Add Select Subject to Your Workflow in Photoshop 2020

Testing Select Subject in Photoshop 2020

Select Subject uses Adobe Sensei, Adobe’s AI technology, to automatically cut a subject out of its background with a single click. Rather than just describing what it does, this puts the tool through three real examples — easy, medium, and hard — to see exactly how well it performs and how to clean up wherever it falls short.

Getting Started with Select Subject

Running the tool itself takes no setup at all — the real skill is in evaluating and refining what it gives you.

1. Run Select Subject

   With an image open, go to Select > Subject. Photoshop analyzes the image and creates a selection around whatever it identifies as the main subject, using Adobe Sensei to make that determination automatically.

2. Check the Result Against a Solid Background

   Click the layer mask button to apply the selection as a mask, then place a solid color layer underneath. Viewing the subject against a flat color makes it much easier to spot where the selection succeeded and where it needs cleanup.

Example One: A High-Contrast Subject on a Light Background

The first test uses a subject with a clear outline against a light, out-of-focus background — close to the ideal case for an automatic selection tool.

Select Subject did a solid job overall, but the edges came out slightly jagged rather than capturing the natural softness of the original photo, and it missed a small amount of detail where the subject’s clothing was close in color to the background, along with a bit of hair.

Cleaning Up a Selection with the Magic Wand and Brush

None of these gaps require starting over. Raising the tolerance on the Magic Wand tool and clicking a missed area, then filling it in with black or white on the layer mask, closes most gaps quickly. A regular hard-edged brush handles anything the Magic Wand can’t easily target, painting white to reveal or black to hide.

Example Two: A Subject Close in Color to the Background

The second test is harder by design — the subject is close in tone to the background, which makes it more difficult for an automatic tool to draw a clean line between the two.

Select Subject still produced a reasonably well-defined outline, though it picked up part of the subject’s shadow and a small amount of extra detail it mistook for part of the subject. For a quick mockup, the result was usable as-is; for more polished work, it still needed some manual cleanup.

Refining the Mask with the Layer Mask Density Slider

Opening the mask’s Properties panel and temporarily lowering its Density lets the original image show through faintly underneath the mask, making it much easier to judge exactly where a hand-painted correction with the brush tool needs to go before committing to full opacity again.

Example Three: A Complex Scene with Intricate Detail

The third test is the hardest of the three — a subject on a motorbike with a lot of background detail and intricate shapes that would take real time to cut out manually.

Select Subject produced a usable starting selection but left a meaningful amount of manual cleanup on the table, particularly around the bike’s spokes and wheels.

Finishing the Selection with the Magic Wand’s Contiguous Option

Unchecking Contiguous on the Magic Wand tool lets one click select every area of similar color across the entire image at once, rather than one connected region at a time — a fast way to grab all of a bike’s spokes in a single click instead of clicking each one individually. That selection can then be painted onto the layer mask to finish cleaning up the edges.

When to Rely on Select Subject vs. Manual Tools

Select Subject is a genuinely fast way to start a rough composite or test whether two images will work together. For final client work, portfolio pieces, or anything requiring precise edges, tools like the Pen tool and dedicated hair-refinement techniques still produce more reliable, controllable results — Select Subject is best treated as a starting point that can be refined with the Magic Wand, the Brush tool and manual masking on the layer mask, not a replacement for them.

Why This Approach Works

Select Subject’s real value isn’t that it replaces manual selection work, it’s that it removes the slowest part of it — drawing an initial rough outline — and hands you a starting selection to refine instead of a blank canvas. In the video, Aaron expects massive improvements, since Adobe Sensei is built to keep learning how to select subjects; a newer look at Select Subject’s cloud-processing capabilities covers the tool in more recent Photoshop versions. The underlying workflow demonstrated here still holds: run the automatic tool first, evaluate the result against a flat background, then use the Magic Wand, a brush, or dedicated hair-cutting techniques to close whatever gaps remain.

Final Thoughts

Across all three difficulty levels, Select Subject proved itself as a legitimate first step rather than a finished answer — strong on high-contrast, well-lit subjects, and progressively rougher as backgrounds get busier or colors get closer together. Combining it with the Magic Wand’s Contiguous toggle, the layer mask Density slider, and a plain brush covers most of the gaps it leaves behind. For anyone building out a broader background changing and removing workflow, treating Select Subject as the fast first pass and manual tools as the finishing pass is still the most reliable combination, even as the automatic tool itself keeps getting better.

Quick Reference: Keys, Menus and Settings

• Full screenF
• Select the subjectSelect > Subject, then click the layer mask icon
• Check the cutoutSolid red color layer underneath; Shift-click the mask for before and after
• Leftover backgroundMagic Wand, Tolerance up to select more, then fill black on the mask
• Missing piecesHard-edged brush, paint white on the mask
• See what is hiddenWindow > Properties, lower Density, paint, then back to 100%
• Many small gapsMagic Wand with Contiguous unchecked; Tolerance down if it grabs too much