TUTORIAL ARTICLE

Beginner

5 min

How to select a subject with one click in Photoshop

Take advantage of assistive AI to automatically select the main subject for you.

What you’ll need

Note: Stock assets provided are for practice purposes only.See terms .

What you learned

Automatically select the subject

Click Select Subject in the Contextual Task Bar to have Photoshop automatically select the main subject on a layer. You can also find this command in the Select menu.

Add a layer mask to replace the background

Click the mask icon in the Contextual Task Bar to create a layer mask from the selection. The layer mask will hide the area that was not selected. With the original background hidden, the layer below becomes visible as a new background for the subject on the layer above.


Instruction and photography by

Seán Duggan

Adobe Stock Contributors

kyrychukvitaliy

Andrii

Den-Belitsky

September 3, 2025

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