Recently Adobe released a major update for its flagship photo editing program, Photoshop 2021. There are several new features and some really interesting updates. Learn all about some of the best ones here.
Sky replacements, neural filters, and a discover panel – oh my!
I’ve only play around with some of the new features, in particular the new beta version Neural Filters. There’s a whole set of them but I was goofing around with Skin Smoothing and Aging one and came up with this.
If you aren’t sure where to begin learning all the new stuff inside Photoshop 2021, help is coming. I’ve curated two different videos by guys I follow, Jesús Ramirez (Photoshop Training Channel) and Unmesh Dinda (Piximperfect).
They’ve both done an excellent job demonstrating several of the new tools. As they each cover a few different features I thought I’d share both so you can get the whole scoop.
They also have very different styles so watch the one you connect with best, or watch them both! Jesús is a great Photoshop educator, but I love Dinda’s enthusiasm and style (he has a slight Indian accent but he’s easy to understand).
Photoshop 2021 best new features explained
In this first video, Jesús covers 13 of the best new features for photographers including:
- Photoshop’s sky replacement tool
- Some of the new Neural filters for skin smoothing and other things you can do with them
- New features for Select and Mask
- The new Discover Panel
- and more . . .
He’s got it divided by chapters, so if you just want to jump ahead to certain tools click on the time stamp next to that one to go right there.
Keep going if you want to see even more of the new features !
Top 21 Photoshop 2021 new features in 21 minutes
This next one from PiXimperfect is a whirlwind tour of the top 21 new features of Photoshop 2021 in (appropriately) just 21 minutes. If he goes too fast for you just adjust the playback speed on YouTube to 75%.
He too has separated the video into handy chapters so you can watch it from start to finish, or just pick the parts most applicable to you. Some of the features covered include:
- Most of the same ones as Jesús above
- Quick Actions
- Refine hair selection tool
- Content-aware tracing tool
- Haze Neural filter
- Make-up Transfer
- Brush tool search
- Shape improvements
- Mask presets
- and more . . .
I personally don’t know if these are things I’ll ever use, but then again I said that about Luminar when sky replacement first came out. Now Photoshop is playing catch-up in that department.
But I think that the new Photoshop 2021 neural filters need a lot more work yet. They go too far and do some very strange things.
As I mentioned above, I don’t know anyone that would want to look older – unless you work for the police department and you need to age a photo of a missing person to help find them.
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Conclusion
Do you think you’ll be using any of these new features in Photoshop 2021? Want to learn how to master Photoshop? Check out my brand new Photoshop for Photographers course.
I’ll probably try the sky replacement and see how it compares to Luminar AI for ease of use and effectiveness.
What about you? Were you excited to see any of these updates or new things? Share your opinions and thoughts in the comment area below.
Cheers,
