P: AI "Select Window mask" option in Lightroom Classic (for real estate)

[NativeUndergr35581440km87]

Could Adobe Lightroom Classic incorporate a feature that automates window masking in real estate photo editing, facilitating 'window pulls' without the need for manual brushing?

Love the products!

greets!

[Cagno Di Media Production]

Hello dear team

as a photographer for real estate photography, I photograph the premises in different light intensities. I always have to manually mark the window or windows afterwards, as in some tutorials on YouTube, so that I can adjust them manually even better.

Isn't there a way to add one for windows, as with sky detection or background detection?

With your automatic tools such as the object recognizer, it often marks the wall or the middle struts of the window.

It would make the work much easier.

Best regards

Pablo

[johnrellis]

Moderators, @Rikk Flohr: Photography, please merge with this existing idea:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-ai-quot-select-window-mask-quot-option-in-l...

[taylor_6485]

For my architectural photos, and even some portraits, I am constantly trying to bring back in window exposures without changing the entire image.. I think it's great LR has added an easy sky mask, but a window mask similar to the sky mask, would be life changing! I know there are tons of tricks for this, and HDR, but I don't always want to do this or switch over to photoshop. LMK if you agree. XO

[KR Seals]

In architectural and real estate photography, I find that doing a series of images (Bracketing -2, 0 and +2 exposure) and processing those as HDR in Lightroom Classic works very well. In extreme condidions it might require -3 and +3 on the brackets. Have you tried that?

[oliver_1611]

The automatic "Select Object" tool is currently quite unreliable. It often fails to accurately detect simple, distinct objects — especially windows, which are a key area for HDR editing. Manually brushing around windows for exposure adjustments is very time-consuming, especially in architectural or interior photography. It would be extremely helpful to have a dedicated tool or AI model trained specifically to detect and mask windows, or at least a better edge-detection assist when doing manual selections.

[KR Seals]

Are you using multiple exposures to create your HDR images? Masking windows should not be necessary if you have used the appropriate range of exposures in the images you have used for true HDR processing.

[Cagno Di Media Production]

As an example, I create 5 images at different exposure levels. The HDR development of Lightroom fulfills its purpose, but not 100% well. This is the reason why you often have to go along the window elements afterwards. Regardless of this, Lightroom does not currently offer an option here, although a majority of real estate photography is processed with it and unfortunately you still have to put a lot of time and energy into the window elements. This is then added to the general editing of the overall image.

[KR Seals]

The latest version of LrC 14.3 has added a new "Landscape" masking feature. That will analyze an image and pick out sections based on whether they sections of the image are sky, mountains, water, ground, artificial ground, etc. I wonder what it would do with an image like an interior with windows and natural foilage and sky outside. You might give that a try. If the Adobe engineers can make that work for landscapes, they should also be able to do automatic masking for architecture and real estate interiors. 

[Cagno Di Media Production]

I've already tried that. The results are not as desired. Manual editing is a quick way to correct everything several times.

[Schuster_Photography]

I'm an architectural and real estate photographer. My suggestion, add an option similar to the "landscape" option in masks that can help with interiors.

There's various ways you could do this. The simplest is teach an AI to recognize windows and select only the outside.

You could go much further for interiors and teach an AI the things interiors photographers usually change and then automatically provide soft masks that can pull or push exposure on different light and dark areas. I'm just brainstorming here 🙂 

This would save me significant time as my current technique when working with ambient light and projects that have lower budgets is to expose for the exterior highlights, use denoise (if needed) and mask out the windows and use highlights / exposure to keep the views. To mask out the windows isn't always easy. If I use a luminance mask, it only selects the bright half of the exterior. Select objects often, but not always works, and it takes a long time as you have to do the window panes one at a time.

[Joshua24887842n5t7]

I recently took some real estate photos as an ameture, and I found that for indoor shots, masking bright windows is both necessary and a significant pain point:  the best strategy that I foud was to use the brush to identify the area, then intersect with a luminance mask, then refine more with the brush as needed.  This is still tedius (despite the luminance help).  Object detection does not handle this well.  I wish that I could just press a button and it could identify all of the outdoor areas.

[Schuster_Photography]

Some mention using HDR, but HDR doesn't handle the tones in a smart way. If you could combine HDR's huge dynamic rannge with the ability to manually adjust the windows as well as blown out lights, you could produce MUCH higher quality images fast. 

I really wish they would have different focus groups for photography genre and then design modes to match each. Us pros have probably been the most loyal customers. We need as much efficiency as possible.