Mask Intersect in Adobe Lightroom

The Most Under-Rated and Powerful Tool in Adobe Lightroom

Adobe aren't known for an aggressive feature release schedule in Lightroom, but over the years it has transformed from a very simple app into a complex asset manager and RAW editor.

One area in which Adobe have innovated is with masking - they remain well ahead of the competition with A.I. masking tools that make targeted edits ridiculously easy.

But in late 2023 they released a feature which seemed to fly under the radar and didn't get as much attention as I thought it should have.

In my opinion, the intersect feature in the masking panel is one of the most under-rated tools in the app. You can also find it in Affinity Photo and in Darktable, but the implementation in Lightroom is far and away the easiest that I've used.

In this article I'm going to explain what the intersect tool does and how you can use it to enhance precisely targeted regions of your photographs in truly creative ways.

The most useful Lightroom feature you've never used was hiding in plain sight.