P:(Masking) Add auto update recompute to subject /sky masking after copy/paste

Hi Rikk, it's great to hear someone from Adobe directly addressing this feature request. The AI masking is great, which is makes it ironically baffling to some of us that batching them was not incorporated from the get-go, seeing as how Lightroom is a batch editing program. In effect, the AI masking saves us time doing complex masks. But it simultaneously adds unnecessary time. I would normally just use a radial gradiant to darken a background, which is easy and quick to batch apply. But since the AI masking is so good, using it looks better than a gradiant, but because we have to manually update the mask, it adds extra clicks, which is not only time-consuming, but mentally draining. So despite how good the AI masking is, the hassle of updating them makes me want to go back to the easier workflow of just using a gradiant. But it doesn't need to be this way. Most people who would be batching 100 images with a mask are going to be professionals who have faster running computers. I have a Macbook Pro from 2017 with 16 gb of ram. Not a pushover, but by no means cutting edge. It takes about 3 seconds to generate a mask. For 100 photos that's 5 minutes and only occasionally will be people be batching that many at a time. That's not a big deal. For myself, a wedding photographer, I might batch apply an AI mask to about 20-30 photos out of a 500 image job. Mostly just the portraits. Of course, use cases will very. But this is a batch editing program. We're used to long preview building, import and export times. A little time to batch masks is hardly a problem when we can do other things simultaneously with that time. We can't do other things while manually clicking update mask. As for how to actually implement it. I think the bare minimum would be to include a check box in the sync dialog box, as well as the preset dialog box. Next to the box can just say, "Auto-Update AI Mask." Maybe two check boxes are necessary, one for sky and one for subject. When I Option+Command+V, it should also include the mask in the copy and paste from the previous photo to the next. Maybe have an option in the edit drop-down menu that says, "Auto-update all masks in selection." I'm sure others will have more complex requests but these might just be the simplest and in line with how everything else works. As for as aborting options, like all processes in Lightroom, just have the processing progress bar at the top left that we can click the x on to cancel the operation. Thank you, again, for reaching out to the community. This feature can't come soon enough!

If the team decides to de-prioritize batch updates, how about prioritizing this missing function call from the SDK's LrDevelopController:

LrDevelopController.updateMaskTool (id): Update a Select Subject or Sky mask tool in the current mask. Must be called while the Develop module is active and masking tool is open.

This would allow plugins to quickly provide the missing functionality (and keep the MIDI controller people happy). It wouldn't be as nice as having it built-in, but it would cheap and quick for Adobe to implement, compared to full batch-update functionality, and it would satisfy the needs of commercial volume photographers.

Here's the idea...you can go vote it up! 🙂
https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/help-locate-images-in-my-catalog-with-mask-errors/idi-p/12548321#M13415

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/help-locate-images-in-my-catalog-with-mask-errors/idi-p/12548321#M13415

It would make a good separate request. 

Let's submit that as an idea, too!

Maybe it would help if there was even a "filter images with masks" option in Library mode to help us find images that may have mask errors? 

"Given that, on some systems,  AI selection can take many seconds to run, processing them to a large batch of images is a non-trivial use of computer resources and, by extension, time"

Applying Select Sky/Subject to a large batch could behave like applying Auto.  Applying it would be fast, just like applying a preset to a large batch. But the actual computation of the masks and Library previews occurs in background, at low priority.   If the user gives a command that requires the mask, e.g. going into Develop, exporting the photo, or Library Loupe, the mask is computed immediately, with the Detecting Subject/Sky overlay appearing:

I would love to be able to apply my subject-select masks to a bunch of images then have the ability to select/filter/view only the "images with errors" in the current folder I'm working on and be able to select and "recompute subject/sky selection" across all of those images for however long it takes. I'd really like it to be a filtered view, if possible, though, so I can just go over those specific images before moving on, when they're done recomputing. 

I definitely don't mind if it halts Lightroom to a standstill the way it currently does -- or the way you can't do anything in Lightroom when you're optmizing the catalog -- but the ability to cancel would be great. 

It would just be another part of the ingest process for me. Start ingest (make a cup of tea), do the basic global image correction changes, create the sky & subject masks with their global tweaks (whilst drinking said cup of tea), copy & paste the masks & global image correction changes to the rest of the import (go and make a second cup of tea whilst it does that).

I'd much rather be able to spend the time it takes to apply the mask recomputing time doing something else rather than having to spend that time manually recomputing the masks. 

If it can't find a sky/subject then those warnings coming up at the end of the process rather than interrupting  it (so it doesn't stall the import if i've gone off to make tea) would be nice. An abort option would be cool, but I wouldn't expect that to be any more than a cancel at its current state, same as you can do when exporting large volumes of images. If 100 images is going to take 20-30 mins then thats fine, I can be off doing something else productive whilst thats just churning through. I have to spend that half an hour doing it manually at the moment, if it still takes the same amount of time but doesn't need my input then i've gained half an hour.... 

Just my thoughts, its awesome that this is being discussed thoroughly and may actually be effected in an update at sometime!