Good news for Refine edge users! In latest Photoshop 15.5, this tool has been improvised and revamped as select and mask feature (Refine edge option is no longer available now). It’s much easier now to make selections of tricky areas such as hair, furs, etc with this new feature. Let’s see how to use it. Below is sample raw file we will use: We can start by making rough selection of model with any automatic selection tool or path at first. If you don’t want to do it, just turn on quick selection mode.                       Go to: Select > Select and Mask We will get tool bar at left side

There is a new add up feature  in Photoshop CC 2014 – Focus Mask, for selecting images based on focus area. With the help of this tool it is very quick and easy to cut out images in limited period of time. Go to – Select > Focus Area Photoshop will automatically analyse the image based on focus area. As per our requirement, we can add or subtract other areas of image. We can also adjust parameters option for a better result. With Auto button turned on it helps to pick correct depth of field automatically. For even better result we can also make adjustment in the Refine mask option. Here is an example of before and after the mask

You must have noticed that when you use layer mask, it creates a soft edged mask around the selected area of the object. Later when you transform such masked area, you will get jagged edged object. The quality of the image degrades if such image is transformed or converted into higher resolution later on. We can avoid this by using vector mask. Make a selection using a path or take an object created using shape tool. Then convert the path or shape into vector mask (Layer > Vector Mask > Current Path). Like layer mask, vector mask is only applied to layers not to backgrounds. So, now if you transform the image to higher sizes, you won’t get jagged edge.