The main news is improvements to Photoshop’s AI Sky Replacement process, with new controls and masking groups
(Image credit: Adobe)
Adobe regularly updates its creative software applications, typically 2-3 times a year. If you’re already a Photography Plan or Photoshop subscriber, you’ll automatically get a notification to install the update. If you’re not, these new features might just convince you to take the plunge!
Actually, though, there’s not a whole lot to report. The biggest news for photographers is that Adobe has improved Photoshop’s AI Sky Replacement, which has been making steady progress but is still not a match for Skylum Luminar’s sky replacement.
Adobe says it has improved quality along the edges of objects when the sky has been replaced, with a better preservation of contrast around thin-line objects like power lines, for example.
This has been achieved with a new layer group in the edited image, with two adjustment layers and a “less smooth” mask than the compositing mask.
It sounds complicated but we look forward to trying it out. Photoshop’s AI Sky Replacement process may lack finesse from time to time but it does create a stack of layers and masks which allow a good deal of manual fine-tuning where needed.
Also new is an Edge Lighting slider to offer better contrast around object edges and reduced ‘halo’ effects, a common characteristic of Photoshop’s sky replacement process so far. This too creates a new layer group – an ‘Edge Lighting Group’.
You can now set up Multithreaded and GPU compositing via the Preferences panel, you’ll be able to find your cloud documents in Photoshop’s Recents section, and Illustrator users will now be able to paste type into Photoshop without having it rasterized (woo-hoo!).
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A couple of features have disappeared, too. The Camera Shake Reduction filter has gone, as the technology “is not compatible with newer development platforms”, and the Quick Share option has been removed due to “low usage”.
Oh, and Photoshop on the iPad gets Content aware fill as a Quick Action for easy object removal.
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Rod is an independent photography journalist and editor, and a long-standing Digital Camera World contributor, having previously worked as DCW's Group Reviews editor. Before that he has been technique editor on N-Photo, Head of Testing for the photography division and Camera Channel editor on TechRadar, as well as contributing to many other publications. He has been writing about photography technique, photo editing and digital cameras since they first appeared, and before that began his career writing about film photography. He has used and reviewed practically every interchangeable lens camera launched in the past 20 years, from entry-level DSLRs to medium format cameras, together with lenses, tripods, gimbals, light meters, camera bags and more. Rod has his own camera gear blog at fotovolo.com but also writes about photo-editing applications and techniques at lifeafterphotoshop.com
