How to copy mask and settings from one Photoshop Camera Raw instance to another?

Question

Ive got many photographs shot against a similar background, ive got these photos saved as high res JPEGs.

My workflow is currently :

• 1. import the photo into photoshop
• 2. right click the background layer and create a smart object
• 3. apply Camera Raw filter to the smart object
• 4. create some quite complex masks in Camera Raw Filter and adjust various levels etc as required

The problem is that im doing all steps 1-4 on each photograph, step 4 takes the longest amount of time and where the photographs have a similar background it seems a waste of keep making the masks manually.

Is it possible to copy and paste and mask and its level settings etc from one photograph to another ?

Im running Photoshop 2023 on a Mac running MacOS 11.7

Answer 1

It is possible to save the masks (and edits) and then load them into a new image or layer. If the masks are AI based like "select subject" they will rerun the auto selection process.

This is true for all programs that use ACR; although the process may be a bit different... I prefer to create a custom preset in Lightroom instead.