I don’t often do videos on what Lightroom can’t do, but I’ve gotten enough questions on this that I want to save you some some time.
About Me
I love teaching and photography... In that order. I feel that enjoying photography, and photo editing can get WAY too complicated. So my personal mission (and favorite thing to do), is to create education that simplifies the process of taking great photos, and how to edit them to get the results you’ve always wanted.
Thanks so much for your LR/ACR Masking video course! really helpful!
Unless I am missing something, you can invert a mask it just takes multiple steps. You invert the lowest level mask and then convert the adds to subtracts and subtracts to adds.
I just read and saw your response to another person who pointed this out. I agree it is not a one step invert.
It would help if “ai’ is explained. It means artificial intelligence but as an outsider I don’t know the abbreviated terms or use them. The explanation is easier to follow if you repeat the meaning of abbreviations several times. Your words are always welcome. Thank you.
I also vote for Matt’s Deep Dive course. Matt goes through each aspect of LR’s new masking features, with step-by-step instruction and demonstration. He is very clear and precise throughout the course and at the end I understood the features much better than the short tutorials on YouTube.
Hope you and your family have a wonderful holiday!!!
I have found the order of mask actions makes a big difference. To avoid the headache of trying to invert a mask with multiple adjustments, I duplicate my mask right after selecting the subject. Invert one of them and you can then make your adjustments on the background and subject. To transfer a mask from lightroom to photoshop make a mask preset in lightroom. The mask is also available in camera raw although you do have to remember to update it
With the comments, I think I have the gist of the limitation and work arounds. Thank you Matt. Happiest of holidays to you and your family
while algebra was my favorite math in school, Sorry Guys,but my head hurt reading about the mathematical formulas!
Lets keep it simple and ……
Have a great holiday Matt and to all your followers. Its been a difficult year for many of us, but your tutorials helped to make it better!
Thank you Matt! Merry Christmas to you and your family.
Sorry Matt, you are completely wrong in saying that you can’t Invert an entire Mask. Yes, Adobe needs to make this happen with an Invert function at the entire Mask level and hopefully they will in a future release.
For now, you can manually Invert an entire Mask and this is how:
1. Invert the first (bottom) component;
2. For each component above the first (bottom) component, toggle its Add/Subtract mode. This means changing Adds to Subtracts and Subtracts to Adds.
That’s it.
You most definitely do not Invert any components above the first (bottom) component mask.
Hi Tony. That is incorrect. You said it yourself… “entire mask”. That is the feature that people want, not what you explained.
Hi Matt. Maybe you need to read it again. The two steps I have given Invert the Entire Mask. This is exactly what I explained.
Go try it for yourself on your example.
Masks in LrC are analogous to Mathematical Sets and the algebra of set theory applies to analysing how LrC masks are combined.
It is easy to show, but beyond most who don’t understand set theory, that for a mask M consisting of masks A Subtract B Add C that the Invert of M is the Invert of A Add B Subtract C. Using ! for the Invert operation, then algebraically !M is
!M = !( A – B + C ) = !A + B – C
If instead, C was Intersected (Subtract Invert C), then
!M = ! ( A – B – !C ) = !A + B + !C
Of course Adobe needs to make this a single click operation, but saying that you can’t do it at all is simply incorrect.
Hi Tony. I understand what you’re saying and I simply disagree with you that it is that easy to invert a mask (hence me including it in the video). At this point let’s just agree to disagree and move on to the fun stuff. Best!
Hi Matt, clearly you don’t understand what I am saying, otherwise you would not disagree. Inverting an entire Mask is as simple as the two steps I have stated. Don’t just assume that it can’t be true because it seems too simple. It is that easy. This is the way to Invert an entire Mask, no matter how complex it is. I ask again, try it for yourself.
I should make the first step a bit clearer:
1. Toggle the Invert state of the first (bottom) component mask.
Could you not just do a second mask, select subject, and invert it? Rather than duplicating the first mask.
You could, but if you have multiple “sub layers” in the mask that created your original selection this still won’t work. It only works if you only have one “Select Subject” layer.
OK. Thanks Matt.
Another great video to help us understand the new Lightroom masking limitations, Matt! Thank you. Merry Christmas to you and looking forward to what you bring us in 2022.
Well worth doing the course. You might think you can get everything you need just on YouTube, but it’s great to have the information presented in a structured manner that leads you from intro to end point.
Matt great video as always. I highly recommend your course. Unless you have, and are willing to spend, countless hours figuring everything out that you so clearly presented in your video don’t be cheap. Buy the video.
I vote for Matt’s “Deep Dive” Class. I found it a great and quick guide to using the new tools. Well worth money and your time! Thanks Matt!
Your second example where you do select sky in Photoshop I would have done the select sky in Lightroom (LR) for those edits then when it was in Photoshop (PS) I would have done the PS select sky to do what ever extra was needed doing in PS. Or I would have sent image to PS like you did, done the PS select sky but done the adjustments in the Camera RAW filter in PS.
My biggest “Lightroom can not do that” is Lightroom can not make my coffee 🙂
The invert mask issue seems pretty simple: implement a top level merge with the result being an invertable mask. I’m certain that they’ve thought of this, but given the apparent triviality (and not knowing the internal implementation), the fix should be sooner rather than later.
Anyway, thanks for the heads up on these anomalies!
yep, seems like something that should be there even if it has to be a merge masks since in most cases you are wanting to invert the full merged mask
I always believed that the Ps designers know everything beforehand but the do the half so they can save the rest for the next update just to keep the thing going! They are not fools.
And surely we aren’t either. Thanks for the video.
Matt,
Here’s my work around for not being able to take an AI mask from Lightroom into Photoshop. I open the file in Photoshop and then open the Camera Raw filter, use an AI mask, such as select sky, make my adjustments and then hit OK.
Will you have an Update course with all the improvements done in late 2021? I would like to see a bundle for both Lightroom and Photoshop, but with the updated improvements that were done in Late 2021.
Tell Blake I said congrats. Dale. USN (Ret)
Hey matt,
As usual a great explanation on the “limitations’ to this wonderful new set of tools in Adobe’s Light Room.
Thanks for publishing YOUR knowledge so freely.
Hey Matt,
Always love your quick tutorials. As a family photographer who has done 45 shoots since the new masking, I will say it is amazing and can really improve the proofing. However, one other thing I wish Adobe would address, when you sync photos with just general linear masks (not the specific ones) each time a dialog box pops, “are you sure, etc….” and you have to chose replace or merge. This should be something you could option to do one way and never see that dialog box again. I am sure it is great if you are doing a few images, but when I am proofing hundreds it gets really tedious. Can’t wait to see where they will go with all the masking possibilities. Thanks always for your hard work keeping us informed!!!! Sincerely, Lynn Crow
I really like the masking tool to select the inverse of the sky. I don’t like applying changes to the sky with a global change. So, this feature is helping me a lot.
Thank you Matt!
May you and the family have a wonderful holiday season!
Thank you, Merry Christmas!
Thank You