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patrickh27764550
Inspiring
September 26, 2025
Question

Trouble masking an object in B&W Photo - Lightroom Classic

  • September 26, 2025
  • 1 reply
  • 171 views

I'm having trouble masking a dark island from a distance in a near grayscale picture.  

 

I have a video that came out terrible becasue of the clouds and lighting situation.  It's out the window of a plane taking off at a remote island.  After converting the video to PNGs and using the various landscape filters in ACR and Lightroom Classic, I was able to add color and turn them into something completely attractive.

 

For the final minute or two of the video, the plane is so far away from the island that ACR can't recognize the island as vegitation or mountains, however the island is much darker than the water and sky.  I tried using the Color Range and Luminance Range masks to isolate the island, however it keeps selecting more of the picture than I want.

 

Can someone recommend to me the best way to mask just the island?

 

Note - I'm using the "sync" feature to apply the masks across several thousand pictures.  Keep in mind the plane is moving so the position of the island moves slightly in each frame.  While the AI "Mountains, Vegitation, Water" masks recalculate and re-generate across eash frame, the "Object" mask is not doing as good of a job, since there are objects close to the edge of the island (a marina) that I want to leave in the water mask, but slowly move their way into the object mask as the marina moves, as the plane moves.

 

See attached sample original and screenshots of the Luminance and Color masks. 

 

Conclusion:  If I can mask out the island without using the object tool, I think I'd be OK.  I just can't figure out how to do that.

1 reply

Conrad_C
Community Expert
Community Expert
September 26, 2025

If this is a sequence of frames, using Camera Raw or Lightroom might work, but there might be other solutions. 

 

If your Creative Cloud plan gives you access to Adobe After Effects, you might also want to consider using After Effects features such the Roto Brush and Mask Tracker to do this. Those features are built to create a mask that can follow a subject over time. More info in the link below. 

https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/rigid-mask-tracking.html

 

You should check out both videos at the bottom of that linked page. I think they might be mislabeled, though. The second one says it’s about the Mask Tracker, but it’s really about the Roto Brush.

 

It’s called the Roto Brush because it’s about rotoscoping, because After Effects is frequently used for animating masks for big-budget movies and TV ads.

patrickh27764550
Inspiring
September 26, 2025

At a first glance the roto looks promising.  Give me a few days to get everything else preped and I'll give it a whirl and report back.

patrickh27764550
Inspiring
September 29, 2025

Update - while it's taking some learning, the Roto is the way to go.  Thanks for the tip.