P: AI "Select Window mask" option in Lightroom Classic (for real estate)

Hi everyone, yes please, add my vote for AI window masking.

We definitely need this feature, OpenAI image editing knows how to do this already, quite well in fact. But as we all know the output images are far too low in resolution for anything besides basic MLS images.

Lightroom’s AI masking tools are a huge time saver for me, especially in real estate and architectural photography. The ability to quickly select skies, subjects, and backgrounds is fantastic for exterior shots,  but having AI detect windows and glass panels in doors but exclude the Muntins or Grilles that divide the window into smaller decorative panes of glass would be extremely helpful and (i believe) a great use case for AI assistance.  

The concept is to take an HDR image to capture the room interior and the beautiful landscaping outside.  Fairly easy with bracketing and merge to HDR in Lightroom.  The trick is selecting those windows and other glass panels in the home to mask and edit the exterior view.  

The AI is very close right now. I can use “Select Object” to frame a window and the AI creates a nice clean mask for me.  However, it also includes the cross sections (Muntins or Grilles) and when the exposure and highlights are lowered, the Muntins become much too dark.  Presently, I remove/subtract the mask with the brush tool.  This works but becomes tedious when there are a lot of windows for a large property and architects and brokers want the windows to look natural, not blown out or have dark frames and Muntins crossing the window, when they should be white. 

The Adobe engineers have already mastered AI selections of the human face, lips, eyes, sclera, rivers, vegetation, architecture, artificial ground, etc.  Maybe interiors, windows, doors, skylights are the next step in automation.  If Lightroom could automatically recognize and mask windows/doors/glass, it would:

• Speed up editing workflows (especially for high-volume real estate jobs)
• Provide more accurate results than manual brushing
• Benefit a ton of photographers who work in real estate, architecture, interiors, and hospitality

 It would make a huge difference for those of us working with properties and interiors every day.

Anyone else think masking windows, doors, etc would benefit from an AI mask?

Some mention using HDR, but HDR doesn't handle the tones in a smart way. If you could combine HDR's huge dynamic rannge with the ability to manually adjust the windows as well as blown out lights, you could produce MUCH higher quality images fast. 

I really wish they would have different focus groups for photography genre and then design modes to match each. Us pros have probably been the most loyal customers. We need as much efficiency as possible.

I recently took some real estate photos as an ameture, and I found that for indoor shots, masking bright windows is both necessary and a significant pain point:  the best strategy that I foud was to use the brush to identify the area, then intersect with a luminance mask, then refine more with the brush as needed.  This is still tedius (despite the luminance help).  Object detection does not handle this well.  I wish that I could just press a button and it could identify all of the outdoor areas.

I'm an architectural and real estate photographer. My suggestion, add an option similar to the "landscape" option in masks that can help with interiors.

There's various ways you could do this. The simplest is teach an AI to recognize windows and select only the outside.

You could go much further for interiors and teach an AI the things interiors photographers usually change and then automatically provide soft masks that can pull or push exposure on different light and dark areas. I'm just brainstorming here 🙂 

This would save me significant time as my current technique when working with ambient light and projects that have lower budgets is to expose for the exterior highlights, use denoise (if needed) and mask out the windows and use highlights / exposure to keep the views. To mask out the windows isn't always easy. If I use a luminance mask, it only selects the bright half of the exterior. Select objects often, but not always works, and it takes a long time as you have to do the window panes one at a time.

I've already tried that. The results are not as desired. Manual editing is a quick way to correct everything several times.

The latest version of LrC 14.3 has added a new "Landscape" masking feature. That will analyze an image and pick out sections based on whether they sections of the image are sky, mountains, water, ground, artificial ground, etc. I wonder what it would do with an image like an interior with windows and natural foilage and sky outside. You might give that a try. If the Adobe engineers can make that work for landscapes, they should also be able to do automatic masking for architecture and real estate interiors. 

As an example, I create 5 images at different exposure levels. The HDR development of Lightroom fulfills its purpose, but not 100% well. This is the reason why you often have to go along the window elements afterwards. Regardless of this, Lightroom does not currently offer an option here, although a majority of real estate photography is processed with it and unfortunately you still have to put a lot of time and energy into the window elements. This is then added to the general editing of the overall image.

Are you using multiple exposures to create your HDR images? Masking windows should not be necessary if you have used the appropriate range of exposures in the images you have used for true HDR processing.