Get masks/Selections from Camera Raw

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
September 28, 2022
24 replies
5276 views

The masking tools in Camera Raw are easy, efficient, and powerful, especially with the Alt Intersect shortcut.

It might be very useful, if we could export them to be re-used in Photoshop, even if we lose their dynamicness.

michaeljames005

Participant

Agreed. Camera Raw's masking workflow has become so good that it's often faster than building equivalent selections in Photoshop from scratch.

Even if the masks were exported as static pixel masks or channels, that would still save a lot of time. The intelligence has already been applied at that point—the main value is being able to continue refining and compositing in Photoshop without recreating the selection.

It feels like a natural bridge between the two applications and would make Camera Raw masks much more useful in complex Photoshop workflows.

Kalajda

Known Participant

Done 🙂

Kalajda

Known Participant

Hi, I have an idea followed by a question. When I create automatic masks - (people recognition - skin, mouth, eye, clothes, etc.) at ACR in RAW file, is it possible to open them (import) into Photoshop together with a picture? It would be nice to keep them. I know that I can keep them while importing a smart object into Photoshop for later edits. I feel I can edit and combine them more easily directly in Photoshop.

PECourtejoie

Author

Community Expert

Merging with an existing request.

@Kalajda please vote on top of this thread.

ArrSea

Participant

I tracked down the "Ideas" section (never used it before) to submit this very request. I see this has been here for a while, but I will upvote to keep this rolling. I watched a seminar where the instructor demonstrated how to get a better mask by using the ACR filter, but then I wondered how to get that mask/selection back into Photoshop... except you can't. Yes, I tracked down a couple of examples where you can drastically alter the colour/contrast/exposure of your selection in ACR, then use that to re-select in Photoshop. Not always effective.

So, yes, being able to transfer a mask/selection from the ACR filter back into Photoshop would be super.

Or... just add the same masking tools directly into Photoshop. Surely the underlying code is there, it just needs to be incorporated.

N

nico__tabo

Participant

Hi there, it's been long time that i think about an improvement to import masks created/generated in LR and CR as mask/layer mask also in PS. They could be very useful for post-processing workflow.

What do you think about that ?

Cheers!