In recent years, Adobe Photoshop has become increasingly reliant on artificial intelligence to power its various features and tools. This trend shows no signs of slowing down, and as Photoshop continues to evolve, more and more Photoshop AI features will likely be introduced.
For graphic designers and content creators, this is good news, as AI can help to automate various tasks and make the design process quicker and easier.
In this article, we will discuss five Adobe Photoshop ai tools that will make the reader a better graphic designer and content creator. By the end of this article, you will be familiar with Neural Filters, Select Object / Select Subject, Sky Replacement, Content aware fill, and Face aware liquify — all of which are features that can help you to create better graphics with less effort. So let’s get started!
What are Photoshop AI features?
Photoshop is part of the Adobe Creative Cloud, a collection of creative desktop and mobile tools and a key component of professional content creation software. Photoshop AI features are a set of tools that use artificial intelligence to improve the editing process. While these new features take a bit of time to learn, ultimately these tools can save a lot of time and effort. And as the technology continues to evolve, it’s likely that we’ll see even more powerful AI features in the future.
The Photoshop AI tools we discuss here can help with your social media marketing, graphic design, or a variety of other content creation needs.
Photoshop Neural Filters
Photoshop Neural Filters are a set of image editing tools that use AI to apply creative effects to photos and images. There are several neural filters available, but some are more novelty than functional in a few cases. The two I use most often are Smart Portrait, Skin Smoothing, and colorize.
To use Neural Filters, simply open up a photo in Photoshop and go to the Filter menu. From there, you will see a list of all the available Neural Filters. To apply a filter, simply click on it and then use the sliders to adjust the settings to your liking. If you don’t see the neural filters, make sure you have the most updated version of Photoshop.
Another way to access these new non destructive filters is through the new discover panel. The discover panel can be accessed by clicking the magnifying glass in the upper right corner of the menu bar.
The best way to master these new features is to explore creative ideas that help you practice using each new tool. As AI and machine learning continue to evolve, they will increasingly become an integral part of design tools.
Example of Smart Portrait
On the left is the original image and on the right is the model 20% happier. The percentage of happiness can be adjusted between one and 100%. It would be nice to adjust our own internal happiness with just a toggle slider!
Example of Skin Smoothing
The image on the left is the original image and the one on the right is after using the skin smoothing filter. I don’t like overdoing it with Photoshop filters such as this, but for you to see the effect of the filter I needed to crank the smoothness and blur up quite a bit.
If you do photo editing on your mobile phone or iPad, you’ll want to checkout Photoshop Express. While Express is not as comprehensive a photo editor as the flagship Photoshop program is, it includes many of the same Photoshop AI features discussed in this article.
Example of the Colorize Filter
The Colorize filter works fairly well, but can sometimes give uneven results. I find it handy for certain images, but somewhat lacking for others. For example, notice the door in this image. The AI took it upon itself to decide the color was not even throughout the door, so instead of a relatively even shade of brown, it has tonal variations that may or may not have been there in the original photo.
There are several other neural filters you can try, including some that are in beta. By using AI features such as Neural Filters, graphic designers and content creators can streamline their workflow and create better graphics with less effort.
Select Object / Select Subject
Select Object and Select Subject are two new selection tools that use AI to automatically select objects or subjects in photos.
To use Select subject simply open an image in Photoshop and choose select subject. Depending on the complexity of the image Photoshop will create a fairly clean selection within seconds.
The Object Selection tool is useful when an image contains multiple objects and you only need to select one object or part of an object. For me, the object selection tool was best explained by seeing it done and then practicing. It’s amazing how easy selecting complex objects is now that AI is working behind the scenes!
Both Select Subject and Select Object are extremely useful for graphic designers and content creators who often need to quickly select objects or subjects in photos. By using these tools, you can save a lot of time and effort, and you can be sure that your selections will be accurate.
Sky Replacement
Have you ever taken a picture that would have been perfect, if not for the dull sky in the background? Or maybe you want to add some extra drama to a photo with more clouds. Whatever the case may be, sky replacement used to be a time-consuming and tedious process.
Fortunately, with the new sky replacement feature, it only takes minutes! This tool allows you to easily replace the sky in your photo with a new one.
To use this feature, open up a photo in Photoshop and then go to the Edit menu. From here, choose Sky Replacement.
Photoshop will automatically replace the selected area with a new sky. Once the sky is replaced you can make various adjustments:
- Adjust the warmth and coolness of the sky tone
- Shift and/or fade the edge for better blending
- Scale the size of the clouds
- Adjust the lighting and color of the foreground
Whether you want to add more clouds or simply remove a dull gray sky, this tool can help photo editors achieve a more ideal image. So next time you’re stuck with an uninspiring sky, don’t despair; just use the sky replacement tool for quick and easy results.
Content Aware Fill
Photoshop’s Content Aware Fill allows you to quickly and easily remove objects from photos.
Have you ever taken a picture of a group of people, only to realize later that someone photobombed the shot? Or maybe you want to remove an unwanted object from a photo. Whatever the case may be, Content Aware Fill can help you achieve your desired results.
This tool uses artificial intelligence to automatically fill in the area where an object has been removed. To use this feature, simply open up a photo in Photoshop and go to the Edit menu. From here, choose Content Aware Fill.
Next, select the object that you want to remove. Once you have made your selection, Photoshop will automatically fill in the area with new content.
This tool is extremely useful for graphic designers and content creators who often need to remove objects from photos. By using this tool, you can save a lot of time and effort, and you can be sure that your results will be realistic.
Face Aware Liquify
The Face Aware Liquify tool is a new feature in Photoshop that allows you to easily and quickly make adjustments to faces in photos.
This tool uses artificial intelligence to automatically detect faces in photos. Once a face is detected, in just a few clicks you can make various adjustments such as:
- Reshape the eyebrows
- Change the size of the eyes
- Adjust the nose shape
- Add or remove wrinkles
- Alter the face shape
- Lower a forehead
To open the Face Aware Liquify panel go to the filter menu and choose liquefy. Once the liquefy panel opens up choose the face icon on the left.
Example of Face Aware Liquify
For this example, I started with an image built from thispersondoesnotexist.com.
I adjusted every feature that could be adjusted—eye size, shape, and tilt; nose height and width; mouth and lip size (plus, gave her a little smile); shortened her forehead, and narrowed her face. It’s unlikely you’d ever have to make multiple adjustments like this, but for the sake of this example, it’s helpful to see all that could be done.
Face Aware Liquify is a multi-faceted robust tool. To learn more about the various features, I encourage you to watch a video to get a better understanding of all you can do with it.
This tool is extremely useful for portrait photographers and other image editing professionals who often need to make small adjustments to faces in photos. By using this tool, you can save a lot of time and effort, and you can be sure that your results will look natural.
Conclusion
The five Photoshop AI tools in this article are my favorite, but they are not the only ones. It seems Adobe sensei features are being added with each new version. Some of the other AI features in Photoshop include:
- Object Aware Refine Mode: for selecting fine or wispy elements such as hair.
- Photoshop Style Transfer: allows you to select an image and apply that style to another image.
- JPEG Artifacts Removal: removes the blocky artifacts that result from JPEG compression
- Super Zoom: allows you to zoom in super close and Photoshop adds detail to compensate for resolution loss.
- Smart Portrait: adjust portrait photography for features such as emotion, gaze, head direction, hair thickness, and lighting.
- Makeup Transfer: this clever feature allows you to transfer makeup styles from one image to another.
- Style transfer: as its name implies, style transfer allows you to transfer the style of one image to another. Want your image to look like it was painted in a particular artistic style? Machine learning now makes that possible!
Looking to the future, it is clear that AI will continue to play an important role in the development of Adobe Photoshop and other new Adobe products. The company is already a leader in this field, and its efforts to expand its AI features are likely to result in even more innovative solutions that will benefit users around the world. Adobe is clearly committed to staying at the forefront of this technology, and there is no doubt that artificial intelligence will continue to transform the way we interact with software applications.