Exporting pictures with a mask

[henrywhenever]

Hi,

I use Lightroom 5.3 desktop on windows. When I have edited a picture and added a mask, I cannit work out how to exporte it with the mask. It seems to reset to the original and I cannit download the edited picture. What am I doing worng?

TX for helping

Henk

[Rob_Cullen]

A "Mask" is only a temporary visual indicator for where you make an editing adjustment (eg. Exposure).

A visible mask (the 'Overlay') does not alter or export with the image. Only the applied develop/edit adjustments (under the mask) get applied to the exported file.

Because a mask can be changed in color (Red > Green > Mono > White, etc) it can cause confusion thinking that an edit adjustment has been made.

[henrywhenever]

Hi Rob

Thank you for your message. Is this develop/edit a specific function and when applied, it can be saved as a new picture?

Thanks for replying in advance

Henry

[Rob_Cullen]

"Is this develop/edit a specific function and when applied, it can be saved as a new picture?"

"specific"  to the extent that all possible slider edits are applied with the Local Adjustment Tool for which the mask was created in the image.

For Example- With a 'Brush' mask applied- all the adjustments in this panel can be applied specifically to a Brush stroke on the image.

"saved as a new picture"? Sure, Export the edited photo.

[JP Hess]

Whatever is applied in the mask is an attribute that becomes part of the exported image. But the mask itself does not export. The attributes of the mask become part of the image but the mask is gone. The mask only exists in the master image.

[JohanElzenga]

This is a common misunderstanding. A mask is not an edit. It is a way to visualise where certain edits (that you make with the sliders) will be applied and where they won't be applied. On export only those edits will show in the exported image, not the mask itself. That means that if you create a mask but do not apply any edits, your exported image will be the original non-masked image.

As a practical example: suppose you use the AI Select Sky mask. If you turn on the mask overlay, then the sky will be red. That does not mean you have now made the sky red, it means that Lightroom is telling you "what is shown in red is what I consider to be the sky". If you now lower the exposure slider of the mask, then that area will be darkened. The exported image will show the darkened sky, not a dark red sky,

[MusicMaxEbb]

This makes no sense. Who wants to spend hours masking out an image on a white background only to learn that you can't export what you are looking at.  

[JohanElzenga]

This makes no sense. Who wants to spend hours masking out an image on a white background only to learn that you can't export what you are looking at.  

By MusicMaxEbb

Read my answer again, because you obviously did not understand it. You can export the image with a white background, but you must use a mask edit that makes the masked background white, not an overlay that just shows the mask as white while you working on it. Set the Exposure slider in the mask panel to +5. Or use Curves and drag the left corner of the curve all the way up.

[MusicMaxEbb]

The only problem with that method is that it doesn't actually make the entire exposure white, because there are still elements of black (like the tripod legs) in the photo can't be removed with 100% exposure alone, so I do still need to edit in photoshop.  I'm taking product photos which are sitting on a white fabric background.  I can mask out the background and turn up the exposure, sure, but it doesn't remove the black tripod legs that are in view.  I hope this makes sense.  I tried using the Remove tool, but it doesn't work very well.   Just wish there was a feature in lightroom under Export, a little check box, "export with mask overlay".  Why not? 

[Conrad_C]

Just wish there was a feature in lightroom under Export, a little check box, "export with mask overlay".  Why not? 

By MusicMaxEbb

You’re not alone in asking for this. A feature request currently exists for this in the Ideas section of this community. A user submitted it in 2021, and over 4 years it has picked up 34 votes. I think it’s a good idea. But…

The probable answer to “why not?” is usually (and this applies to all software companies) that there is a long list of feature requests and bugs to be fixed, usually hundreds or thousands of items long, so for the next release they pick the top x number of things to do. And probably, being able to expprt the mask hasn’t gotten close enough to the top.

For context, the top 10 feature requests in the Ideas section range from 214 to over 1,300 votes. So at 34 votes, this idea has a long way to go based on user votes alone. But votes aren’t the only criterion, an engineering team always decides by weighing lots of factors such as ease of development and debugging, size of opportunity or pressure from competitor's features, competing marketing goals, ability to sync across Lightroom platforms, etc. 

Edit: Sorry, I eventually realized this thread was posted for cloud Lightroom, so the advice below doesn’t apply. It applies only to Lightroom Classic, which does support plug-ins. But I’m leaving it in just in case some Lightroom Classic users read this.

In the meantime, workarounds have been devised by users. The Copy Settings plug-in for Lightroom Classic, by John Ellis, has a feature called Extract Masks that you probably want to look into. 

Use Extract Masks to extract a photo’s masks as grayscale images suitable for use as layer masks in Photoshop

[JohanElzenga]

The only problem with that method is that it doesn't actually make the entire exposure white, because there are still elements of black (like the tripod legs) in the photo can't be removed with 100% exposure alone, so I do still need to edit in photoshop.  

By MusicMaxEbb

Use the second option I mentioned. Use curves and drag the left side of the curve all the way up, so you have a horizontal curve all the way at the top. That will make all masked pixels pure white, even pure black pixels.

[Rob_Cullen]

Thanks @JohanElzenga  another great answer. (One that has not yet become intuitive to me.)

Curves are still a powerful tool.

I think you also suggested curves to make a blank white sky to blue (by reducing red & green curves)

[JohanElzenga]

Correct. It is amazing what you can do with curves. Initially, when Adobe had added it to masking, I thought it was rather superfluous because of all the other options we already had in masking. That's because I only thought of it in the traditional way (increase/decrease brightness or contrast). But then I realized it is actually one of the most powerful tools in masking, because you can manipulate the color channels directly.

[Conrad_C]

It sounds like it’s still not understood, so I’ll try…

The masks in the Adobe parametric raw processors (Lightroom, Lightroom Classic, Camera Raw) are not applied at the file level. They’re applied at the edit level. You create a mask for a specific edit, so the mask is for that edit…part of that edit is transparent, where the mask is. But the image still has an opaque background. There is no mask that creates transparent areas for the image itself.

This is actually very similar to how masks work in Photoshop and other non-raw/non-parametric image editors, where a mask is always attached to a layer. If you have a Photoshop document with an opaque background, it doesn’t matter how many masks you add to the layers above it, you are not going to get a transparent background when you export.

If you are trying to use a mask to cut out a subject and export an image with a transparent background, what you’re looking for is an alpha channel on export — to include a mask that applies to an entire image so that its background is transparent in other applications. 

Unfortunately, there is no support for alpha channels in Lightroom/Lightroom Classic/Camera Raw. Every image exported from that software has an opaque rectangular background.

If you need to export transparency behind the subject of an image:

1. Open it in Photoshop. 

2. Select and remove the background. 

3. In the Layers panel, confirm that the bottom layer is not named “Background” with a lock icon. (If it is, then it’s an opaque background.)

4. Export to a file format that supports alpha channel transparency, such as PNG.