Question

P: People mask detection fails. No people found.

Forum|Forum|9 months ago
December 26, 2025
27 replies
1998 views

With recent update of Lightroom release 15.1 and camera raw 18.1 on Windows 11, the software cannot detect people in some photos for masking even though they are very obvious in the photos (see the example attached). I haven't seen such an issue before recent update. Can anybody provide some insights about it? What could be wrong and how to fix this issue? Thanks in advance.

[moved from bugs to discussions according to the community rules - Mod.]

johnrellis

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@DiLoi On my Intel iMac (3.6 GHz 10-Core Intel Core i9, AMD Radeon Pro 5500 XT 8 GB) the Find People masking feature stopped working several months ago after an update. Now with 15.5.1 installed it still can’t find people, not even in studio portraits. Any word on when they - or if - Adobe will fix that?

Apple and AMD released a buggy graphics driver in Mac OS 26.3, and many people with Intel Macs have reported similar symptoms:
https://community.adobe.com/questions-675/p-people-masking-fails-on-mac-intel-1551766/index3.html

The only known workaround is to roll back to Mac OS 26.2, which is tedious:
https://community.adobe.com/questions-675/p-people-masking-fails-on-mac-intel-1551766?postid=7687932#post7687932

Apple has dropped support for Intel Macs in Mac OS 27 (already released), and AMD hasn’t sold graphics chips to Apple for six years, so I think it’s quite unlikely that Apple and AMD will release another version of Mac OS 26 containing fixed graphics drivers for the numerous AMD chips sold with Intel Macs.

While it’s possible Adobe may investigate a workaround for the buggy graphics drivers, I’m skeptical they will do so, given that the last model year for Intel Macs was 2020.

Since this thread contains reports from users on Intel Macs, Apple Silicon Macs, and Windows, I suggest that you post your feedback and opinion in the thread dedicated to Intel Macs:

https://community.adobe.com/questions-675/p-people-masking-fails-on-mac-intel-1551766/index3.html

D

DiLoi

Participating Frequently

On my Intel iMac (3.6 GHz 10-Core Intel Core i9, AMD Radeon Pro 5500 XT 8 GB) the Find People masking feature stopped working several months ago after an update. Now with 15.5.1 installed it still can’t find people, not even in studio portraits. Any word on when they - or if - Adobe will fix that?

G

gifted_body8593

Participant

I dont think so. Only if everyone boycott Adobe then they will.

G

gifted_body8593

Participant

I have the same issue with my IMac Tahoe 26.x OS. I talked to Adobe support people and they keep saying next month and next month will have the fix and now 2 years. I don’t know why they lie to their customers or they want us to stop using Adobe products?

E

Elenor98A5

Participant

I notice that this issue has been here for 7 months with no apparent solution. I have checked my whole setup. I have the most recent drivers for my GPU, I’ve tried resetting my preferences, I’ve got the most recent version of Lightroom (15.5) and yet I am having the same problem. Has a solution been found or are we waiting for Adobe to remember who pays them again?

johnrellis

Legend

@Elenor98A5, please do the LR menu command Help > System Info, click the Copy button in the upper right corner, and paste into your reply here, so we can see exactly which versions of hardware and software LR thinks you're running and important LR options that are set.

Also, please attach here the original photo (not a screenshot) for which People masking is failing. We can see if the problem occurs on other installations or is specific to yours.

nongj70857852Author

@Anshul_Saini Hi, any update on this issue? Thanks

Anshul_Saini

Community Manager

Thanks for checking back in, @nongj70857852.

I wanted to let you know that this issue has now been transferred from the Lightroom team to the Camera Raw team. The team is actively investigating the samples you have shared.

The bug is currently under investigation, and there’s nothing further needed from you right now. As soon as I have a concrete update or guidance from the Camera Raw team, I’ll post it here.

Thanks again for your patience and for providing the images; they’ve been essential in moving this forward.

Best regards,
Anshul Saini

Anshul_Saini

Community Manager

Updating status.

Anshul_Saini

Community Manager

Hi @nongj70857852,

Thanks for sharing the full-resolution image and for patiently working through this.

I’ve tested the same image on my end as well, and I’m seeing the same behavior. People are not detected in this photo. Since this issue reproduces on a different system and OS, it suggests that the AI model is not recognizing people in this specific image, rather than an issue with your hardware, GPU driver, or local setup.

Here’s what we’ll do next:

• I’m sharing this example with the product team so they can investigate why People detection fails on this image

• This appears to be image-specific behavior rather than a system or version-specific regression

If you have a few more original, full-resolution examples where People masking fails in a similar way, please feel free to attach them. That will help the team with their investigation.

Thanks again for flagging this and for your patience while we investigate.

Best regards,

Anshul Saini

nongj70857852Author

Please see the additional two photos.

9688: the masks of the left two people are completely missing

9717: individual mask for the most right person is missing, but the mask of all people covers the most right person.

Thank you for investigating.

Sameer K

Community Manager

Thanks for the update. We've shared the samples with the product team to investigate further.

Best,

Sameer K
(Type '@' and type my name to mention me when you reply)

johnrellis

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@nongj70857852, using your screenshot, my LR 15.1 / Mac OS doesn't find any People masks either:

Please attach here a full-resolution JPEG exported from the original photos (with no edits), so we can verify that the problem occurs on other LR installations.

If it does, that indicates a failure of the AI model behind People masking to correctly recognize the people in this photo.

nongj70857852Author

Please see the image attached.

GoldingD

Legend

Dedicated GPU memory used by Lightroom: 1434.4MB / 128.0MB (1120%)

That looks very odd.

johnrellis

Legend

Dedicated GPU memory used by Lightroom: 1434.4MB / 128.0MB (1120%)

"That looks very odd"

That's what LR reports for integrated GPUs that have a very small amount of dedicated memory (e.g. 128 MB in this case) but access much larger amounts of shared memory. I don't think Adobe has ever clarified the system requirements for such GPUs -- the current minimum requirements say "2 GB of GPU memory" without distinguishing between dedicated and shared memory. There are lots of reports here of people with newer Intel integrated GPUs successfully using AI masking and other AI commands.

nongj70857852Author

Not all masking of people failed. On my computer, some failed and some succeeded. I couldn't figure out why. My Arc GPU should be pretty new. It was released in Sep 2024. I didn't encountered such problem before upgrading to 15.1 recently, but I don't recall which version was used when I did people masking last time.

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

Problems like this are almost always caused by outdated GPU drivers. Check the website of your GPU manufacturer for driver updates. If you use a Ndvia GPU, then make sure you install the Studio drivers, not the Game Ready drivers.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

nongj70857852Author

Thanks for response. I use Intel ARC GPU in a HP laptop. I updated to the lastest vertion 32.0.101.8331. It didn't help. I tried on and off of using graphics processor. It didn't help either. Anything else to check?

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