Does Photoshop have "smart masks" yet?

Question

I haven't upgraded Photoshop since CS6 and was just wondering if Photoshop allows "smart masks" yet? For me, this is the only major thing Photoshop is missing.

Let me just clarify a few key reasons why I want this feature...

1. Transform with no loss of quality
"Smart masks" would allow you to scale and rotate masks with no loss of quality! This means you can enlarge a mask slightly, then rotate it slightly, then shrink it again, all without having to re-draw the mask every time.

2. Perfect with Smart Objects
Normally, if a smart object has a mask, then you can't scale or rotate the smart object without having to re-draw the mask from scratch. But with smart masks, this problem would disappear - you could scale and rotate the smart objects as much as you like, with no loss of quality to its mask.

3. Update multiple masks at once
You could apply a smart mask to multiple layers, and then any changes you make to it would apply to all the layers which use it.

4. Animated mask movement
Smart masks would allow smart objects to be scaled or rotated in an animation. Currently, anything with a mask cannot be scaled or rotated in an animation. (And before you recommend I use Premiere for animation - no, Premiere is good for general video editing but it is TERRIBLE software for animating objects, and does not even support simple things like layer groups, selecting and transforming multiple objects at once, relative transforming (it uses absolute coordinates), pixel positioning, or bitmap masking. Even displaying images at 1:1 size is virtually impossible. This is why I use Photoshop for animation.)

D Fosse · Accepted Answer

BarbBinder wrote:Photoshop has had vector masks for as long as I can remember. Raster masks are bitmapped, vector masks are equation-based.To clarify, I am talking about raster masks, not vector. There would be no need for a 'smart' vector mask would there! I'm not rejecting the idea, but...I have difficulty seeing the payoff.It's hard to see how a couple of transforms would degrade a mask to the point where it would actually affect the visible pixels. After all, it's just a mask, not an image. Transforms soften the result slightly, but IME at least, a slightly soft mask is usually a good thing. What kind of masks do you make, that this is a real consideration?And in any case "no quality loss" would be no more true than it is in an existing smart object. There is always the quality loss of the final transform.Submit a feature request over on the feedback site, and see what traction it gets. If others like the idea they'll chime in.

kirkr5689 · Answer

For all the purposes you mentioned you don't need any upgrade at all since if I am not wrong CS6 alredy supports Group clipping.

You make your mask a smart object, than make its black pixels transparent through "Blend" if dialog , then put it inside a group with "blend clipped layers as group" uncheked , then set this group fill opasity to zero and finnaly put whatever thing you initially wanted masked on top of that group and clipped.

Now you have a "smart" mask . I know it's a disaster from usability and user experience point of view but works, kind of 🙂

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