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In focus areas are highlighted in bright red (after Focus Peaking Lines Only action). Read more.

Focus Selection in Adobe Photoshop

It looks like we’re finally getting a feature in Adobe Photoshop we’ve long been waiting for: Focus Selection. A while back I had written a tutorial on focus peaking in Adobe Photoshop including some actions that are available for download (for free) that automate the process. They were far from perfect, but did a good job on most images. And I wondered:

Wouldn’t it be awesome if we had a selection feature in Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom where we could easily select only the areas of an image that are in focus? The way this would work is exactly like the “Color Range” selection process in Photoshop, but only instead of a range of colors, it would select a range of focus. It would start by selecting the areas that are sharply in focus, and you could then increase the range/radius to include more of the picture in your selection extending more to the out of focus areas.

I had sent an email to Adobe about this in 2012, and it looks like we’re finally going to have it in the next version of Photoshop. Check out the preview video below.

It won’t surprise me if we also get this in a future version of Lightroom in the form of a focus masking option for the adjustment brushes. That will be awesome.

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