While the digital editing of photographs is often criticized online due to the heavy alterations made to model bodies, aiding in the creation of unhealthy expectations about how one should look, it’s so much more than this. Many create art by using tools like Adobe Photoshop, by taking out a subject from one photo and placing it in a makebelieve world.
Even so, there’s one thing that many people, amateurs or professionals, hate – cropping someone from a picture. Some have developed all kinds of techniques to do this, but in the end, it’s just a difficult thing to do, something that gives you a headache just by thinking of it. There’s always that one strand of hair that’s impossible to get just right or a crease in the clothes, and let’s not talk about fingers. Not even a professional tablet can’t help you draw a perfect contour for your object, and that magnet link tool doesn’t always work properly.
And who would know this better than Adobe itself, right? Well, that’s perfect because it won’t be long before Adobe Sensei, the company’s AI and machine learning technology will come to the rescue with the new Select Subject tool.
Announced not too long ago, the Select Subject tool will simply allow you to tap on the object you want to crop out and have it done automatically. Maybe it’s the entire background; maybe it’s a person – the tool does the job well, as you can see in the embedded video. Of course, you can make adjustments of your own, but it does the job well in general.
The Photoshop Future
This is a massive shift. It’s Adobe using artificial intelligence technology to solve one of the largest issues the creative community has had in the past couple of decades. The Adobe Sensei has been put to use before, of course, especially in helping users find the right stock photos or pump juice in the Match Font tool.
The Select Subject tool will become available to users along with the upcoming Photoshop CC release.
Adobe, of course, isn’t the only one who’s putting artificial intelligence to use to make photo-related tools better. Google has also recently made a new advancement in its research – an AI that can predict which of your photos will be best liked by others. In a world where every like on Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest is particularly important to people’s self-worth, this seems to be a great tool.
Whether you’re a professional photographer simply trying to figure out which photo is best in a string of pictures, or just an amateur trying to find the best selfie, this tool has got you covered. It could also be quite useful in making edits to any of your pictures to maximize the chance that someone else will like it.
The field is changing, and in the next few years, we should see even more advances in the world of digital editing that will make the life of professionals working in the field that much easier. It will also make life better for all those casual photographers that want to make a proper photo crop that doesn’t need to be hidden with the blend tool.
The Cyber-Secret Futurist 