Lightroom Classic v11 — Local Adjustment Tools, Masking, Premium Presets, Metadata Updates and More!

I’m excited to announce several new features and enhancements to Lightroom Classic v11 including:  re-envisioned local adjustment tools, the new Masking panel, Premium Presets, updates to the Metadata panel and more!

Local Adjustment Tool Updates and Masking Panel — in this video (Lightroom Classic v11 – The New Masking Tools), you’ll discover how easy it is to make selective adjustments to your photographs using Lightroom Classic’s reimagined local adjustments tools including the all new Masking panel, Select Subject, Select Sky, Radial and Linear Gradients, Brush, and Range Masking tools.

Below are several additional tips for using the new Masks panel and adjustment tools that I didn’t have time to include in the video:

• To see all of the shortcuts associated with masking click the question mark icon at the top right of the Masks panel.

• With the Radial Gradient tool selected, tapping the ‘ (apostrophe) key toggles the Invert feature. When inverted, the adjustment affects the area outside of the ellipse (instead of the inside). The same shortcut applies to the Linear Gradient (the adjustment will affect the opposite side of the gradient). Note: the brush has been removed from the Linear and Radial gradients – instead use the tools in Add /Subtract/Intersect mode to combine mask components.

• When using the Brush tool, tap “A” to toggle the Auto Mask option. Hold Option (Mac) | Alt (Win) to toggle between the Brush and the Eraser.

• Tap “N” to create a new mask of the same type as the currently selected component.

• Option + O (Mac ) | Alt + O (Win) cycles through the different mask overlays (Color, Color Overlay on B&W, Image on B&W etc.). Shift + O cycles through the mask colors (red, green, white, black).

• When Show Edit Pins is set to Selected, hold the “S” key to temporarily display the pins for unselected masks. Click on a Mask’s pin in the image area to quickly select another mask (without having to use the Masks panel).

• Use the Option + arrow keys (Mac) | Alt + arrow keys (Win) to navigate the mask panel. These shortcuts take a bit of getting used to because they depend on whether or not a mask has more than one component (tool) that makes up the mask:

– If you have a mask with only one component (tool), the component is automatically selected as you navigate through the masks. This means that in order to navigate to another mask (above or below the currently selected mask) you need to first use the Option/Alt + left arrow key to deselect the component, then use the Option/Alt + up/down arrow to move to the next mask.

– If a mask has more than one component, then none of the components are selected as you move from one mask to another using the Option/Alt + up/down arrow keys. As a result, with a multi-component mask selected, use Option/Alt + right arrow to select a component, then use the Option/Alt + up/down arrow to move from one component to another within a mask. Use Option/Alt + left arrow to deselect all components for a mask (so that you can use Option/Alt + up/down arrow to move to the next mask).

• Hold Option Mac) | Alt (Win) to toggle the Add and Subtract buttons in the masks panel to Intersect (or, use the More Options icon (…) to select the Intersect command). Note: Intersect automatically creates a mask component in Subtract + Invert mode. For example, use a brush to get a rough selection around part of the scene, then use Intersect to create a color range mask that further limits the brush mask to just the color(s) selected by the range mask.

• When applying a Color Range mask, Option -drag (Mac) | Alt -drag (Win) the Refine slider (in the Panel track) to preview the targeted range as a greyscale mask in the image area.

• Select the Luminance Range mask option to create a selection based on the brightness values in an image. In the example below, I’ve added a Linear Gradient to darken the sky, but it also darkens the tops of the trees.

To remove the trees from the mask, choose Subtract, then select Luminance Range.

To select the desired range of values to adjust:

– Use the eyedropper tool to select a specific value.

– Use the eyedropper tool to drag-select a range of values.

– Use the Luminance Range interface to select the area to be masked.

The area within the rectangle will be fully adjusted. To avoid abrupt transitions between the areas that are adjusted and those that are not, drag the vertical line (the outer marker) to adjust the smoothness of the fall-off (how quickly the selection transitions from the selected tonal range to the unselected range).

Option -drag (Mac) | Alt -drag (Win) in the Luminance range options to see the Luminance map in the image area (or enable Show Luminance Map).

Note: Range Masks created using older versions of Lightroom Classic will display a warning message in the Panel track. These masks must be updated to the latest version by clicking on Update button before making additional edits to the Range Mask.

• Depth Range masks select ares in an image based on their distance from the camera and are available for photos that have embedded depth map data. As of now, this is limited to HEIC files captured on Apple iPhone using the Portrait mode in the built-in iOS camera app. Note: if there is no available depth info for an image, the Depth Range option is disabled.

To select the desired depth range to adjust:

– Use the eyedropper tool to sample a single area.

– Click-drag with the eyedropper to sample a depth range

– Use the Depth Range interface to select the area to be masked. The area within the rectangle will be adjusted. To avoid abrupt transitions between the areas that are adjusted and those that are not, drag the vertical line to adjust the fade range.

In this example, because the depth range  that was selected was farthest from the camera, the adjustment (decreased saturation) was applied to the background leaves but not the foreground flower.

Note: Adjustments that included Depth Range Masks created using older versions of Lightroom Classic will display a warning message in the Panel track. These masks must be updated to latest version by clicking on Update button before making additional edits to the Depth Range Mask.

• When you copy and paste a mask to a different image, if the destination image has any masks, you will have the option to “Merge” the masks (add the pasted masks to the existing masks) or “Replace” the masks (deleting any existing masks).

– Applying “Previous” Settings will always replace the masks in the destination image.

– Auto-Sync and Presets will always merge masks.

• You can copy and paste Select Subject and Select Sky masks, but the masks will need to be recomputed in the new image. Click the Update button in the panel track to update the mask.

• Masks can be saved in presets. Select Subject and Select Sky will need to be recomputed  on the new image (click the Update button in the panel track).

This blog post by Josh Bury Masking Reimagined  has even more information about the new masking features direct from the Adobe Camera Raw team!

Premium Presets — Lightroom Classic has added several new Premium Presets including Auto + Retro, Black & White, Cinematic II, Food, Landscape, Lifestyle, Travel II, and Urban Architecture. Presets are an excellent starting point and are a great way to try out different “looks” on your images.

If you’re interested in spending some time studying what changes the Premium Presets make to a color chart (as well as to your images), I’ve created two “template” files in Photoshop that you can download. One includes the Portrait and Black & White presets and the other includes all of the remaining Premium Presets. Note: I split them because the file size of the document was getting really large.

Because I duplicated a Smart Object to create all of the instances of the color chart and applied the presets using Camera Raw as a filter, you can easily replace the contents of the Smart Object with your own image. Here are the links to download each of the templates:

01Portrait_BWDistribute.psd  and 02SpecialEffectsDistribute.psd

And here are the instructions for replacing the contents of the Smart Object with your own image:

• Open the template file in Photoshop and, in the Layers panel, target (click on) the “Original” layer.

• Select Layer > Smart Objects > Edit Contents. This will open the “Original” layer in its own window named ColorTest.psb. or ColorTest1.psb (depending on the template).

• Copy and paste (or drag and drop) your image into the ColorTest.psb. or ColorTest1.psb document.

• Choose Edit > Free Transform and scale your image to fit within the document as needed (both .psb files are 600 pixels x 600 pixels).

• Save the changes to the ColorTest.psb and close it. Photoshop will update all copies of the Smart Object. The template is a very complex document – depending on your system, it may take a few moments to process and update the contents of the Smart Objects! 

• Once you’ve chosen your preferred preset, note the name of the preset, return to your original image in Lightroom Classic, and apply it!

Note: There might be very slight differences in color/tone between the Preset applied in Lightroom Classic and Photoshop depending on the settings chosen to export the file from Lightroom Classic as well as the Color Settings set in Photoshop.

Customize the Default Metadata Panel — In Default view, click the Customize button at the bottom of the Metadata Panel to access the Customize Metadata Default Panel dialog.

• Use the check-boxes to toggle the visibility of  the desired metadata fields. Then, click the Arrange button to rearrange the order of metadata fields.

• By default, with multiple photos selected, Lightroom Classic displays the metadata for the the target photo.  Use the Target Photo | Selected Photo option at the top of the Metadata panel to show the metadata for either the Target Photo or for all Selected Photos.

• To increase performance, when editing metadata for large volumes of images, use the Page icon on the Metadata panel to toggle Edit-Only mode. In Edit-Only mode, all fields that are not editable are hidden (making it easier to find and edit the desired metadata fields). One word of caution — In Edit-Only mode, Lightroom Classic doesn’t the load metadata values from the selected file(s) into the metadata fields in the Metadata panel. This means that if, for example, you have an image (or multiple images) selected and the image(s) have metadata applied, you will not see it in the metadata field and, if you enter new metadata into the field, Lightroom Classic will replace any existing metadata.

Updates to “Automatically write changes into XMP” — Edits made in the Develop module will be saved into XMP only after the active image selection changes (in other words, when you move to another image), unlike previous versions where every single edit would be saved into XMP. Note: Automatically write changes to XMP must be enabled in Catalog Settings for Lightroom Classic to write the settings to the files (or to an external sidecar file for proprietary raw files).

New Metadata Filters — Two new Library Filters (Month and Day) have been added to the Metadata options.

Batch Edit Improvements ­— Previews should update faster in Grid, Secondary Grid, Survey mode and in the filmstrip (Library and Develop modules) after settings are applied to multiple images.

Catalog Upgrade — Because this is a full upgrade (v11) and not just an update, Lightroom Classic will need to upgrade your catalog.  Upgrading your catalog creates a new copy of your catalog, so your existing catalog remains intact in the unlikely event that you would want to return to the previous version. When prompted to upgrade, Lightroom Classic displays a window where you can rename the catalog as desired. You can choose to keep the default name for the upgraded catalog: (currentCatalogName)-lrcV11 or, choose a name of your own. All of Lightroom’s companion files (lrdata packages/folders for Previews and Sync for example), will automatically be renamed based on name of the upgraded catalog. In addition, a new <CatalogName>.lrcat-data file will appear next to your catalog (on the hard drive) which stores Smart Selection generated masks along with the 3D LUT (from profiles) and will be included (within the zip archive) when backing up a catalog.

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