I’ve been doing post-production for ad agencies long enough to remember when separating a subject from their background meant either a careful pen tool path or a lot of hoping the photographer nailed the depth of field in camera. Neither option was fast. Neither was particularly forgiving if the client came back three rounds later wanting changes.

Recently I was working through a batch of corporate headshots where the photographer had shot everything on a relatively tight 85mm at f/2.8 – solid background separation, but not enough to really sell the “executive presence” the brand was after. The background needed to recede more. The subject needed to feel like they existed in a different plane of focus than the room behind them. I knew what I wanted. The question was how to get there without baking anything in permanently.

That’s when I came back to this Aaron Nace (PHLEARN) tutorial on AI depth masking in Camera Raw, and it sharpened my whole approach.

Why Camera Raw Is Doing the Heavy Lifting Now

Most people still think of Camera Raw as a RAW file processing step you push through before the “real” editing starts. That framing undersells it considerably. When you work on a Smart Object in Photoshop – or convert a layer to one before opening it in Camera Raw – you get a fully non-destructive edit that lives as a filter on the layer. You can double-click it and go right back in. Nothing is merged, nothing is flattened, nothing is committed until you say so.

This matters for the depth masking workflow because you’re going to be making exposure and blur decisions that need to stay adjustable. A client who wants “a little less blur” at the final review stage is not a hypothetical. It happens constantly. Building the edit inside Camera Raw on a Smart Object means that conversation costs you about 45 seconds, not a rebuilt composite.

The Depth Mask: What It Does and How to Pull It Up

Inside Camera Raw, the Masking panel is where this technique lives. Once you’ve opened your image there, you’ll find an option to create a mask based on depth. Camera Raw uses AI to analyze the image and assign depth values across the frame – essentially figuring out what’s close to the lens and what isn’t.

When you create a depth-based mask, you get a range selector with two handles. The left handle controls the near depth range, the right controls the far. Sliding them lets you define exactly which depth zone you’re targeting. To isolate the background, you push the selector toward the far end of the range. The mask updates in real time and you can see the red overlay shift to cover the areas Camera Raw has identified as being further from the camera.

For the headshot work I mentioned, I kept the near handle just past the subject’s shoulder plane. That kept any edge fringing off the face and hair and put the full effect on the wall and furniture behind them. Feathering the mask range – spreading the two handles slightly rather than keeping them snapped together – softens the transition and avoids that obvious hard line where the blur effect starts.

Targeted Exposure on the Background, Then the Blur

Once the depth mask is set and covering the background, Nace applies a negative exposure adjustment, somewhere in the range of minus one third to minus two thirds of a stop depending on the image. This is subtle on purpose. It’s not about making the background dark, it’s about making the viewer’s eye understand that the background is secondary. A slight luminance drop reinforces the sense of depth without looking like a vignette or a composite.

After that adjustment, the lens blur effect in Camera Raw does the rest of the spatial separation work. The blur mimics the optical characteristics of a fast lens – it’s not the same as a Gaussian blur, which tends to look soft and digital. The lens blur has a bit of character to it, including bokeh simulation, which keeps things feeling photographic rather than processed.

The full workflow inside Camera Raw runs to about six steps: open as Smart Object, enter Camera Raw as a filter, create a depth mask targeting the far range, feather the range handles, apply the exposure drop, and add the lens blur. That’s it. The Smart Object layer in Photoshop holds all of it and stays fully editable.

Where This Technique Runs Into Trouble

I want to be straight with you about one scenario where I’ve had to supplement this approach. When the background subject overlap is complex – flyaway hair against a busy background, for example, or a subject wearing something with fine texture that bleeds into a similarly toned wall – the AI depth mask can make some awkward calls. It’s impressive overall, but it is reading depth from a 2D image, and it can lose confidence in areas where there isn’t strong tonal or contrast separation between the subject and background.

In those cases, I use the depth mask to handle the easy 80 percent of the frame, then add a luminosity or hand-painted mask adjustment for the problem zones. The Smart Object approach still works, you’re just stacking masks rather than relying on one. It’s still miles faster than doing the whole thing manually.

The Real Value Is in Staying Non-Destructive

The thing I keep coming back to with this workflow is not the AI masking specifically – it’s the structure. Smart Object plus Camera Raw filter means every creative decision stays revisable. That’s worth building into your standard portrait workflow even if you never touch the depth masking feature, because the moment a client asks for a change you already anticipated it.

The single biggest takeaway from Nace’s tutorial is this: depth masking without a non-destructive container is only half the technique. Get the Smart Object in place first, and everything else becomes adjustable instead of permanent.

Watch the full PHLEARN tutorial for the visual walkthrough – seeing the mask overlay update in real time as Nace moves the depth range handles makes the whole thing click faster than any written description can.