applied in Photoshop can now be rotated as a property of that pattern (similar to adjusting the scale of a pattern). Now, easily change the rotation angle of pattern fills, pattern overlays, and even pattern strokes. Best of all, the rotation is completely non-destructive and can easily be reset or altered.

Get more info about Rotatable Patterns at these links:

Match Font Update

Match Fonts is a Sensei AI machine learning feature that enables you to identify fonts that appear in your images. Originally released in Photoshop a few years ago, here’s how it works: the AI algorithm detects and recognises the font in a photograph; maybe you have a picture of text on a wall, in a sign, on the side of a car, etc. In the example above, I have a photograph of some greenery beside a new year’s card with text written on it. The algorithm somehow determines that the pixels in the image are text, figures out what font it is, and then searches through your fonts to find a match for that text. If you want, you can also download a matched font from Adobe Fonts.

In this release, we’ve responded to our top customer feedback on this feature and improved the matching experience with support for more fonts, vertical text (as above) and multiple-line detection.

More about Match Fonts.

To learn about everything new in Photoshop on desktop today go here.

Photoshop on iPad

Get Photoshop on iPad here

Lightroom-linked Editing in Photoshop on iPad

Lightroom on iPad.

Photoshop on iPad.

Millions of our customers enjoy using both Lightroom and Photoshop together on their desktops. In this release of Photoshop on iPad, we address one of your top requests— greater Lightroom and Photoshop integration on the iPad. Starting today, you can seamlessly move an image from Lightroom to Photoshop and back so you can easily process large sets of images in Lightroom and also transform them into something completely new using Photoshop on the iPad. In this first version of integration, we have addressed your top requests:

Learn more about Lightroom interoperability with Photoshop on iPad.

To learn about everything new in Photoshop on iPad today, and the many features we’ve added since we released the first version just just seven months ago (!), go here.

There’s more?

There are many amazing services and features you already have access to via your Photoshop membership that you might not know about. Some of them sneak out into the world without much fanfare. Today, I will highlight the new Adobe Capture extension for Photoshop on the desktop.

Adobe Capture Photoshop Extension

The capabilities of the Adobe Capture mobile experience are now also available in Photoshop on your desktop. With this addition, you can use the Capture extension to access powerful mobile workflows to save time when creating a variety of digital assets. You can access the extension via CC Libraries.

With Adobe Capture you can take a photo of your surroundings, or an Adobe Stock image or any image source and incorporate characteristics of it into your work.

As you can see from the leopard example above, you can pull patterns, shapes, colour themes and gradients from the image to use in creative ways. Transform the coarse texture of tree bark or sweeping wisps of grass into the symmetry of a brick face or turn patterns of metal work into digital assets. Easily vectorise images and work with them as shapes or masks. Add the assets to your Library to access them anywhere you have CC Libraries. In addition, you can batch process multiple assets at once, or quickly extract multiple assets from a single image to reduce steps and save time.

For a great blog post with more info about Adobe Capture in Photoshop go here and even more useful info is here.

Download Adobe Capture mobile app here and use it with Photoshop today!

Don’t Miss This Upcoming Event

June 16th from 9:30 – 11:30am PT

Join Adobe evangelist Paul Trani and graphic designer Elise Swopes, on Adobe Live as they share what’s new in Photoshop! Tune in as Elise shares her full workflow and her favourite photoshop tools to create two unique composites on June 16th from 9:30 – 11:30am PT. Or watch at your convenience here.

Thank you

We know many people are impacted by the current COVID-19 crisis and our thoughts are with you. The entire Photoshop team wants to thank you, our customers and all creators around the world for the work you do to keep us inspired during this difficult time.

Adobe also joins those people speaking out against social injustice and intolerance. We will continue to support, elevate, and amplify diverse voices through our community of employees, creatives, customers and partners. Racism, inequality and hate are against everything we stand for. Today, and every day, we stand together with the Black community.