How to Use AI Masking in Photoshop

How to Use AI Masking in Photoshop

Photoshop’s Camera Raw filter now includes automatic, AI-driven masking tools that can find a subject’s eyes, skin, hair, and clothing on their own — no manual selection required. Paired with a Smart Object workflow, these masks stay fully editable, so you can come back and adjust the eyes, skin, or clothing of a portrait at any time without rebuilding a single selection from scratch.

Getting Started with the Smart Object Workflow

Before opening the masking tools, the background layer needs to be converted into a Smart Object so every adjustment made inside Camera Raw stays non-destructive and editable later.

1. Convert the Background Layer to a Smart Object

   Right-click the background layer and choose Convert to Smart Object. A small Smart Object icon appears on the layer thumbnail once it’s done. This step only applies in Photoshop — Smart Objects don’t exist in Lightroom, so this isn’t necessary there.

Why Smart Objects Matter Here

Applying Camera Raw as a filter on a regular layer bakes the changes in permanently. Applying it to a Smart Object turns it into an editable Smart Filter instead, which means every mask and every slider adjustment made inside Camera Raw can be reopened and changed at any point later, without starting over.

Opening the Camera Raw Filter

2. Open the Camera Raw Filter

   With the Smart Object layer selected, go to Filter > Camera Raw Filter. Make sure both Camera Raw and Photoshop are updated through Creative Cloud, since these masking tools are a newer addition.

3. Open the Masking Panel

   In the panel on the right, click Masking. Alongside the existing options to mask the entire subject, sky, or background, look for the new People option, which is where the added power comes in.

Masking the Subject’s Eyes

The People option breaks a detected person down into selectable parts, from their entire body down to specific facial features.

4. Select People

   Click People in the Masking panel. Once a person is identified, you can select the entire person, or drill down further into options like skin, eyebrows, the sclera (the whites of the eyes), the iris and pupil, or hair — each option previews on the image as you hover over it.

5. Choose Iris and Pupil, Then Create

   Select Iris and Pupil and click Create to generate the mask inside Camera Raw.

6. Adjust the Eyes

   With the mask active, raise Saturation to make the eye color pop, add a touch more Blue, and increase Contrast and Highlights. Toggle the mask’s visibility icon off and on to compare the before and after.

How the People Selection Options Work

The specific options available under People change depending on what Photoshop’s AI actually detects in your image — if a visible body is present, options like body skin may appear alongside face-specific choices. The tool only offers selections it can confidently identify in that particular photo.

Masking the Subject’s Face and Skin

A second, independent mask can target just the skin for its own set of adjustments.

7. Create a New Mask

   At the top of the Masks panel, click Create New Mask, then select People again.

8. Select Face Skin and Create

   Choose Face Skin from the People options and click Create.

9. Brighten the Skin’s Shadows

   Raise the Shadows slider to brighten just the skin of the subject’s face, since the mask isolates only that area.

Isolating Clothing with Additive and Subtractive Masks

There’s no direct “select clothing” option, but combining Select Subject with a subtractive mask reaches the same result.

10. Select Subject

    Create a new mask and choose Select Subject to select the entire person.

11. Subtract the Face and Skin

    Click the Subtract icon, then choose People again and check Face Skin, Eyebrows, Eye Sclera, Iris and Pupil, and Hair: every box below Entire Person. Hover over them to preview what will be removed.

12. Create the Clothing Mask

    Click Create. What remains, after subtracting the face out of the full-subject selection, is effectively just the clothing.

13. Adjust the Clothing

    With the clothing mask active, raise Shadows and Exposure, and pull Color Temperature toward blue to recover detail and shift the color of the fabric. Toggle the mask on and off to see the shadow detail return.

Why Subtract from Select Subject

Since there’s no built-in option to select clothing directly, starting from a full Select Subject mask and subtracting out every part of the face, hair included, is what isolates the clothing without any manual lasso work. The same additive-and-subtractive approach can be reused for other combinations the tool doesn’t offer as a single preset.

Making Non-Destructive Edits Later

14. Return to Photoshop

    Click OK at the bottom right of the Camera Raw dialog to return to Photoshop. Because the layer is a Smart Object, the Camera Raw filter now appears as an editable Smart Filter, with its own visibility toggle just like any other Photoshop filter.

15. Reopen the Filter to Make Changes

    Double-click Camera Raw Filter in the Layers panel at any time to go back in, select any of the masks you created — the eyes, the face skin, or the clothing — and adjust the sliders again. Every mask is saved and waiting exactly where you left it.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Skipping the Smart Object conversion before applying the Camera Raw filter is the most common misstep — without it, the filter applies destructively and there’s no way to reopen your masks and adjustments later. It’s also easy to forget that the People options change based on what’s actually detected in a given photo, so don’t expect the exact same menu of choices on every image.

And when isolating something like clothing that has no direct preset, remember that combining Select Subject with a subtracted selection, rather than trying to manually lasso the area, is what keeps the mask accurate and reusable.

Why This Approach Works

What makes this workflow powerful isn’t just that Photoshop can find a subject’s eyes or skin automatically — it’s that every mask it creates lands inside a fully editable Camera Raw filter rather than a one-time destructive edit. Wrapping the background layer in a Smart Object first is what makes that possible: the AI masking does the difficult work of isolating small, specific areas like an iris or a strip of clothing that would otherwise take real time to select by hand, while the Smart Object preserves every one of those masks as a live, revisitable adjustment.

The additive-and-subtractive masking trick used to isolate clothing shows why this matters even more — when the AI doesn’t offer a preset for exactly what you want, you can still reach it by combining two of its existing selections, which means the tool’s usefulness isn’t limited to whatever categories it explicitly lists. That combination of automatic detection and non-destructive editing is what turns a single quick pass through using Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop into a portrait retouch you can keep refining indefinitely.

Final Thoughts

AI masking in Camera Raw removes a huge amount of the manual selection work that used to stand between a raw portrait and a polished edit, and because it’s all happening inside a Smart Object, none of that speed comes at the cost of flexibility. Once you’re comfortable creating masks for eyes, skin, and clothing individually, and using Select Subject with subtraction to reach areas without a direct preset, the same approach scales to any portrait where you want targeted, reversible adjustments rather than one blanket edit applied to the whole image.

Quick Reference: Keys, Menus and Settings

• Keep it editableRight-click the Background layer > Convert to Smart Object
• Open the masksFilter > Camera Raw Filter, then the Masking icon > People
• Mask the eyesIris and Pupil > Create; Cmd/Ctrl + + to zoom in; raise Saturation, Contrast and Highlights
• Mask the face skinCreate New Mask > People > Face Skin > Create; raise Shadows
• Mask the clothingCreate New Mask > Select Subject, then Subtract > People with every face part and Hair checked
• CompareEye icon beside each mask, or beside Camera Raw Filter in the Layers panel
• Change it laterDouble-click Camera Raw Filter, open Masking, select a mask, move its sliders