Join Lightroom expert Terry White in this excerpt from his Photoshop World 2023 class “Leverage the Power of AI in Lightroom” as he demonstrates advanced masking techniques for editing multiple people in your photos. Learn how to get optimal results when selecting and adjusting clothing and facial features. Perfect for all photographers looking to enhance their editing skills. Watch the clip from our YouTube channel here, or keep reading this post below.

AI Masking can be based on subject or based on person. What happens when it’s more than one person, you ask? I’ve got a sample right here. So, there are three people in this shot.

Click on the masking icon to get started

When I go to click on the masking icon, it quickly detects all three people.

Lightroom automatically detects that there are three people

It doesn’t know which one’s which, but it detects all three. So now let’s say I want to select the guy in the middle. Just click on “Person 2” and Lightroom will reveal all the available Person Mask Options for that person.

Let’s mess with his clothes. Tick on the box for Clothes from these options.

Terry clicks on “Person 2” mask and ticks on “Clothes” under Person Mask Options then clicks “Create Mask”

It does a good job. So let’s go create a mask for just the clothes by clicking on Create Mask. We can adjust just the clothes, lightening or darkening them, using any Lightroom adjustments we want. Now in this case, the first guy’s hood is not part of this outfit. So what would I do if I don’t want his hood selected? Let’s name this mask “Person 2 clothes.”

Go to that mask. I would hit Subtract > Brush, and just say, “no, no, no, leave that other guy’s hood alone” by painting over that area with the brush. And so now when I make adjustments, it’s not affecting the first guy’s hoodie at all.

Terry goes to the “Person 2 clothes” mask and clicks Subtract and then Brush to adjust the mask

So same thing on the right. The mask is including the back of the woman’s hoodie. Use that same brush to subtract her hood from the mask.

If you want, you can even change the color of his outfit. I’ve shifted it to look more purple. I see now that Person 3’s hand is on the center guy’s shoulder. Let’s not make her hand purple. Brush on the mask there, too.

Keep brushing areas of the mask that don’t need to be selected, like the woman’s hood and hand

You’d want to zoom in to do a better job, but this shows a quick subtraction of her hand.

Those are the kinds of things you want to look for and correct, especially when people are touching like this. You want to make sure that the AI doesn’t go a little too far.

That’s what Lightroom’s AI masking does for multiple people.

If you go Create New Mask and choose “Select People“, it will show you all three subjects again, and then you can select whatever part of each person you want.

If I go to “Person 1”, he’s got enough facial hair that it’s identified in the Person Mask Options. So, if I select tick on facial hair, click Create Mask, I can then go in and make any changes to his facial hair that I want.

Terry Creates New Mask, chooses Person 1, ticks on Facial Hair and clicks Create Mask to focus edits on just the facial hair of the first subject

So, we could give him a dark grizzly bear beard, or whatever you call it, I don’t know, I’m not a beard guy. Or lighten it up a bit, or make any other changes to it you want.

I’ve found that I’m more successful when I try and lighten or darken facial hair not with Exposure, but with Curves instead. When I click the Curves, it just gives me better results when I’m making adjustments to the facial hair.

Terry finds that Curves provides more control over facial hair than Exposure does

And I’m not really a Curves guy, but this is one of those times where Curves is the better way to go. when you’re affecting facial hair. I’ve just found that to be the case.

I’ll show you one more example where we can adjust the facial hair. So, the person mask selects his facial hair. Look at that nice red mask right on the facial hair. So easy! Create the mask by clicking on Create Mask. Rename that mask “facial hair.”

Another example of Lightroom’s Person Masking with only the option for “Facial Hair” ticked on

Again, you could use Exposure. If you just want to adjust a little bit, Exposure is fine.

Using Exposure to darken the facial hair slightly

If you really want to be detailed about it, use Curves. Look at just how much control you get with a curve.

Using Curves for more precise control over the facial hair mask

Cheers everybody, thanks for watching.​ I hope you enjoyed this tutorial from one of my classes from last year’s Photoshop World. The schedule for Photoshop World 2024 is coming soon, so keep an eye on the site. Looking forward to it!

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