Today’s Question: In your answer [on May 12th] about dots under the buttons for adjustment tools in Lightroom Classic, what is the meaning of “the AI masks may need to be updated“?
Tim’s Quick Answer: The indication that AI masks need to be updated means the overall image has been altered in a way that could cause an AI mask to no longer be accurate, such as when pixels were changed with the Remove tool.
More Detail: The masks that are based on artificial intelligence (AI) technology in Lightroom Classic (or Camera Raw or Lightroom desktop) analyze the image to determine what the shape of the mask should be. For example, you can use the Select Sky option to have a mask created automatically that matches the shape of the sky in the image, so that an adjustment can be applied to only the sky.
While the AI-based mask options tend to perform very well, there are situations where you need to reprocess the image to update the mask, based on having made changes to the underlying image.
For example, let’s assume you used the Select Sky feature to create a mask of the sky for an image that included a power pole that extended into the sky. In this case the shape of the mask would reflect the sky excluding the area of the power pole. The targeted adjustment would therefore affect the sky without affecting the area covered by the power pole.
If you then used the Remove tool to remove the power pole from the sky, the mask for the sky adjustment would no longer be accurate. In other words, when the power pole was removed from the image that area would be replaced by sky, the sky mask would not include that “new” area of sky. Therefore, the mask would need to be updated based on a new analysis of the image.
When this type of situation occurs, the dot below the Masking button (the dashed circle icon) on the toolbar below the histogram would appear red, indicating that the AI masks need to be updated. You can update the masks by choosing Settings > Update AI Settings from the menu, or by clicking on the more button (the three dots) to the right of one of the masks and choosing “Update AI Masks” from the popup menu. In the example above, that would cause the sky mask to be updated to include the portion of the sky where the power pole had previously appeared before being removed.
