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david5551
david5551
Participant
June 9, 2026
Question

problem with Lightroom classic masking with brush

  • June 9, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 25 views

I am using a Macbook Pro with Lightroom Classic (LRC) 15.5 (latest update). When I originally installed LRC on this Mac, the masking worked fine. However, for the past few weeks, when I go into develop mode and try to use a brush tool (either as a stand alone brush tool or as an add / subtract modification of another mask) i have a problem - when i initially press the mouse button, a circular overlay is displayed as expected. Keeping the mouse button pressed, I then try to extend the mask; the cursor moves but the overlay does not change until I release the mouse button when the overlay is then correctly displayed (reflecting the cursor movement that I made). The overlay function does work correctly on other Macs and Windows versions of LRC and indeed, did work on this particular Macbook.

I have tried installing an older version of LRC, clearing the LR preferences, installing LRC with a new catalogue and installing the latest Macos. Also tried disabling the GPU and checked the mask toggle as suggested in many posts the try to faultfind masking issues.

Any pointers appreciated as I do use the brush to adjust masks and not having it dynamically update the overlay makes it pretty unusable.

Thanks, Dave

    1 reply

    JohanElzenga
    Community Expert
    JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    June 9, 2026

    There is no Lightroom Classic 15.5 yet, but anyway. How large are your files and what are the specs of your MacBook Pro? I see something similar on my M1 Max MBP with the remove tool, when I zoom in to 100% on Sony A7R V images. There is a delay, which can be pretty long. Zooming in to 50% solves it. It doesn’t happen with smaller files, such as the images from a Sony A7R III or A7 IV.

    -- Johan W. Elzenga
    david5551
    david5551Author
    Participant
    June 9, 2026

    Hi Johan; sorry, LRC version is 15.3.1.

    Macbook is a 2.3Gb quad core Intel i7 with 16Gb ram (2021 build). Images used are Nikon Raw images (.NEF), typically between 20 and 30MB. LRC displays the same problem when I load a JPEG image about 10MB.

    Issue exists at any zoom level between 25 and 400%. Strangely enough, the masking works fine if i go to “detect objects” and you are prompted to select an area.

    I am tempted to set the Mac back to factory settings and reinstall everything but it would be good to understand where this is going wrong. 

    JohanElzenga
    Community Expert
    JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    June 9, 2026

    Your MBP is getting old. Apple is dropping support for it in MacOS27 and Adobe soon will too. It may still meet the minimum requirements right now, but it will probably just meet them. I don’t think there will be much you can do about this.

    -- Johan W. Elzenga
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