Today’s Question: The new landscape masking feature in Lightroom Classic includes the ability to detect the sky in a photo. Is there any reason to use this rather than the existing Select Sky option?
Tim’s Quick Answer: The only reason to use the new Select Landscape feature instead of the Select Sky feature when applying a targeted adjustment with the masking adjustment is if you also want to create a mask for other portions of the image, such as water, vegetation, or mountains.
More Detail: If you use the Sky option with the Select Landscape feature, you’ll get the same mask shape for the sky in the image as you would if you used the Select Sky feature. You can therefore create a mask for a targeted adjustment for the sky in an image using either option.
If you only want to apply an adjustment to the sky, and not any other areas that could be masked using the Select Landscape feature, then it is slightly more efficient to use the Select Sky feature. But either option is perfectly fine and will result in the same mask shape for the sky.
Of course, one of the advantages of the Select Landscape feature is that you can select other portions of the image beyond the sky. For example, the Select Landscape feature can identify areas of mountains, vegetation, water, natural ground, and more. If you want to apply a targeted adjustment for multiple areas that the Select Landscape feature can detect, it is more efficient to use Select Landscape to create a sky mask in addition to the other masks you want to create, rather than using Select Sky for the sky and then Select Landscape for other portions of the image.
If you’d like to learn more about the AI-powered masks in Lightroom Classic, be sure to sign up for my free webinar on the subject, which I’ll present live on Friday, May 30th, starting at 12pm Eastern Time. You can sign up to join me or to get access to a recording of the full presentation after it concludes by filling out this form:
https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/sl/fL9XlHa/aimasks
