A critical note on the new landscape masks in Lightroom

Saturday 3 May 2025, 20:10 by Nando Harmsen | 3,658 views | 5 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

The latest Lightroom update (spring 2025) has added landscape masks. Automatic masks are created based on the contents of your photo. They are not limited to landscapes. How useful are they?

Lightroom reads the photo and creates masks based on what it recognises in the photo. There are seven different objects that can be recognised. Think of it as a variation on the automatic masks for people.

People are often reasonably easy to recognise in a photo, just like hair, eyes, faces and so on. That is not always so obvious with a landscape. Atmospheric conditions in particular can blur the boundary between one thing and another.

One of the image elements is architecture. This is (usually) easy to recognise in a landscape, although Lightroom has been rather broad in its selection here.
Not only do atmospheric conditions play a role in the difficulty of the selection. Telling the difference between different elements can be difficult because there is almost never a sharp dividing line.

Here, Lightroom manages to distinguish reasonably well between natural ground and artificial ground. Not all natural elements are included in the selection.
On the whole, the software produces an impressive result. Even in situations where I did not expect it to work well. However, it also often gets things wrong. Sometimes it even produces unusable results.

I have an example of a landscape with a river, mountains, buildings and some foreground vegetation. We can clearly see the difference between the mountains and the foreground vegetation. Lightroom has more trouble with it. Distinguishing between mountains and natural ground in particular proves difficult.

The mountains mask also selects some of the foreground vegetation, as well as the fields on the other side of the river.

Ironically, if you look at the natural ground mask, the mountains are selected, along with the fields. In addition, the mountains and natural ground masks overlap considerably.

The natural ground mask, in turn, mainly shows the mountains as the selection.

There is another aspect to take into account. The selections are often sharply outlined, resulting in abrupt transitions in the masks. In many cases, these are undesirable in landscapes. There is no clear dividing line.

A small edit to the sky and vegetation makes it clear that these sharp transitions almost never work. This is unusable.
The sharp transitions create an unrealistic edit of the photo, which often becomes very clear with transitions from sky to vegetation. In addition, the transitions are rarely accurate enough, resulting in bleed.

There are no sharp transitions in a landscape. This mask is unusable as it is. You have to adjust it.
Of course, it is important to make the transitions very gradual. This produces much more realistic results. It is therefore important to adjust masks and correct them where necessary. Creating mask intersections is an effective tool for this.

A simple mask intersection produces a much more natural result. As it is now, it is usable in an edit. There are no sharp dividing lines.
Bear in mind that the masks Lightroom creates for you can provide an excellent starting point in some cases. However, they are not finished, and adjusting the masks until they are correct will become very important in your workflow.

I used the automatic landscape masks as a basis and adjusted them to make them usable. Creating the masks myself would have been quicker.
If you use the automatic landscape masks in your edit, make sure you correct and adjust them. However, be careful that you do not spend more time correcting them than the result is worth. If it takes too much time, a normal manually applied mask may have been much better.

What do you think of the new landscape masks in Lightroom, Lightroom Classic and Adobe Camera Raw? Have you used them yet, and if so, what do you think of them? Let us know in a comment below this post.

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About the author

Nando Harmsen has been photographing for more than 40 years. He specialises in wedding photography and landscape photography. Nando also gives talks, workshops, masterclasses and photo trips, and regularly reviews new and interesting equipment.

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5 comments

Donald Willemsen wrote on Saturday 3 May 2025 at 23:36 | reply
Adobe jumped on the AI bandwagon far too late and is now lagging behind compared to some other editing software that chose the path of AI much earlier. All those different automatic masks are based on AI models. Adobe is now trying to catch up on the backlog it has and is releasing updates too quickly that do not function properly yet.
If you have to correct a lot of things in those automatic masks, you lose a lot of time. The analysis of your photo by Adobe also takes quite some time, and you could have used that time to create a mask yourself of the part in the photo that you want to edit. After all, Adobe creates masks for all the elements in the photo during the analysis.
Translated from Dutch.

Nando wrote on Monday 5 May 2025 at 13:40 | reply
Why always that preachy finger about 'jumping in too late and lagging behind', and more of that sort of thing? If you don't like the software, or you find something that works better, then use that.

You turn it into a battle, as if the software has personally caused you suffering. It's simply software that either works to your satisfaction, or it doesn't. Accept that. It's not a competition.

Personally, I don't see any immediate added value in this new masking option. I'm giving ideas for dealing with it differently. That's all.
Translated from Dutch.

Donald Willemsen wrote on Monday 5 May 2025 at 14:23 | reply
Nando, if I have a strongly held opinion, I am allowed to say (write) that. You are too. We live in a (still) fairly free Europe where freedom of speech (for now) still counts as a great good.
Likewise, you have every right to misinterpret my words.
My words have nothing, but absolutely nothing, to do with personal suffering. Let that be especially clear.
My criticism is not aimed at the software as such, but rather at Adobe's policies as a developer.
Translated from Dutch.

RAWshooter wrote on Tuesday 6 May 2025 at 11:15 | reply
This is not about Adobe or its competitors, but about the effects of AI. Every editing software maker that uses AI for masking is making a mistake and saddling its customers with an empty promise. It never works with the promised “one click”.
And it can't either, if you understand a little about what AI in photography entails. Nothing new is invented, existing functions are merely automated. Old wine in mouldy bags.
Translated from Dutch.

Ron wrote on Tuesday 6 May 2025 at 11:44 | reply
Donald apparently works at Adobe and has inside information at his disposal and knows how the company approaches the various software branches it has. To point out to a company that has already more than earned its stripes in the world of photo and video editing what it is doing wrong. To lecture condescendingly to a company that leads the way in the world of image, film and audio software that it is too late with the implementation of various AI modules.

Furthermore, everyone should do what he or she feels comfortable with. I swear by Adobe and advise: cobbler, stick to your last.
Translated from Dutch.

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