About two months ago I had a peculiar and extremely irritating problem with masking in Lightroom Classic. It started without warning, and it lasted for weeks - and then it disappeared as suddenly as it had started, without my ever finding out what was going on. There followed several weeks when everything behaved as it should...and now it's back! I would love to know (a) whether anyone else has experienced the following, (b) what's going on, (c) HOW DO I FIX IT?!!!
One more thing: I tried uninstalling and reinstalling Lightroom the first time the problem. That didn't work.
The problem affects all masks. That is, whenever I create any mask: it can be an object; a brush; any kind of gradient; a person (including all elements, i.e. facial skin, body skin, hair, teeth, etc.).
Here's what happens: I click to open one of the above masks. The mask opens, however a string of changes have been made which seem to relate to edits I have made on photographs in earlier editing sessions: whites in the basic panel are lowered; the saturation has been turned to zero, so whatever is masked is black and white; in the tone curve, changes have been made in the red, green and blue channels. In other words, I am not starting with a 'clean slate', with everything reset to zero or neutral values, as should be the case. And, to be clear, I can turn off and restart Lightroom, I can even turn off the computer and re-boot, the same edits will still be 'pre-applied' to all masks.
To use a mask, therefore, I first have to hit reset in the Basic panel, and I have reset the channels in the tone curve. It's distracting, annoying and it interrupts editing, especially when I am applying several masks to a single photo.
Once I've put everything right, things work as normal, but as I say, I don't for the life of me know how this started.
Perhaps the problem will fix itself again, as happened a month ago, but I would really love to know what's going on.
Can anyone shed any light?
Cheers, and thanks!
1 Correct answer
4
Replies
AdChoices