macOS 27 / MacBook m4 Pro…….AI Sky selection for masking is totally unusable unless there are no trees or other items in view. Has this been discussed or otherwise noted in any of the technical data? Hard to believe they even included it when all of the other AI selections that I’ve tested are so good. Also, the object removal feature is pretty bad and also nearly unusable except for some very minor objects. These are much better in other generally less capable software. Happy to hear other opinions on these features.
Please add screens showing the issues in more detail. Images say more than 100 words (they say)…
Agree, I 've published an example in this forum where the Sky choice was anything but the sky. Just don’t use it. Personally, I would start with negative Selective Tones Highlights settings, then try to use standard “sky enhancement” by HSL Saturation=-10..-15 and Vibrance=40 or so (see the Landscape preset). If that doesn’t work, use LA Control Line of multiple Control Points, as many examples in this forum show.
I think that’s a common perception here, including me. You may also notice that e.g. ‘Flowers’ AI mask choice works very well on mushrooms 
Please provide a sample. I didn’t have such problems with (non-AI) sensor dust spots removal and similar cases. Maybe you expect too much – it’s not an AI tool. E.g. a common problem is removing something on image edges. Speaking about landscapes, various events, and Jazz concerts. Don’t know your case.
PhotoLab doesn’t have an object removal tool, really. It has a healing brush, which is meant to just patch small issues in an image not totally remove objects. Think: retouching facial features, removing a stain from someone’s clothing, or the odd small object removal (as you said, minor objects).
As already pointed out, it’s not an AI tool so it’s not going to have any generative remove abilities such as Lightroom’s and Photoshop’s object removal.
After seeing these replies, I “tested” several other photos for “healing” and understand better the intent and capability of the tool. I guess I was thinking of “AI Generative Erase” available in other apps, so coming here for this expertise was indeed helpful. Thanks!
I have found sky selection to be vastly improved in v10.
Have you tried it with trees and the sky in the background? If it is working for you, I (and obviously others) would like to know the technique….thanks
No. I’m not saying v10 is great. Just a vast improvement on 9. An open really obvious chunk of blue sky sometimes failed to even be recognised in v9. At least v10 now appears to work for the easy stuff!
Okay… I guess. Not meaning to start a verbal skirmish, but “really obvious chunks of blue sky” not being masked is pretty worthless…at least to me. A three legged horse is “better” than a two legged horse, but I don’t want to ride either one.
Stars have aligned, I have stumbled upon this thread and Andy’s video published 5 hours ago exactly on sky masking and dxo. May be it will help https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmxcXb4jc2w
You make a valid point, but why do we need an AI sky mask when a Control Line does the job with so much ease?
Thank you very much for the link you shared!
… and for PL 10 users:
Also try out the new Control Brush. – It works with the same Chroma and Luma settings as the Control Line but offers even more control as you can simply paint over the desired area.
Yes, it is a good secondary choice after Control lines for sky areas. However, to get the best from it with no overlap or unintended modification of adjacent areas, I find the control brush requires distinctive edges between objects, especially objects that share a similar hue. Sometimes, moving the hue pointer to a different place in the sky can help with that hue confusion.
Mark
For those whose time is precious, the guy spends 30 minutes explaining that he combines a sky mask with a luminosity mask and slightly adjusts the luminosity mask manually to refine the edges - to do this zooming at more than 100% is usefull (it’s likely that, in his example, the luminosity mask alone would have been sufficient and that the added ai sky selection was unnecessary).
And his approach is the opposite of a sky selection : he prefers to adjust the sky globally, and create a mask of everything except the sky, and adjust everything that isn’t the sky locally. So he uses an inverted mask with methods provided in photolab.
This can save you time.
Fot batch export images of the same serie, a working ai sky selection should be good for the whole set of images, when a control line needs to have pipette and lines at the right place on each images, and may so require different adjustments depending on the image.
So why ? : efficiency.
Ah, yes, hadn’t thought of that. I’ve never had the need to batch process photos.
Sure – use the eyedropper as well as the chroma and luma settings, just like with a control line.
If you experiment with a combination of control line, control point, and control brush (all located within the same parent mask), check their chroma and luma settings, as these are ‘not automatically synchronized’.