Making precise selections quickly matters, especially if you’re editing complex scenes or composites. Better selections mean less wasted time and fewer headaches during editing sessions.
Coming to you from Anthony Morganti, this straightforward video highlights the significant improvements made to Photoshop’s “Select Subject” feature in the beta version compared to Photoshop 2025. Morganti demonstrates this clearly using a challenging example—a bicycle, which is notoriously tough due to its intricate spokes and fine details. In the current Photoshop 2025, the feature struggles, missing critical parts like spokes, handlebar areas, and seat portions, leaving a messy result that’s hard to repair. But when he repeats the selection process in Photoshop Beta, the selection comes out clean and nearly perfect, capturing even fine details like bicycle spokes effortlessly. Morganti points out how practical this improvement is, showing a clear side-by-side comparison that makes the advancements easy to appreciate.
But Morganti doesn’t stop there—he moves beyond the bicycle example, recognizing that you probably don’t regularly replace bicycle backgrounds. He switches to a more realistic scenario: selecting a complex structure like the Brooklyn Bridge for a sky replacement. First, he tries using the standard Photoshop 2025 version, and it struggles badly, leaving large gaps and missed areas. Attempting to manually correct the selection would be tedious or even impossible without significant manual work. Then, demonstrating the same process in Photoshop Beta, Morganti reveals a significantly better result, though he still uses a quick manual adjustment with the Refine Edge brush to perfect the mask. This shows not just improved accuracy but practical usability in scenarios you’re likely to encounter, such as architectural or landscape composites.
Morganti also briefly addresses another tool—Sky Replacement—in Photoshop 2025, acknowledging that it handles sky swapping effectively even without the improvements from the beta. This distinction is helpful since “Select Subject” and “Sky Replacement” seem similar but actually perform differently due to different internal selection processes. He highlights that Sky Replacement works well already in Photoshop 2025, emphasizing that the real value of the improved selection tools in Photoshop Beta is in selecting subjects themselves—like people or intricate objects—not just skies. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Morganti.
