Adobe’s Photoshop software gets a minor overhaul every year where new features and fixes are added. Whether these are cosmetic or functional, there’s always some kind of a buzz about the newest installation among the creative community. From being able to virtually change climates to performance enhancements to preexisting tools, here’s my list for the top 5 newest additions to Photoshop 2022 (in no particular order).
1. Neural Filters; Landscape Mixer
Adobe released “Neural Filters” in Version 22.0 back in October 2020. Most of these new AI-driven filters work to achieve seemingly simple tasks with a click of a button and a few sliders. They expertly simplify even the most repetitive tasks. Things like skin-smoothing, colorizing an image, and even aging and de-aging portraits. To access these tools, simply select Filter>Neural Filters on the top toolbar.
The landscape mixer is another of these options, and the focus for number 1 on our list. The landscape mixer is a powerful neural filter that lets you merge two landscape images, and merges their properties, like the season and time of day.
Once you have your image open, you can select the landscape mixer from the beta filters list. From here, you can use Adobe’s presets or a custom image of your own to mesh together. The sliders allow to you play with the time of day and season.
The newest upgrade to Photoshop also allows this tool to make drastic changes to any landscape image very easily. For example, you can take a photo of a bridge at noon in the summer-time, and using this very intelligent and versatile tool, can alter it to be a bridge at night in the fall. The possibilities for this are surely endless, and a great trick to the digital designer’s bag of tricks.
2. Object Finder Upgrade in Photoshop 2022
It’s well known that the object selection tool does a relatively good job at using AI-wizardry to separate a subject from a background and make a selection for you. The Object Finder is a new update to this already more-than-impressive tool. Using the same AI-powered Adobe Sensei technology, the Object Finder allows you to select and deselect more than one subject at a time, at your whim. It sounds simple, but if you’ve ever had to use the pen tool around more than one or two complex subjects, this tool seems better than every single green light on your way home.
Using the addition is utterly frictionless. Just select the Object Selection from the toolbar like normal, and then simply enable the Object Finder tool in the top toolbar. Hold shift and click on a new object to add to your selection, or, you can hold alt and click to remove objections from your selections. You can also use the keyboard shortcut “N” to see all the detected objects in your viewport.
3. Layer Selection Menu
To use this, first select your layer. Then in the top menu, select Layer > Layer Mask all Objects. This will create a layer group, and apply a mask to all subjects in your composition. From here, its incredibly convenient to apply adjustments to just one subject at a time.
4. Adding Comments to Cloud Using Photoshop 2022
It’s been possible to add comments to a cloud document to share between team members, but now it’s even easier than ever. By clicking on Window > Comments, and then converting your file to a cloud document. Click Save, and then you’ll be able to share your cloud documents and receive feedback from your associate designers, managers, and clients, if needed. Comments will appear in the comments window.
5. Importing Vector Files from Illustrator
For those who work fluidly between Illustrator and Photoshop, its lately become easier to do so. Taking a complex vector illustration is now as easy as copy and pasting.
All you have to do is highlight your vector in Illustrator, and hit ctrl+c (cmd+c on mac). Importing is then as easy as going into Photoshop and hitting ctrl or cmd+v on your keyboard.
The neat part is that this will also copy and paste your layer structures and names, as well as preserving Illustrator attributes. This means your illustration will still have live paths that can still be edited in Photoshop.