Everyday edits: This minimalist still life shows Lightroom’s AI masking working perfectly

Minimalism, brutalism and architecture, three of my favourite things. So when I got the chance to spend a week in a converted WWII bunker, I spent much of my time exploring the objects, compositions and lighting in this strange but extraordinary environment.

This Ilford timer caught my eye as it had been repurposed as a kitchen timer and was standing on a polished black worktop in front of an original concrete wall which still showed faded stencilled lettering. The arrangement looked perfect. Well, to my minimal(list) brain, anyway.

Unfortunately, the camera doesn’t always capture what you think you see. In this case I hadn’t bothered to check the histogram, or I would have seen that some positive EV compensation was called for, and I did my usual thing of inadvertently tilting the camera about 1.5 degrees to the left as I took the shot. However, a few minutes work in Lightroom fixed everything and turned the image into one that I’m very happy with. You can see the before-and-after comparison below:

You can see all my editing steps below, but the key tool for this editing process was Lightroom Classic’s AI masking tools. These don’t always work perfectly and sometimes need some fettling, but for this shot they were perfect, as it features a clearly defined, sharp-edged subject and background. And when everything is just right, as here, they can do in an instant what might have taken minutes with regular masking tools.

But I also want to mention Lightroom Classic’s Transform panel and its automated perspective corrections. The key to this image is not just the masking and editing adjustments, but the straightening up of the horizontal base. Straightening (and keystoning correction) are often overlooked, but can make or break an austere, minimalist composition like this one. They can make the difference between a photo that looks sloppy and one that’s been meticulously planned to the last millimetre.

01 Picking a Profile

It’s easy to just sail straight past Lightroom Classic’s Profile option in the Basic panel, but if you do that you’ll be working with Adobe’s generic Adobe Color profile, which is fine, but has no particular character. At the very least, you should click the Browse button and check out the Camera Matching section in the dropdown list, where you’ll find simulations of the different picture styles offered by your camera. There are lots of other Adobe Profiles to try further down the list, but I like to use a profile pack from Lutify.me. This one is called Hydrobius, and it gives a very saturated, contrasty look that still looks natural. Everything still looks quite dark and gloomy, but we’re just getting started.

02 Lightroom’s Auto adjustments

This step will probably divide option, but I like to try the Auto button in Lightroom Classic’s Basic panel. This applies automatic Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites and Blacks adjustments. Sometimes it works, sometimes it looks pretty dreadful and you have to hit Ctrl/Command-Z and choose your own settings manually, but sometimes it works just fine and saves you a lot of time – and that’s just what’s happened here.

One of the chief reasons for Lightroom’s Auto settings looking overcooked is that they apply a hefty Vibrance increase and a smaller Saturation increase too. If you double-click the sliders to return the settings to zero, the auto adjustments will often look fine after all.

03 Straighten up!

We’re making some progress, but that skew is really annoying me. I absolutely have to fix that next, and it’s a simple job. You can do this with the Crop tool, but you can also go to Lightroom Classic’s Transform panel, check the Constrain Crop box (this stops any white wedges appearing at the edges) and click the Level button above. In an instant my image is straightened up and immediately looks more like a carefully crafted image and less like a hasty grab shot.

04 Subject mask

I want to brighten up the timer to make it stand out more, so I head over to the Mask panel and choose the Subject option. You can see from the red overlay that Lightroom has not only correctly identified the main subject of the photo but it has masked it perfectly.

05 Subject adjustments

I’ve just applied a simple Exposure increase to brighten up the timer, and reduced the Highlights slightly to stop the brightest parts from blowing out. My next and final task is to really bring out the amazing textures of the concrete wall behind it.

06 Background mask

There are two ways I could have selected the background here. One would be to use the three-dot menu alongside the subject mask to duplicated and invert that mask. Now, everything except the subject would be masked. But Lightroom actually has a Background mask button, so I’ve used that instead. It looks like this has worked perfectly – though if you examine the mask overlay you might see that it’s also picked up the right edge of the timer. Never mind, we’ll press on. You often find that a mask that looks a little sloppy still works fine with most real-world adjustments.

07 Background adjustments

My adjustments for the background are slightly different because I wanted to emphasise the textures not just the tones and colours. I have increased the Exposure a little and the Contrast by quite a lot, but I’ve also boosted the Texture and Clarity sliders. If you apply them to the whole image, big Texture and Clarity adjustments can look over-processed and artificial, but if they are confined to specific areas you don’t really notice this.

The finished image

I realise not everyone will share my fascination with concrete and abstract compositions (what’s the matter with you?) but I hope that the tools and techniques I’ve explored in this walkthrough will be useful to you in your own photography. Have fun!