Before we start covering what is Subject Masking, what it does, and how it works in Aftershoot you need to make sure you have one of three things - a Personal AI Editing Profile, a pre-built AI Style, or a Creator Style.
Learn how to create and train your Personal AI Editing Profile here and how to download a pre-built AI Style or Creator style here.
What is Subject Masking?
Image Masking is the process of isolating a specific part of an image, to perform more in-depth and detailed editing. In other words, you are "masking" the part that you don't want to manipulate, separating it from the parts that will undergo editing.
Subject Masking works the same way, except it is focused solely on the people who are in the foreground of the image.
How does it work in Aftershoot?
When you edit an image with Aftershoot, be it with your Personal AI Editing Profile, AI Style, or Creator Style, the adjustments are made to the image as a whole.
When using Aftershoot's Subject Masking during an editing session, the AI will detect the main subject and mask it. Masked subjects can have another layer of editing added on top, with up to 7 different sliders being adjusted. Alternatively, the edits to the subject can be added by you, with the rest of the image remaining the same. You decide which suits you better, by choosing between Subject Mask with Edits and Subject Mask Only when enabling AI Masking.
Several things to keep in mind when using Aftershoot's Subject Masking:
For now, Masking works only with Lightroom Catalogs, as well as JPEG and RAW formats.
Masking results depend on the Personal AI Editing Profile, AI Style, or Creator Style.
In this iteration, only Subject Masking is available - meaning it will only work on images with human subjects.
How do I use Subject Masking?
We made sure that this feature is extremely simple and intuitive to use. First, create a new album and upload your images. Then either run a Culling session if you need to do so or proceed straight to the Edit Tab.
Then proceed to the right side of the screen and select your editing preferences and AI Profile as usual. There you can enable AI Masking by simply clicking on the toggle next to its name.
Now, you need to choose from the dropdown menu. Subject Mask with Edits will apply AI-based edits to the generated subject masks. While Subject Mask Only, will only generate AI-based subject masks without any edits.
With that out of the way, all that's left to do is to run your editing session as you usually would.
We hope this article was useful and if you still experience difficulties or have questions, feel free to contact us at [email protected] - it will be our pleasure to help you out!