The bane of many photographers’ existence over the last couple of decades has been endless hours spent creating complex masks in Photoshop using the Pen tool. Unmesh Dinda of PiXimperfect shows you how much faster your workflow can be with the Select Subject tool, which was recently updated in the latest version of Photoshop.

Photoshop’s Select Subject tool was something of a game-changer when it was first introduced, but it often left some jagged edges and frequently struggled with complex edges such as hair. A few months ago, Adobe updated Photoshop, and the Select Subject tool underwent a fairly significant upgrade to the extent that you might never use the Pen tool ever again.

No doubt, the Pen tool offers some advantages, but as Dinda notes, the amount of time that you save by at least trying the Select Subject tool first is massive.

As usual, Dinda packs in a ton of other techniques as part of demonstrating how the Select Subject tool can be used as part of a workflow. For example, I never knew that I could create a shape and apply it to the layer below (see 18:10). 

Have you been taking advantage of Photoshop’s updated tool? Let us know your experiences in the comments below.