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Photo © Slavenko Vukasovic – Dreamstime.comAdobe Photoshop CC 2019 has been out for several months now, but many of us are busy with our daily activities and may not have had a chance to explore all the great new features available. If you fall into that camp, or maybe you just need a quick refresher, here are 14 neat new features you may want to explore in Photoshop CC 2019.

New Content-Aware Fill

One of the biggest areas of improvement is with the content aware fill function. The new Edit – Content Aware Fill dialogue box allows for greater control over the process. A Live preview area will show the results being generated as you modify your selections. The sampling zone shows the area included in building the fill. Painting with the sampling brush removes areas from consideration while the ALT or OPT key will allow you to paint areas back in. Tick boxes control fill settings for color adaption, rotation adaption, scale and mirror effect; and the output settings control if the effects are applied to the current layer, new layer or duplicate layer. The lasso tool in the interface allows for further refinement of the fill area.

Photo © Chansom Pantip – Dreamstime.com

Symmetry Mode

Choosing the butterfly icon in the options bar when working with the Paint Brush, Mixer Brush, Pencil or Eraser tools allows you to control a symmetry in the created pattern. Symmetrical settings include the vertical axis, horizontal axis, dual axis, diagonal axis, wavy, circle, spiral, parallel lines, radial and mandala to create intricate symmetrical patterns.

Multiple Undo

The new undo tool Control+Z (win) or Command+Z (mac) now works to undo multiple undo steps. A real time saver when trying to fix those nasty situations we can find ourselves in.

Auto commit actions

Crop, transform, place and text tools no longer need to be explicitly committed. Moving to a new tool, selecting a new layer, or clicking outside the canvas will commit the changes automatically.

Framing Tool

The Frame Tool easily creates a rectangular or elliptical frame which can be filled with another image or illustration. Dragging content into the frame will convert it to a Smart Object such that it can scale non-destructively. Any existing shape or text can be converted to a frame by selecting Convert to Frame in the layer operations menu to create a frame for use in the same manner.

Improved in-app learning

Use the in-app tutorial from the Window – Learn panel to understand principals by following a step-by-step process. Then select the “Try with your own images” option at the end of the tutorial to have the same step-by-step process illustrated to walk you through making the adjustments in real time.

Transform proportionally

Layer transformations are now proportional by default with the exception of shapes and paths. Switch to non-proportional transformations by holding the Shift key.

Illustration © Aleksey Vanin – Dreamstime.com

Double click to edit text

No longer do you need to toggle to the Text Tool to edit existing text. Double clicking on the type layer with the Move tool allows for quick edits.

Live blend mode preview

Not sure what affect the Layer Blend Modes you select are going to have on the layers? Now with Live Preview, the results will show you scroll the options in the Layers panel or Layer Style dialog.

Math in number fields

Not good at math? Enter simple math operations in any numeric field and let the application do the calculations for you.

Color wheel

In the Color panel, select the Color Wheel from the menu to display the color spectrum and easily choose color values based on color theory and principal.

Lock Home Screen

Use the new Window-Workspace-Lock Workspace to prevent accidental moving of workspace panels.

Distributed spacing

Objects can now be selected and distributive spaced in addition to aligned and distributed.

Photo © Kaspars Grinvalds – Dreamstime.com

Increase UI size

Use the Edit-Preferences-Interface to tick the Scale UI to font box and choose the font size Tiny-Small-Medium-Large to adjust the scale of the UI if you find those icons and dialog boxes a touch too small.

Even if you don’t have time to explore all the new features available, now you know what features are available to you the next time you might need them.

Stock photos provided by Dreamstime.com

Author Bio
Karen Foley is a freelance photographer and writer who loves sharing her art with others. See more of her work at karenfoleyphotography.com.

Images & Article by Pratik Panda

Photoshop is a very versatile software when it comes to processing of digital images. If you have been into stock photography for quite some time, you definitely know the importance of digital post processing and how much it can affect your status in the stock photography business. This is not just true for portraits, HDR images and low light images, but also for studio images that require “isolation”. Isolation refers to the neat removal of the background from an image so that the frame contains just the subject. The background is usually transparent/white/black depending on what suits the application best. Isolating images makes it possible to use the images as “clip art” and boosts sales in most categories.

There are a variety of methods for creating isolated objects. That includes the most primitive method: Erase the background away using the eraser tool! But is it smart? Not really. How long would it take to isolate a millipede? Perhaps two days and a ton of will power.

As stock photography is a game of both quality and quantity, the simple methods start to become very inefficient for a large number of complex images.

This is where the smarter features of Photoshop come to the rescue. Using the edge refining algorithms, Photoshop can make the task of isolation much faster even on complex objects such as hair or partly blurred subjects. Also, this method removes the “stains” of the previous background color that was removed, thus creating an impression that the object was shot in a studio environment with a neutral background color even if it was not.

Here is how to do it the smarter way:

As an example, let us try to isolate a hibiscus flower on a green background. A part of it is blurred by low depth of field – which means erasing away the background will not work as the edges must be hard and smooth depending on where the object is sharp and where it is blurred respectively.

A flower that needs to be isolated.

Notice that there are sharp as well as smooth edges in the subject. Also, the subject color is very similar to background color – nightmare for isolation by normal methods.

Hard and smooth edges.

We will begin by using the “Quick Selection” tool to select the background that we have to remove.

Quick selection tool.

The objective is to ‘select’ the subject as well as possible using the quick selection tool. The approach for this image is to select the background and then right click > Invert selection so that the subject is selected.

The subject is selected. Blurred areas are roughly selected.

Now, go to the menu bar and go to Select > Refine Edge and then select a type of view in the Refine Edge window that pops up, preferable selected layer on background layer. You should see something like this:

Refine edge tool.

You may see the background layers if you have any layers under the current layer.

To remove the greenish ‘stains’ from the edges of the petal, you can select the decontaminate colors option and get rid of any remaining color left behind by the removed green background. Now to smooth out the edges, all you have to do is use the brush tool in the dialogue and paint on the edges to enhance them. The settings shown in the screenshot work well for most situations, however, feel free to experiment.

Brush tool and painting on the edges to enhance them.

You can do the same with the blurred regions too. Though it may need some care and attention, it will give you good results in a few seconds and after a couple of strokes.

You can now hit OK when you are satisfied with the results. After you are done, you will get the object isolated. To put a different background, for example, a black background, you can simply create a new layer beneath the current layer and fill it with black or white, etc.

The flower isolated on black.

Don’t forget to save your work!

Isolating objects is fun and a much better experience now, is it not?

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14 Things to Know about Photoshop CC 2019