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17

P: AI Masks Require updating and/or disappear

Explorer ,
May 29, 2025 May 29, 2025

Hello,

 

I recently had a call with Adobe support with no luck. I have found some threads on this but nothing presents a solution and it seems hard to find what the actual issue is.

 

If I edit a client gallery and use any healing brush tool or AI masking tool, the mask or healing brush/generative AI will get a red dot underneath after going back to the start of the gallery, my AI edits are gone....

 

I also noticed this happens 100% of the time when I quite and reopen lightroom, I can fix the mask, update ai settings but it just resets each time I open lightroom.

 

We tested a new catalogue, we tested a bunch of things with no luck. 

 

We really need a fix on this Adobe it is killing workflow, not sure what broke this setting. I can't revert to an old version because I have lots of photos (I do 1 catalogue per year) and can't go back weeks of client work.

 

Also this catalogue was started at the begining of 2025 so there is no version 13 of this catalogue to revert to and test.

 

PLEASE HELP ADOBE!

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correct answers 1 Pinned Reply

Adobe Employee , Aug 04, 2025 Aug 04, 2025

It has been reported that one cause of this issue is the use of the Imagen AI Plugin. 

 

@johnrellis has provided two workarounds in his post in this thread. 

 

  1. Deleting the <catalog>.LRCAT-data file, or
  2. Using Imagen AI's Bridge workflow, which downloads .xmp sidecars rather than writing into the catalog. 

 

You can find additional details in the thread. 

 

Update 8/12/2025

Greetings all, 

 

A new update for the Adobe Photography products has been released.  The August update contains an updat

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Community Beginner ,
Oct 18, 2024 Oct 18, 2024

Thanks for your suggestion. I will give this a try. Adobe customer support is absolutely terrible. Many replies said the 14.0.1 update fixed this. It did not. I had a deadline yesterday and this issue has complicated things so much, it's taken me twice as long to finish a gallery. I'm going to look into CaptureOne. Getting real tired of Adobe. I already dropped Premiere. What a nightmare that app is.

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Community Beginner ,
Oct 18, 2024 Oct 18, 2024

I gave this a try, and unfortunately the red dots persist. Some under the mask tool, others under the erase tool, or both.  I seem to be able to update individual photos. But when I try several in a batch, it gets about 5% of the way through then either hangs the program or says that AI updates could not be completed for (#) images. Ugh. What a mess this update has been. 

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Community Expert ,
Oct 18, 2024 Oct 18, 2024

I did a lot of testing on this issue, and I have found two things:

1: The red dots signal the need for an update, but if you do update a photo then you'll see that there almost always is no visual change. So for now, just ignore these dots.

2: If you already have updated many photos, then uncheck the 'Optimize catalog' checkbox when you make a catalog backup. Optimizing the catalog will make the dots return.

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga
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Community Beginner ,
Oct 18, 2024 Oct 18, 2024

Good advice! Additionally I found:

1. when using generative remove, if you see ghosting where the removal looks semi-transparent, updating your masks fixes that.  
2. For the issue above, where the AI masks never errs to update, I found that creating a new catalog, then importing your old catalog into it solves that issue! This seems to implement the 14.0.1 fix better than a catalog update. 

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Community Expert ,
Oct 19, 2024 Oct 19, 2024
quote

Good advice! Additionally I found:

1. when using generative remove, if you see ghosting where the removal looks semi-transparent, updating your masks fixes that.  


By @SCR76


That is nothing new and has no bearing on this bug. It also happens with the normal remove tools and has been present since the introduction of AI masks. The explanation is simple. Let's take removing a kite from the sky as an example. When Lightroom created the sky mask, it left a gap in that mask where the kite was, because the kite is not part of the sky. If you remove the kite, that gap remains and so so you will see no sky adjustments in that place. If your sky mask darkens the sky, you will see a faint white ghost in the shape of the gap. The solution is to update the mask. For this reason Adobe suggest to remove things first if possible, and create AI masks later.

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga
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Community Beginner ,
Oct 19, 2024 Oct 19, 2024

Well Johan, I disagree a bit with you, as I felt it may be helpful to the discussion in this thread, especially if you read the original post.  The second comment I made, directly relates to the bug. 
Regarding the need to manually update AI masks after modifying another AI mask such as remove, that should be automatic. Otherwise the process is not very artificially intelligent is it? As it's implemented here, there are entirely too many interactions required for a process that should be fairly hands off. 
But anyway, thanks for providing a new summary of the issue being discussed. 

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Community Beginner ,
Oct 19, 2024 Oct 19, 2024

Apologies, in advance. I didn't mean for that to sound snarky. 🙂

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Community Expert ,
Oct 19, 2024 Oct 19, 2024

You can argue that the AI mask update should be automatic after you use any of the remove tools, and I tend to agree with that, but it sure has nothing to do with the bug that is discussed in this thread. Like I said, this has been like that from the moment the first AI masking was introduced in Lightroom. And no, the original post is not referring to that. It talks about "Some Remove settings need to be updated", so that is definitely something else. That refers to the new AI remove, not AI masks.

 

Anyway, as this is off topic I am not going to further discuss this with you. 

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga
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Community Beginner ,
Oct 19, 2024 Oct 19, 2024

" I am not going to further discuss this with you."

Thanks! No need to shut down a discussion like that Johan, especially when you don't have a solution. 
Anyway, it seems that creating a brand new catalog in the latest LrC version, then importing everything from your original catalog fixes the red dots and the "Some Remove settings need to be updated" bug the OP is asking about. I found this thread looking for a solution to the same thing and it worked for me, and I really hope it works for someone else, too!

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New Here ,
Nov 12, 2024 Nov 12, 2024

not working for me....

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New Here ,
Nov 10, 2024 Nov 10, 2024

I created a new catalog and it is empty. how do you do this and get all the original edits?

 

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Community Expert ,
Nov 10, 2024 Nov 10, 2024

Start a new thread with your issue.

 

Add information about why you created a new catalogue, and have you imported images into it? If it was really necessary to create a new catalogue, have you not used File > Import from Another Catalog to add images and bring in the edits? But start your own thread.

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New Here ,
Nov 12, 2024 Nov 12, 2024

Im having the same issue and tried what was said to be the solution and it didnt work. 

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Community Beginner ,
Nov 12, 2024 Nov 12, 2024

Go to file -> import from another catalog. Then select your old catalog. That will import everything into the new one. 

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New Here ,
Nov 13, 2024 Nov 13, 2024

I was able to import it to the new catalog, but the ai masks all still need updated and it doent stick once they are.

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New Here ,
May 23, 2025 May 23, 2025
Hallo ihr Lieben,
ich habe aktuell das Problem, dass LRc meine Bearbeitungen, retusche und Masken nicht mehr nimmt!
Seit heute verlangt Lightroom immer auf den Bildern wo ich mit Masken gearbeitet habe "Einige KI Masken müssen aktualisiert werden". Aktualisieren funktioniert leider nicht. Sobald ich ein Foto aktualisiere ist es beim letzten wieder weg. Man kann weder alle bearbeiten noch einzeln, es verschwindet immer und immer wieder.
Auch die Shortcuts Comand Option + U funktioniert nicht!
Egal ob ich es in der Bibliothek mache oder im Bearbeitungsreiter selbst!
Updates, komplett neu geladen, funktioniert nicht.
gelöscht neu Installiert - funktioniert nicht.
Hatte jemand das selbe Problem und kann mir helfen!?
DANKE
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LEGEND ,
May 23, 2025 May 23, 2025
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Community Beginner ,
Oct 21, 2024 Oct 21, 2024

I was having this issue and getting super frustrated, but selecting all the images in the catalog, going to file and selecting optimize catalog fixed it!

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Community Beginner ,
Oct 21, 2024 Oct 21, 2024

I thought this fixed it but it didnt, i ended uo having to close the old catalog and start over 

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Community Beginner ,
Oct 21, 2024 Oct 21, 2024

Ugh! I feel your pain, that didnt work for me either. Try putting your current catalog in a safe place, create an all new catalog, then import your old one into the new one using  menu item FILE -> "Import From Another Catalog". All your masks and edits will still be there, but you'll just have to re generate previews. If it works, nothing else to do. If not, you still have your old catalog safely tucked away, and you can just put it back. Hope you can get it working again!

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Community Beginner ,
Nov 07, 2024 Nov 07, 2024

Every single time I open LRC to work on my clients wedding photos!!!!!  It is EXHAUSTING!!  I find this  inexcusable on ADOBE's part.  We pay $60/m for this?????  Get the bugs out or i'll be canceling and owning my own software editor from another company!

When does it happen?  every instance of opening LRC from a closed state.

What do i experience? all masks, Remove, heal, clone,blur, Denoise, crop edits that I make from the previous session are needing to be updated.... not just a one button update, but I have to click on every mask created find the subject/object/preset used and update it.  Also if I update the masks first, then go to the Blur and update that, next I have to RE-update the masks, crop, remove/heal/clone, etc... all over again!  

What needs to be fixed?  If I need to update, it needs to analyse and know the sequence of priority for a one button push update on all!   I really should not have to do the update if it would just save to the catalouge properly.  I have LRC set to ask me to save the cat file every time prior to exit.  

 

This bug is a big time waster and is costing me time and money!  Fix it Adobe! or I'm gone!

 

Lightroom Classic version: 14.0.1 [ 202410161356-30922cfc ]
License: Creative Cloud
Language setting: en
Operating system: Windows 11 - Home Premium Edition
Version: 11.0.22631
Application architecture: x64
System architecture: x64
Logical processor count: 20
Processor speed: 2.1GHz
SqLite Version: 3.36.0
CPU Utilisation: 3.0%
Power Source: Plugged In
Built-in memory: 65251.0 MB
Dedicated GPU memory used by Lightroom: 14529.3MB / 12115.0MB (119%)
Real memory available to Lightroom: 65251.0 MB
Real memory used by Lightroom: 18163.0 MB (27.8%)
Virtual memory used by Lightroom: 34862.4 MB
GDI objects count: 1167
USER objects count: 4702
Process handles count: 4958
Memory cache size: 779.4MB
Internal Camera Raw version: 17.0 [ 2043 ]
Maximum thread count used by Camera Raw: 5
Camera Raw SIMD optimization: SSE2,AVX,AVX2
Camera Raw virtual memory: 4765MB / 32625MB (14%)
Camera Raw real memory: -133994MB / 65251MB (-205%)
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Community Beginner ,
Nov 28, 2024 Nov 28, 2024

This is still an issue. Ridiculous that one of the top photo editing apps is doing this for months. Can't wait for another company to take Adobe's place. Maybe it's time to switch to Capture One...

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New Here ,
Dec 17, 2024 Dec 17, 2024

Just commenting to say I've been dealing with the same thing the last couple months and my workflow has slowed down to 25% of the speed when I was working on Capture One. Lightroom is so susceptible to file corruption and rendering for masks is painfully slow. This is not sustainable for business. I can't believe Adobe makes as much money as it does yet their software is so far behind. 

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Community Expert ,
Dec 17, 2024 Dec 17, 2024

This issue should be solved with the Lightroom Classic 14.1 update. You will have to update one more time, but then this should 'stick'. If you are referring to other issues, then please do that in a separate thread.

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga
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Engaged ,
Mar 18, 2025 Mar 18, 2025

I started getting the same thing in Photoshop... It just started today when I tried to use adaptive profiles in the Camera Raw Filter. I was wondering, "What the [heck]".

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