It looks like even Capture One has got "submasks"

Yes even CO :slight_smile: but I guess Photolab was first quicker with AI-submasks.

From what I can see CO looks more structure which might appeal to newe or inexperienced users but it seems to take more clicking around than Photolab.

Since I have both I´m happy but I think I prefer Photolab since it gives me a faster flow. What do you think?

I’ve not tried Capture One, but I find Lightroom’s mask creation superior to PhotoLab’s. It is more intuitive and more performant.

At the moment, if I could easily round-trip between PhotoLab and Lightroom (Classic) without creating mutliple files all over the place, I’d still be doing my bird photos in Lightroom.

If Lightroom scores 100 for mask creation, PhotoLab is at about 70. It could get a boost to around 90 just by fixing the UI bugs and making it perform well.