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Merlin3
Inspiring
January 18, 2025
Question

where is levels or contrast for adjusting a mask in raw converter ?

  • January 18, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 614 views

Hi, Pshop 26.2 and rawcon 17.1.1

I have a sky, basically white, then the far hills are cyan, yuk, then nearer hills are darker.

If I was in Pshop and having taken the image, pasted it into channels, adjusted contrast then levels to maximise the white/black areas, I can then use that as a selection.

In raw mode I made a mask using colour range, turned on white on black view. then not finding such controls as I would use, had to paint out most of the grey areas with a brush which put down black, but the more subtle areas need contrast and levels to black/white them . see attached image.

 

I see no means of doing that. There is no levels or contrast. I drag the black slider and white on black view of mask vanishes.

 

The masking tools seem VERY PRIMITIVE , cannot do correct masking with them.  Used select subject but it selected buildings I had not even told it to, surely it should ask me to click on the subject.

 

Where is magic wand to select the masked area, could do a mask in seconds but instead have to mess about with brushes of varying diameters and feathers, and when doing so the zoom tool , much needed when masking with brushes, is disabled !   Does my head in ! Not impressed by the tools at all in raw17.

They need designing instead by the photoshop team !

 

Merlin3

 

 

2 replies

Conrad_C
Community Expert
Conrad_CCommunity Expert
Community Expert
January 29, 2025

I agree that Camera Raw/Lightroom lacks some Photoshop masking features such as edge and tone refinement. However, Camera Raw/Lightroom masks are powerful in their own way, if used properly. There are things Camera Raw/Lightroom masks can do which are difficult or impossible in Photoshop (mostly about the easily editable gradient and range masks, plus the Add/Subtract/Intersect operations); some of those masking features actually make Photoshop masks look outdated and primitive in some ways.

 

The real problem is that Adobe has not yet given a full set of modern masking tools to either Photoshop or Camera Raw/Lightroom…both offer different powerful masking features, but they’re not all available in the same single set of tools.

 

If you use the Camera Raw/Lightroom masking features properly, at least in my experience there is relatively little need to use the Brush mask. In fact, I try to avoid using the Brush mask as much as possible, because if a mask can be built purely parametrically (no manual brushing), it can be pasted onto other similar images and the mask will automatically adapt to where the content is in the other images. 

 

Below was my solution, using your screen shot.

 

1. Do a quick Sky mask to take care of all of that. 

 

 

2. Add a Color Range mask. I did not click the Color Range sampler, I dragged it to include more colors in the sample for a more solid selection of the cyan area. However, those colors had too much in common with the foreground trees, so…

 

 

3. I did a quick Subtract by dragging an Object Selection tool rectangle around the foreground. This is pretty good, but some parts of the cyan area are still not masked, so…

 

 

4. I returned to the Color Range mask and adjusted its Refine option. 

 

 

Now there are only a few little bits left that can easily be picked up by a brush mask.

 

Again I agree that maybe this would be easier with some of the features in Photoshop. But my point is, if you keep an open mind as to how these masking tools work, you won’t get trapped in a Photoshop-only mindset and will pick up some different, and sometimes better, ways to think about masks.

M
Merlin3Author
Inspiring
February 2, 2025

Hi,

I have a wall against a bright white sky, I select mask and sky, i get sky but a por match around the trees, I select luminance subtract and click the sky area by the trees and it improves, however all the mortar as well as other bits is black on a white area, I reach for the contrast slider to perhaps sort these out, but instead it attacks the contrast of the picture itself.

where do we get at the controls you show so that they work on the mask. I am in white on black mode to see the mask.

as soon as I drag the exposure or the contrast slidet the white on black vanishes and it alters the photo itself.

Cheers

Merlin3.

Conrad_C
Community Expert
Conrad_CCommunity Expert
Community Expert
February 5, 2025

Again, the masks in the raw processors (Camera Raw and Lightroom) are designed differently than Photoshop masks. Camera Raw and Lightroom do not currently offer any direct tonal control over the mask itself, such as Levels, Curves… Instead, in the raw processors, all the control you have is for how the mask is created. That control is either in the Masks panel itself, or in the darker (lower) mask refinement controls in the Edit panel stack.

 

When the Edit panel stack is shown for a selected mask, the mask editing controls are in the darker area, and the controls that affect the image through the mask are in the lighter area below that. So…if you adjust Contrast, Curves, etc. in the lighter area, you are always applying the edit to the image through the mask — you are not editing the mask itself. So you can’t use Contrast, Curves, etc. to edit a mask, at least for now.

 

In the upper darker area of the Edit panel stack, the Refine controls are available only for range masks, because they refine the range that you specify. Other mask types may have other controls there that are specific to the mask type; for example, that’s where the Radial Gradient mask offers its Feather option. 

 

 

What I’ve found in the Adobe raw processors is that when viewing the mask overlay in a high contrast view such as Black On White, mask edges created by the AI masks (sky, object, people) often aren’t as precise as we might like and look a little disappointing. But there are a lot of times when that imprecision doesn’t always affect the final result in a noticeable way and ends up being OK. What my earlier example showed is that sometimes, using Add/Subtract/Intersect with a range mask can help clean up that mask, if the image content can be range-masked in just the right way.

 

But that doesn’t always work. There are times when the best mask you can make with Camera Raw/Lightroom still isn’t acceptable. If you have such an image, where you must have pixel-level or tonal-level control over a mask to really do it right, this is when you send the image over to Photoshop and finish it off the way you’re used to.

 

Again, although the Camera Raw/Lightroom nondestructive and parametric masks have many advantages over the Photoshop masking model, they’re still not ideal. I’d like to see direct tonal refinement of Camera Raw/Lightroom masks. But this is how it works for now.

Chuck Uebele
Community Expert
Chuck UebeleCommunity Expert
Community Expert
January 19, 2025

Moved to the Camera Raw forum, from the Photoshop forum.

 

A
Community Manager
AlekeCommunity Manager
Community Manager
January 29, 2025

Hi @Merlin3!

I might not have understood your question correctly. You should be able to edit the contrast or the curves in your mask selection in Camera Raw using the panel on the right. If I misunderstood something, please let me know.



Thank you for the feedback on the masking tools. I'd recommend heading over to the Ideas board to see if there's already a thread for your suggestion. You can upvote existing threads or start a new one if your idea isn't listed. The team reviews these suggestions and prioritizes feature releases based on the number of upvotes. Here's the link:  https://adobe.ly/40SgnEB


Thank you!
Alek

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