Today’s Question: I’ve noticed that sometimes a white dot and sometimes a red dot appears below the Masking button on the right panel in the Develop module. What do those dots mean?
Tim’s Quick Answer: A white dot indicates a tool that has been used for the current image, and a red dot below the Masking button indicates there are AI masks that need to be updated.
More Detail: In Lightroom Classic there are various indications of which specific adjustments have been applied. For example, the numerical value associated with a slider will appear brighter (white rather than light gray) to indicate the adjustment has been changed from the default value.
The toolbar below the Histogram section on the right panel in the Develop module includes five buttons associated with the various editing tools. Those buttons are: Edit, Crop, Remove, Red Eye Correction, and Masking. For each of these buttons, if any adjustments in that category have been applied a white dot will appear below the button to indicate that adjustment has actually been used in some way.
For Masking there are a series of AI-based masks, such as Select Sky and Select Subject. In some cases the AI masks may need to be updated, and that is indicated by a red dot under the Masking button. To update the masks, click on the “more” button (the three dots) to the right of a mask and choose “Update AI Masks” from the popup. You can also update by selecting one or more photos in the grid view in the Library module and choose Photo > Develop Settings > Update AI Settings from the menu to update the AI masks for all selected photos in batch.
Note, by the way, that there is a similar issue with the Remove tool where the Generative AI cleanup may need to be updated, in which case a red dot will appear under the button for the Remove tool.
