An addendum to

Adobe Photoshop: A Complete Course and Compendium of Features

Steve Laskevitch

luminousworks.com

© 2020 Stephen Laskevitch

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Photoshop Course & Compendium 2021 Addendum

New in Photoshop 2021

October of 2020 saw the release of the next round of the entire Adobe line-up. Some products saw little change, but Photoshop received a few welcome additions, refinements, and amusing experimental features.

This short addendum to Adobe Photoshop: A Complete Course and Compendium of Features should help make readers of that book ready to face a new year and new version.

I hope you enjoy it.

Cloud Docs and Version History

When saving documents from Photoshop, we can choose to save them to our computer or on Adobe’s servers as cloud documents. The first time (or until we check the Don’t show again box), we this dialog box:

Even if we choose to not see this, we will still have the option to save to cloud documents from the standard Save As dialog. We can see and open what we’ve saved there from the Creative Cloud desktop app, too.

Version History Panel

Choose Window > Version History to access this new panel. You can access files you’ve saved to cloud documents by going to Your work in the Creative Cloud desktop app. There, on the left, you can access CC Libraries as well. Click the cloud documents icon (). Once a cloud doc is open, you edit it as normal. However, some seconds after you save, a new version will appear in the Version History panel.

You likely will not care about every version—you might be hitting Save periodically just out of caution. But if a version appears that you wish to restore later, Mark it by clicking the bookmark icon to its right (see the figure that follows). You’ll be given the option to name it. Do so in a way that will help identify it later.

The ellipsis icon (…) shows a menu with several options including a way to rename the version (in case “final_14b” wasn’t good enough).

You can choose Revert to this version if the current state of the document no longer pleases you. This is good if you’ve done so many edits that you’ve run out of entries in the History panel. Or if you’ve saved a faulty version more recently than a good one. Open the faulty document then restore it to the superior version.

If you need a closer look at a version just to be sure it’s better than what you’ve got, or you want to show a colleague next to you, choose Open in a new tab. Then you can deeply compare without risking a premature reversion.

Collaboration

Note the dialog box at the beginning of this section. It says, regarding cloud documents, “In future releases, you’ll be able to use them to collaborate with others.” Keep your eyes open for that future update so you can invite others to safely edit your cloud files collaboratively.

Select & Mask

So Many Things Refined

Select > Select and Mask… is not new. But there are additions and adjustments to its algorithms that may help us. Both inside that interface or “task space” and out, the Select Subject command has had its artificial intelligence (AI) enhanced to recognize more subjects and do elegant things with hair.

First, a reminder of what “Edge” means in the Select and Mask task space. Consider activating Select and Mask then clicking the Select Subject button there to create a starting selection.

Recall that there is an Edge Detection panel on the right in which we can set a Radius. The Radius is a narrow area along the boundary of the selection in which the subject’s edges are aggressively detected. Checking the Show Edge box shows that area. That area can be augmented with the Refine Edge Brush Tool. As you can see above, Select Subject may save us the trouble of using that tool, especially if the new Object Aware mode is chosen as well. This mode is designed to help detect the edges of fuzzy subjects or those with hair. Color Aware mode is for sharp-edged subjects on cleaner backgrounds (picture product shots).

The new Refine Hair button attempts to find any hair not included in the initial selection. So far, I’ve found that it not only finds more hair, but unfortunately it also extends the “edge” too far into non-hairy parts of subjects, like below.

Since all the AI-aided features are now under very active development, I suspect this will be remedied relatively soon in subsequent update.

Sky Replacement

Flexible & Customizable

A perfectly legitimate way to replace a sky in a photo would be to add a new sky as a layer masked to the undesired sky. One might also add adjustment layers to ensure that the foreground and new sky get along visually.

Photoshop’s new Sky Replacement feature does those things. Access it by choosing Edit > Sky Replacement…. Choose a sky (or add your own, see above for how) and adjust the result in the dialog box. When you commit, you’ll get layers much like we might have created and can later tweak to taste.

Adobe Camera Raw

ACR has a whole new look that will make Lightroom users feel much more at home. There are name changes (the Lens Corrections panel is now called Optics), and Split Toning has been replaced by the more capable Color Grading panel.

New User Interface

You can exercise some control over the look and feel as well as some behavior of ACR. Clicking the small gear icon in the upper-right opens ACR’s Preferences.

You can cure the potential annoyance of seeing only one panel at a time by leaving the default panel behavior and choosing Multiple. If you’re tight on space, Responsive may be a better choice as well as clicking Use compact layout.

I’ve chosen to Use Lightroom style zoom and pan as well, since I use Lightroom often and find that comfortably familiar.

Be sure to check out the other pages of the Preferences dialog to see if there other changes you’d like made.

Color Grading

The big new feature in ACR is Color Grading, the replacement for Split Toning. Like its predecessor, Color Grading maps color to different parts of the tonal range something like Photoshop’s Gradient Map adjustment.

Color Grading applies colors to three parts of the tonal range: highlights, midtones, and shadows, each of which it can also lighten or darken a bit. It also has a global adjustment interface for giving all tonal values a bit of a color bump.

If you open an image that had a Split Toning adjustment, it will maintain the same look you previously achieved. Color Grading can also let you achieve more.

See the figure above to get a grasp on the user interface. However, the best way to master this new adjustment is to experiment. I rather like the way I was able to warm up the light on the armor in the photo above while making the steel look cold and more, well, steely. I’m sure you’ll find nice uses to give a chill to winter images and some swelter to summer ones.

Neural Filters

This is the name for a new filter “gallery” that utilizes Adobe’s new artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms. We’ve seen combo filters before: Blur Gallery and the original Filter Gallery (which can be independent filters via a preference setting).

Most of what’s on offer is experimental (as shown by a laboratory flask icon). The two filters that are considered more-or-less complete are Skin Smoothing and Style Transfer. The former looks promising for cosmetic retouching, the latter may find a use. Style Transfer uses one of several included images to alter your own, giving color, texture, and a bit of the “feel” of the source image.

Skin Smoothing goes beyond other tools we’ve used and attempts to use Adobe’s huge database of skin images to achieve its results.

Amusement with Potential

I’ve chosen not to show any of the experimental Neural filters. I very, very strongly recommend you open an image of a person, perhaps someone of whom you are not terribly fond, and try these. If you were to do an internet search for “Adobe Neural Filters,” you will find a great deal of ridicule and even more fun.

Hint: in your own recreations, look for the Smart Portrait filter’s Happiness slider. Or perhaps try the Makeup Transfer filter (you’ll need another photo of someone with makeup to transfer).

There are others, currently inactive, that are awaiting votes from the Photoshop community. You can express your interest in the user interface. In time, these filters will find their way into our workflows. Right now, they’re mostly just good fun.