Last month I was mid-project on a skincare campaign, three layers deep into a mask stack that was held together with what I can only describe as optimism and expired coffee, when my usual workflow just stopped feeling efficient. Not broken, exactly. Just slow. Creaky. The kind of slow that makes you wonder whether you’ve been doing something the hard way for years without realizing it.

That’s the headspace I was in when I sat down with Matt Kloskowski’s April 2026 Photoshop update breakdown, and I’m glad I did. Some updates are genuinely worth stopping your day for.

Why New Photoshop Features Hit Different When You Retouch Faces

General photographers and designers get excited about Photoshop updates for all kinds of reasons. For those of us working specifically on skin, hair, and facial structure, the bar is higher. A feature has to be precise, non-destructive, and fast, because beauty work is already painstaking. Anything that saves thirty seconds per mask across a sixty-image edit adds up to real time.

Matt’s tutorial focuses on what Adobe shipped in the April 2026 release, and he approaches it the way I wish more educators would: not a feature tour, but a practical demonstration of what’s actually useful versus what looks impressive in a demo and then sits unused.

The Masking Improvements That Actually Matter Here

The headline improvement in this release centers on refinements to Photoshop’s AI-assisted masking tools, and Matt walks through how the updated Select Subject and Refine Hair functions handle edge cases that previously required significant manual cleanup. For beauty retouchers, “edge cases” is just another way of saying “every single job,” because faces have flyaways, soft jawline transitions, and wispy brow hairs that have always made clean selections feel like a minor miracle.

In the tutorial, Matt demonstrates the updated Refine Hair function on a subject with lighter, finer hair against a slightly busy background. The previous version of this tool would often choke on low-contrast edges, pulling in background color or leaving a fringe that needed hand-painting to fix. The updated version reads the edge with noticeably better contrast sensitivity. He shows before and after views of the mask at pixel level, and the improvement in mid-tone hair strands is visible without having to zoom in to convince yourself it’s real.

The workflow he uses runs like this: run Select Subject to get your base mask, jump into Select and Mask, apply Refine Hair along the edge, then use the new edge smoothing slider (which has been rebuilt with a lighter touch than the old version) to clean up without softening the mask globally. He keeps the feathering at zero and lets the AI do the edge work rather than blurring his way to a smooth result. That distinction matters. Blurred masks look retouched. Clean, refined masks look like the subject was just photographed that way.

Generative and Adjustment Layer Changes Worth Noting

Matt also covers some smaller but genuinely useful updates to adjustment layer behavior, specifically how Curves and Hue/Saturation layers now respond inside masked groups. The clipping behavior has been cleaned up so that an adjustment layer clipped to a masked layer respects the mask boundary more predictably. This sounds minor until you’ve spent time wondering why your targeted skin tone adjustment is bleeding into the background when it absolutely should not be.

For beauty work, I almost always run skin adjustments inside a masked group rather than directly on the layer, so tighter clipping behavior directly reduces the cleanup step I’d normally do after.

He also briefly covers updates to the Generative Fill tool, specifically improvements to how it handles texture matching on skin when used for small blemish or background repairs. The new iteration reads surrounding texture at a finer grain, which means less of that telltale softness that used to appear in AI-filled patches near pores or fine lines.

Where I’d Push This Further (or Pull Back)

Here’s where I’d add a small note from my own experience: the updated Refine Hair tool is excellent, but it still wants to be given a clean starting selection. If you let Select Subject make a rough call on a face with hair that blends into a similarly-toned background, the AI refinement compounds the initial error rather than correcting it. I’ve found it’s worth spending an extra thirty seconds with the Object Selection tool to tighten the base mask on the hairline before you hand it to Refine Hair. Think of it as giving the tool a better starting argument.

I also wouldn’t use Generative Fill for anything larger than a small distraction or a straightforward background fill on beauty work. For skin texture repairs specifically, frequency separation still gives me more control over what the patch looks like, and control is the whole point on a campaign image that’s going to a client with very specific expectations.

The Update That Changes My Actual Daily Workflow

The masking improvements here are the real story. Better edge detection on fine hair, cleaner clipping behavior inside masked groups, and a more honest Refine Hair result mean less time in cleanup and more time in the actual work. For anyone doing portrait or beauty retouching at volume, this release is worth updating for.

Watch Matt Kloskowski’s full video for the visual walkthrough, especially the side-by-side mask comparisons. Seeing the edge quality difference on screen makes the argument for updating immediately, and Matt has a clear, unhurried way of explaining exactly what changed and why it matters.