Make sure the layer you wish to mask is selected. Simply tap a layer thumbnail from the taskbar to select a layer.
Supercharge your Photoshop workflows with selection and masking on your iPad.
Making selections and adding masks are two powerful ways to edit selective areas and add effects to your composites.
A selection isolates one or more parts of your image. By selecting specific areas, you can edit, and apply effects and filters to portions of your document while leaving the deselected areas untouched.
Double-tap or long-press the active selection tool from the toolbar to bring up more Selection tools — Lasso, Object Select, Quick selection, Marquee rectangle, Marquee ellipse, and Magic wand. Lasso is the default selection tool.
Actions allow you to quickly achieve an outcome such as selecting a subject.
Note:
When you tap a selection tool, the associated tool options appear. From the tool options, you can choose whether to add to your selection, subtract from your selection, or select the areas that intersect with the current selection.
When you make a selection, the active selection properties appear at the bottom of the workspace. It gives you the option to Deselect, Mask, Erase, Invert, Refine edge, Transform the selection, or Select similar.
The Lasso tool is the default selection tool in Photoshop on the iPad and is useful for drawing freeform segments of a selection. Tap from the toolbar to select the Lasso tool and choose from the tool options that appear. Simply draw a freehand selection on your document to proceed.
To select an object using Object Select, do the following:
The Quick selection tool allows you to quickly paint a selection using an adjustable round brush. As you drag, the selection expands outward and automatically finds and follows defined edges in your document.
Tap or long press the Lasso tool from the toolbar to reveal the Quick selection tool . As you tap the Quick selection tool, choose from the tool options that appear:
The marquee tools allow you to select rectangles and ellipses. To make a marquee selection, choose one of the marquee tools and simply drag over the area you wish to select. If you have a physical keyboard connected to your iPad, you can also press M (Shift) to select the Marquee tools.
Use the Elliptical marquee tool () for makins an elliptical selection.
Use the Rectangular marquee tool () for making a rectangular selection.
Magic Wand is useful for quickly extracting objects from a flat background, quickly selecting an irregularly shaped area, or selecting a distinctly colored element.
To make a selection using the Magic Wand tool, do the following:
Powered by Adobe Sensei, Select Subject () is trained to identify a variety of objects in an image—people, animals, vehicles, toys, and more. Select Subject uses the power of Sensei to identify the most prominent subjects in your document and make a selection — all with a single tap.
The Select Subject tool saves time by quickly isolating the main subjects from the background. It gives the best results when your composition is less cluttered, free of reflective surfaces, has a good amount of contrast between the main subject and the background, and has sharp edges around the main subject. You can further refine the automatic selection using other selection tools to fine-tune your selection.
To make a selection using the Select Subject tool, do the following:
1. Double-tap or long-press Lasso (default) or other active selection tools from the toolbar to bring up more selection tool options.
2. Tap Select Subject () under Actions. It automatically selects the main subject in the active layer of your document.
With the March 2022 release of Photoshop on the iPad, we have enhanced the Select subject action with improved AI technology that will help you get precise selections when working with portrait images on your iPad.
With the April 2022 release of Photoshop on the iPad, you can now easily remove the background from your photos and have them ready to use in your composites at the tap of a button.
Tap the Remove background quick action button in the Selection tools panel to remove the background from your image. Alternatively, you can access this quick action button from the Layer properties panel as well.
Once you make a selection, you can see active selection properties at the bottom of the workspace:
Use Refine edge () to further fine-tune the boundary of your selection. Refine edge helps make complex selections such as strands of hair, fur, or other tricky edges of your subject easier.
To use Refine edge, do the following:
You can use masks to hide portions of a layer and reveal portions of the layers below. Masks are nondestructive, which means you can go back and edit the masks again without losing the pixels they hide.
You can create a layer mask to show parts of a layer and hide others by turning a selection into a layer mask, or by painting on the layer mask after creating it. In areas where the layer is masked or hidden, the layers below are visible. Masking layers is a valuable compositing technique for combining multiple documents into a single document or for removing unwanted objects from a composite.
Make sure the layer you wish to mask is selected. Simply tap a layer thumbnail from the taskbar to select a layer.
Create a selection using one of the selection tools.
Tap the layer mask icon on the taskbar (
).You can view the selected area while the rest of the layer gets masked.
From the compact layer view, you can swipe left and right on the layer thumbnail to switch the view from layer view to layer mask view. Both thumbnails are visible on the detailed layer view. To learn more about layer views, see Work with layers.
Make sure the layer you wish to mask is selected. Simply tap a layer thumbnail from the taskbar to select a layer.
Tap the layer mask (
) icon on the taskbar to create a mask.Tap the brush () icon.
Set up brush properties as desired. Choose black to fully mask where you paint. To learn more about brush properties, see Draw and paint with brushes.
Paint over the mask layer.
To learn more about layer masks, see Work with layers.
A clipping mask allows you to use the content of one layer to mask the layers above it. To learn more about clipping masks, see Work with layers.
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