Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Adobe Lightroom Q&A => Topic started by: mcbroomf on September 28, 2021, 12:30:47 pm
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLVaLkFPPEA&t=12s
https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2021/09/28/from-the-acr-team-masking-reimagined.html#gs.bwoq7o
Going into ACR as well
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I can't wait! I know all this can be done in PS, but I find it so much easier to do stuff in LR when I can.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLVaLkFPPEA&t=12s
https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2021/09/28/from-the-acr-team-masking-reimagined.html#gs.bwoq7o
Going into ACR as well
Aaaahhh! The anti-mask nitwits will be pissed!
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Aaaahhh! The anti-mask nitwits will be pissed!
I thnk the vitally important question is;
Are they introducing VACCINES in LR??? :o 8) :-[
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLVaLkFPPEA&t=12s
https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2021/09/28/from-the-acr-team-masking-reimagined.html#gs.bwoq7o
Going into ACR as well
It's not clear to me if this will be offered to Lightroom purchased V6 or only the CC variety? Will this be offered in ACR? My PS Elements goes to ACR on RAW images before switching to the regular edit portion.
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If it works well as advertised, this looks to me to be one of the biggest and most useful changes in LR/ACR in years. Looking forward to trying it out.
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It's not clear to me if this will be offered to Lightroom purchased V6 or only the CC variety? Will this be offered in ACR? My PS Elements goes to ACR on RAW images before switching to the regular edit portion.
Alan, I think you will find it only on the monthly licensed LRC, LR, & PS(ACR). Whether it ever flows down to PS Elements…??
BTW…have you seen any of the functional (monthly licensed) LR/ACR functions get updated in V6? I’d suggest it is time to move on…whether with Adobe or some other software if you want improved function.
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The question that has come up for me on this new tool is how will my local adjustments be migrated to it. My guess is that each local adjustment button that is placed on an image will be migrated to a mask.
Has anyone seen a migrated image with local adjustments?
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It's not clear to me if this will be offered to Lightroom purchased V6 or only the CC variety?
It isn't (yet) clear that you'll get NO new features or bug fixes in V6 anymore?
LR6 was released 6 years ago.
You see any updates to features since CC was release????
Will this be offered in ACR?
A modern version? Yes. One you currently 'own' (you don't subscribe to), no. Had you actually read the OP's post, well, he correctly stated it is in ACR too.
My PS Elements goes to ACR on RAW images before switching to the regular edit portion.
Your old and intentionally crippled (by Adobe) version of ACR in Elements; unlikely, very unlikely again you'll ever see anything like these new features there.
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The question that has come up for me on this new tool is how will my local adjustments be migrated to it. My guess is that each local adjustment button that is placed on an image will be migrated to a mask.
Has anyone seen a migrated image with local adjustments?
I don't understand your question about 'migration'.
The masks are stored as XMP metadata in the catalog (as far as Lightroom Classic is concerned). ACR is a bit different, no catalog but again, the masks are XMP (sidecar), like all the other parametric edits. The new masks are of course NOT backwards compatible. Your older masks will 'migrate' to newer versions if that's what you worry about.
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The question that has come up for me on this new tool is how will my local adjustments be migrated to it. My guess is that each local adjustment button that is placed on an image will be migrated to a mask.
Has anyone seen a migrated image with local adjustments?
I suspect that existing local adjustments won't need to be "migrated"; they'll continue in the old vector-based format. The new masking options (subject, sky...) will use bitmap masks, but the existing selections (brush, gradient, range...) will continue to use vector-based descriptions.
See this Adobe blog (https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2021/09/28/from-the-acr-team-masking-reimagined.html#gs.dthm2t), which includes:
With the new masking functionality, we needed to make it possible for both vector-based as well as bitmap-based masks to live together in harmony. The brush, gradients, and range masks continue to be vector-based (to limit space used when making masks) while the AI-powered tools such as select subject and select sky use these bitmap-based masks.
That suggests that using the new bitmap-based masks might lead to huge XMP files (or similarly large space in the Lightroom catalog)! Hey, ho, storage is cheap...
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I wonder if they are going to save that information in the XMP file or use an additional channel (like an alpha channel) forcing the use of DNG. Other option is a separate file with the mask as in Capture one.
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I wonder if they are going to save that information in the XMP file or use an additional channel (like an alpha channel) forcing the use of DNG.
There is NO forcing the use of DNG but it's a good idea if you want this data and more, embedded into the actual image document.
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I don't understand your question about 'migration'.
The masks are stored as XMP metadata in the catalog (as far as Lightroom Classic is concerned). ACR is a bit different, no catalog but again, the masks are XMP (sidecar), like all the other parametric edits. The new masks are of course NOT backwards compatible. Your older masks will 'migrate' to newer versions if that's what you worry about.
In the new UI the top develop tool bar now has 4 tools: Crop Rotate, Healing (bandaid) guessing spot removal, Red Eye, and the New Mask tool. The New Mask tool is where Brush, Linear and Radial Gradients will be performed. There is not an option to choose between vector or bit mapped, the new Masks are the only option.
There are no tools for the old vector based Brush, Linear and Radial Gradient tools. This implies to me that any Brush or Gradient (Linear or Radial) adjustments from the old process will be imported/migrated/converted (pick your term) to the new process. They cannot be orphaned.
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There is not an option to choose between vector or bit mapped, the new Masks are the only option.
Indeed, no option or need. They are what they need to be.
There are no tools for the old vector based Brush, Linear and Radial Gradient tools.
Yes there still are such tools in the newer version(s).
This implies to me that any Brush or Gradient (Linear or Radial) adjustments from the old process will be imported/migrated/converted (pick your term) to the new process. They cannot be orphaned.
I am sill unclear by the term orphaned, they can and do travel forward if that's what you mean and are concerned about.
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Indeed, no option or need. They are what they need to be. Yes there still are such tools in the newer version(s). I am sill unclear by the term orphaned, they can and do travel forward if that's what you mean and are concerned about.
In a couple days we’ll all know….but if you say it’s all there, I’m sure it is.
Additionally, Adobe rarely ‘orphans’ anything. They have been very careful to, mostly, continue older processes even when replaced with new ones.
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In a couple days we’ll all know….but if you say it’s all there, I’m sure it is.
In a couple days you'll know.
Some of us, have been hammering on this for many months. ::)
Additionally, Adobe rarely ‘orphans’ anything
Absolutely correct.
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There is not an option to choose between vector or bit mapped, the new Masks are the only option.
I am sure it will be vector based... as the whole LR program is.
Makes it much easier to go backwards without having the size of the DNG explode.
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In the new UI the top develop tool bar now has 4 tools: Crop Rotate, Healing (bandaid) guessing spot removal, Red Eye, and the New Mask tool. The New Mask tool is where Brush, Linear and Radial Gradients will be performed. There is not an option to choose between vector or bit mapped, the new Masks are the only option.
There are no tools for the old vector based Brush, Linear and Radial Gradient tools. This implies to me that any Brush or Gradient (Linear or Radial) adjustments from the old process will be imported/migrated/converted (pick your term) to the new process. They cannot be orphaned.
They migrate. The new UI is as much about bringing the three existing tools together into one feature, allowing you to group the local adjustment (ie make a Mask), and then about adding new capability such as sky and subject selection.
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They migrate. The new UI is as much about bringing the three existing tools together into one feature, allowing you to group the local adjustment (ie make a Mask), and then about adding new capability such as sky and subject selection.
Sounds reasonable, since both ‘gradient’ & ‘radial’ already had ‘brush’ components.
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Equally, I wouldn't want to minimize the change. While I do find the overall experience more fiddly, that's only a small regret because local adjustments are significantly more powerful, especially when they're used in combination. For example, you can select a sky, but then graduate the adjustment impact by subracting a linear gradient from the sky. Or you can select all the blues in an image using a colour range selection, but then use a radial filter to remove the effect in one part of the image.
I've not actually tried taking images with these adjustments back from Lr11 to Lr10, but I'd not be too optimistic that the adjustments will survive.
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At least on this end, Sky Replacement works very well and on its own is a great new masking feature.
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I am sure it will be vector based... as the whole LR program is.
This implies to me that any Brush or Gradient (Linear or Radial) adjustments from the old process will be imported/migrated/converted (pick your term) to the new process.
I quoted this a day or two ago, from an Adobe blog:
With the new masking functionality, we needed to make it possible for both vector-based as well as bitmap-based masks to live together in harmony. The brush, gradients, and range masks continue to be vector-based (to limit space used when making masks) while the AI-powered tools such as select subject and select sky use these bitmap-based masks.
The author (Josh Bury) doesn't say whether there will be a new catalog format, but I infer that existing tools and existing adjustments to images will remain.
See this Adobe blog article (https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2021/09/28/from-the-acr-team-masking-reimagined.html#gs.dg17ja).
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The author (Josh Bury) doesn't say whether there will be a new catalog format, but I infer that existing tools and existing adjustments to images will remain.
Yes, you'll update the catalog so like all times in the past this has occurred, keep the backup the older one for awhile.
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Does any of you who have tested the new version know or can tell if it is going to be possible to choose between local adjustment that are located exactly in the same position?
E.g. when you duplicate a brush, you can select only the topmost one.
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I think that's still awkward, at least if you duplicate it on the same layer, sorry mask. But if you remember a keyboard shortcut, you can also duplicate in place by dragging a local adjustment onto the + button (new mask). So the duplicate is in exactly the same location but you can easily select it as it's on a different layer / mask.
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Does any of you who have tested the new version know or can tell if it is going to be possible to choose between local adjustment that are located exactly in the same position?
E.g. when you duplicate a brush, you can select only the topmost one.
It’s only ~ a week before we all see it!!! 😀😀
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I think that's still awkward, at least if you duplicate it on the same layer, sorry mask. But if you remember a keyboard shortcut, you can also duplicate in place by dragging a local adjustment onto the + button (new mask). So the duplicate is in exactly the same location but you can easily select it as it's on a different layer / mask.
From the same blog post I quoted:
Another major request was the ability to name each mask, making it easier to keep track of each mask group and what it’s doing.
Don't know if that will make it easier.
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At least on this end, Sky Replacement works very well and on its own is a great new masking feature.
Does this work the same in Lightroom as in Photoshop, where invoking Sky Replacement triggers the creation of a group of additive mask layers? Or is it something new? (I.e., "and now for something completely different. . . . ")
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Does this work the same in Lightroom as in Photoshop, where invoking Sky Replacement triggers the creation of a group of additive mask layers?
Basically yes, in terms of a selection.
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From the same blog post I quoted:
Another major request was the ability to name each mask, making it easier to keep track of each mask group and what it’s doing.
Don't know if that will make it easier.
Neither do I, but it's certainly possible as you see here. I don't normally bother.
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Does this work the same in Lightroom as in Photoshop, where invoking Sky Replacement triggers the creation of a group of additive mask layers? Or is it something new? (I.e., "and now for something completely different. . . . ")
At the risk of being embarrassed if I've overlooked it, there's no Sky Replacement - there is Sky Selection.
Of course, it seems a relatively short leap to imagine Sky Replacement might be coming.
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At the risk of being embarrassed if I've overlooked it, there's no Sky Replacement - there is Sky Selection.
It's Edit>Sky Replacement in Photoshop 22.5.1. (See attached.)
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Yes, I know that feature. Maybe it's just crossed wires as I'd read this response and this is a Lightroom forum.
At least on this end, Sky Replacement works very well and on its own is a great new masking feature.
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At the risk of being embarrassed if I've overlooked it, there's no Sky Replacement - there is Sky Selection.
Of course, it seems a relatively short leap to imagine Sky Replacement might be coming.
‘Sky selection’ by itself would be great. It would be much better, if one could adjust the selection using the full color/calibration sliders, but, I’m guessing, only the normal ‘local adjustment’ sliders will be available.
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‘Sky selection’ by itself would be great. It would be much better, if one could adjust the selection using the full color/calibration sliders, but, I’m guessing, only the normal ‘local adjustment’ sliders will be available.
Indeed. I also failed to call the new feature “Sky Replacement” instead of “Selection” which is what you really get. Then move those sliders.
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I've only scratched the surface so far, but I'm favorably impressed.
The sky and subject masks—the new "A.I." features (i.e., based on machine-learning)—offer a quick head start for making selections. Sometimes they nail the selection automatically, but sometimes you need to fiddle with it manually, for example with the brush tool; but that's also true in Photoshop.
Actually, however, I think an even greater benefit of the new masking design is that it makes it possible to create a sophisticated stack of non-destructive local adjustments that can be quite complex but are easy to work with. You create these sequentially, and prior selections can become the basis for modified or intersecting subsequent ones. Describing it makes it sound more complicated than it is in practice.
(When I say the local adjustments are sequential, I'm referring to the dependency relationship among them not how the edits are actually applied when you export an image. For example, you can select the sky, then apply a gradient to part of the sky, then make adjustments only to the part of the sky affected by the gradient. So the edits are additive from your perspective. Presumably Lightroom will actually apply them according to its own internal logic when you export or print the image.)
Another feature I really like is the ability to attach your own label to each selection in the stack. That facilitates moving from one selection to another in order to tweak each one as you work toward the final appearance you want.
I've attached an example of an image that I edited using only local adjustments. The first attachment shows the appearance of the imported raw file in Lightroom's Develop module. The stack of selections is visible in the upper right corner of the second attachment. You read it from bottom to top:
- First, I used Select Subject to select only the heron. Lightroom made a perfect selection automatically. I then inverted the selection so that I now had a selection that included everything except the heron. I labeled this "background."
- Next, I used a Luminance Range to select just the brightest parts of the waterfall (and labeled the selection "waterfall"), then edited that selection to bring out the detail in that part of the water.
- The next step was to create a selection so I could pull up the shadows in the rocks. I used another Luminance Range for that.
- Next, I used Select Subject again, but didn't invert it, so I could make some minor adjustments to the heron.
- Finally, I wasn't satisfied with the detail in the water below the falls at the lower left of the image, so I used a brush to select it and made some adjustments to that area.
After I had made initial edits for each of the selections, I went back to tweak several of them a bit. It only dawned on me after the fact—I was playing with this file to figure out how the new masking feature worked—that I never made any global adjustments to the image. Also, despite the use of machine learning to select and invert the subject, all the adjustments were non-destructive and could be modified at any time.
The entire process took about five minutes. When I originally edited this image back in 2012, I probably spent several hours working on it in Photoshop.
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Thumbs up on the new masking scheme. This makes it much easier to create and edit multiple local adjustments and to keep track of what I've done to an image. Not full Layers by any means, but a lot closer in an important way!.
But I do have a question: The Select Subject command seems to pick the most prominent foreground object - does anybody know of a way to direct the tool to ignore its first choice of subject and look in a different portion of the image?
The Adobe documentation does not seem to offer this, and I've done a few tests (far from exhaustive) running select subject as a subtraction from another mask and running select subject after cropping out the the automatic subject - but with no change to the selected subject. It appears the select subject process is only run on the entire image.
Thanks for any inputs.
Don
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I've found the same: subject select always looks at the whole image, even if you crop first.
Another issue: I've found that Shift + O to change the colour of the selection overlay doesn't work. I have to click the coloured rectangle in the mask panel. However, that does reveal other useful options, including a wider range of colours for the mask, and being able to toggle between showing the area affected by the mask, and the area unafffected. Alt + O to give different mask presentations (like Photoshop) is great too.
A bit of learning needed, and perhaps some tweaking in the next Lightroom update.
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Here's my first and, I think, very successful use of the new masking tool. I show before and after images. I used sky select and reduced the exposure. Then I used subject select and increased saturation and luminance on the chairs. I am impressed. I also love the customizable metadata.
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looks pretty good; it only forgot the gaps.
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Another "feature" of the upgrades (Photoshop v 23.0, Bridge v 12.0 and Lightroom Classic v 11.0) is that they require MacOS 10.15 or later if you are on a Mac (at least, according to the Creative Cloud notification that I get). I am presently using a rather old Mac Pro (mid 2010) running MacOS Mojave (10.14.6) which might be as far as I can go on this hardware. This 11 year old computer still runs fine, but now I'm running into these issues with lack of compatibility with new versions of software. There are paths forward, but I'm kind of waiting to see what Apple does with the new (not yet announced) Mac Mini or the (possible) smaller Mac Pro version that has been discussed. Also, the new MacBook Pro could be a suitable replacement for my old Mac Pro (with an attached monitor such as the NEC PA271 that I have and which is also 11 years old). I think my bank account is going to take a hit sometime soon.
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And worth reading/watching:
https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/masking.html
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Very nice, Peter. It selected both chairs?
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At least on this end, Sky Replacement works very well and on its own is a great new masking feature.
With relatively simple subject matter, maybe. However, if dealing with complex subjects like trees, or when there are not very distinct tonal differences between the sky and the rest of the scene, I find it generally does not work very well for me at all.
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With relatively simple subject matter, maybe. However, if dealing with complex subjects like trees, or when there are not very distinct tonal differences between the sky and the rest of the scene, I find it generally does not work very well for me at all.
First, this is a work in progress and will get even better.
2nd, it's a starting place and in some, maybe many cases, you are going to have to do some refinements.
3rd. at least on this end, with the images I've played with, it is a huge time saver compared to starting with nothing in the first place.
If you expect this to be perfect from the get-go, with every image, keep this in mind:
"Have no fear of perfection-you'll never reach it." -Salvador Dali
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First, this is a work in progress and will get even better.
2nd, it's a starting place and in some, maybe many cases, you are going to have to do some refinements.
3rd. at least on this end, with the images I've played with, it is a huge time saver compared to starting with nothing in the first place.
If you expect this to be perfect from the get-go, with every image, keep this in mind:
"Have no fear of perfection-you'll never reach it." -Salvador Dali
I find LR's new masking abilities to be extremely useful and easy to use. The ability to add and subtract masks is great!
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The ability to add and subtract masks is great!
I think the interaction among the various components of the masking suite—the two selection tools that use machine-learning as well as the more traditional ones—is very well implemented. In particular, the ability to restrict modifications to the intersection of two masks strikes me as rather clever.
As an aside, I've been shooting some black-and-white film lately with a prewar 35mm rangefinder camera I recently acquired. I've found the new masking features extremely useful in producing the localized tonal adjustments I want to make in order to exploit the analog capabilities of my negative scans. (Examples here (https://www.flickr.com/photos/chriskernpix/51691695630/in/datetaken/) and here. (https://www.flickr.com/photos/chriskernpix/51693561228/in/datetaken/))
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I would like to be able to join the two types of masks (Vector and raster), maybe by "Rasterizing" the vector masks. For instance, if you select a subject and then add a brush, it keeps them as separate objects. Try to "Invert" the mask and you''ll see what I mean.
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I would like to be able to join the two types of masks (Vector and raster), maybe by "Rasterizing" the vector masks. For instance, if you select a subject and then add a brush, it keeps them as separate objects. Try to "Invert" the mask and you''ll see what I mean.
I ran into that issue too, where when you combine two or more selections in one mask, there appears to be no way to invert the combination. However, after a search I did find that there is a way to do it, even if it is a little kludgy. See this webpage description and associated video: https://scottdavenportphoto.com/blog/how-to-invert-simple-and-complex-masks-in-lightroom. Hopefully, in a future update Adobe will give us a more straightforward way to accomplish this.
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Yes Adobe knows about the need for a better means to invert and yes, that "kludge" is a way to get around this for the time being. Again, this is a V1 feature but a big one, more coming.
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Again, this is a V1 feature but a big one, more coming.
"Time was invented so everything wouldn't happen at once."