Zoner Studio’s Spring 2025 update introduces a smarter, faster way to edit photos, built around a powerful new AI-driven Local Adjustments tool. Formerly known as Zoner Photo Studio X, the software has been renamed to reflect its evolution—but everything familiar is still here, just with more power under the hood.
The biggest change in this update is how you make selections. You don’t need to brush over areas manually anymore. Zoner Studio now gives you smarter tools that help you pick out exactly what you want to edit, quickly and without the hassle.
You can brighten a face, pull down the highlights in a background, or fix a patchy color—all without affecting the rest of the image. It’s fast, clean, and just makes editing feel a lot less fiddly.
You also get the option to mix different selection methods in one go. That includes AI, but also luminance and color range. So if you’re trying to lift detail out of the shadows without messing up the highlights, or adjust skin tones without touching the background, it’s all there, and it just works. Simple but powerful.
AI Masking Tools
The latest update to Zoner Studio completely overhauls the way local adjustments work. Instead of juggling separate tools like gradient filters, radial filters, and brushes, everything now lives under one streamlined panel called Local Adjustments. The big shift here is the introduction of four AI-powered masking tools that can automatically detect and isolate different parts of your image.
AI Subject is designed to pick out the main subject—whether that’s a person, pet, vehicle, or really anything that stands out. It gives you a clean selection instantly, so you can jump straight into editing without wasting time.
AI Background does the opposite—it selects the area behind your subject. Handy if you want to darken or blur the background for more depth.
AI Sky is smart enough to isolate the sky even through tricky areas like tree branches or buildings. It’s perfect for making targeted edits to just the sky without touching the rest of the image.
AI Object lets you click on any object in the photo and have it automatically masked. It’s especially useful if there are multiple subjects and you want to fine-tune one without affecting the others.
Each of these masks is editable. You can tweak things like opacity, feathering, blur, and size to get a more precise result. And once the mask is created, it shows up in the panel where everything stays organized and easy to manage.
Combining Masking Tools
One of the more powerful parts of the new system is how easy it is to combine masks. You can now stack different masking tools—AI or manual—using simple Add and Subtract controls.
Say you want to apply a gradient to the sky but don’t want it bleeding over into the trees. You’d start with AI Sky to get a clean selection, then use Subtract > Linear Gradient to remove just the parts overlapping with the trees. It takes seconds, and it’s a lot more intuitive than doing it all by hand.
You can mix and match any of the tools—AI selections, gradients, brushes—to build exactly the mask you need. It’s flexible, efficient, and a major upgrade if you’ve ever been frustrated by the limitations of single-tool adjustments.
Batch Masking
This is honestly the part of the update I’m most excited about. Editing a big batch of photos—whether it’s a wedding, a portrait session, or a documentary project—has always been a grind when it comes to selections. Making the same mask over and over for every image is just boring and eats up so much time.
Now, you don’t have to. With this update, you can create a mask once and apply it across a whole series of photos. The AI automatically adjusts the mask to fit each new image, even if the composition changes. That’s huge.
For me, this fixes one of the most frustrating parts of editing. It’s not just a nice bonus—it actually changes the way you work. It means less repetition, more speed, and way more time spent on the creative stuff instead of the tedious clicking.
Social Media Tools
One of the more creative parts of this update is the addition of built-in tools for designing content specifically for social media. Zoner Studio now lets you create collages and carousels directly inside the app—no third-party tools, no exporting to other platforms.
You can take a single photo and split it across multiple canvases to create seamless transitions between frames. This is especially useful for Instagram-style swipe carousels, where one image flows across several slides. The same system also works for building cohesive, visually striking feeds. If you want your grid to tell a story or maintain a consistent aesthetic, you can divide one photo into several posts and preview how it all lines up before publishing.
Print Layouts
Beyond social media, Zoner Studio also added something for those of us who still believe in printing our work: multi-canvas layouts for prints.
The feature works directly in the editor. You choose how the image is split and how many panels you want, and Zoner Studio handles the spacing. There’s no need to manually crop or measure segments, and no back-and-forth with templates. Whether you're printing for clients or decorating your own space, it just makes the process much faster and cleaner.
HEIF/HEVC Format Support
This update also brings native support for HEIF and HEVC formats, which are increasingly common thanks to modern smartphones and mirrorless cameras. These formats are known for their efficient file size and high image quality, especially when dealing with HDR content.
In practical terms, it means you can now open, edit, and export these files directly in Zoner Studio. No converters, no compatibility errors, and no quality loss. You get full access to the files just like you would with JPEGs or RAW.
For anyone working across multiple devices—such as shooting on an iPhone and editing on a PC—this support eliminates the annoying middle steps and keeps everything moving smoothly.
Clarity for Highlights and Shadows
Zoner Studio now gives you more nuanced control over clarity, which can now be adjusted separately in highlights and shadows. That might sound minor, but in practice it means you can fine-tune the texture and depth of an image without flattening it or introducing weird artifacts.
Want to soften blown-out skies while keeping foreground detail crisp? You can. Want to bring a bit of punch into darker areas without overcooking the whole frame? Done. The old all-in-one clarity slider is now a more flexible tool that lets you work more like a retoucher and less like someone just dragging sliders around.
Chromatic Aberration Effect
Lastly, there’s a new Chromatic Aberration effect in the Effects panel, inspired by vintage film and old lenses. It adds a bit of color fringing to contrast edges, which can give your images a slightly analog or cinematic feel.
Unlike all the other features discussed in this article, this feature is more about adding a creative touch to images, as opposed to correcting anything. It's similar to adding grain or a vignette. When used subtly, it can give digital images a bit more character.
What’s nice is that it’s not just slapped on—it’s part of the overall editing flow and works well with the other new tools in this update. It’s another reminder that Zoner Studio isn’t just chasing precision—they’re thinking about creative features too.
Final Thoughts
What stands out most about this update is that it’s not just about adding new features for the sake of it—it’s about solving real, everyday problems for photographers.
The masking tools feel like a genuine leap forward. They’re fast, surprisingly accurate, and flexible enough to use in creative or technical workflows. Batch masking alone is a massive upgrade, but when you combine that with the new layout tools and subtle touches like clarity control, you start to get a sense of how complete this release really is.
There's a 7-day trial where you can experience these features for yourself.
