PhotoLab 10 AI Masks: People and Faces Without Hand-Masking
Crowded sideline. Group portrait. One subject you need to pop while everyone else stays put. You don’t have time to paint a mask by hand.
In DxO PhotoLab 10, AI Masks for people and faces are how I isolate a subject — or a face part — and edit locally without tracing edges. This post is the written companion to the video: what the tool is for, how I use it on deadline frames, and when to move a control point.
What AI masks are for
Depth Mask edits by distance. Control Points edit by local light. AI Masks edit by who (and which part of a face).
Use AI Masks when:
You need one person out of a group, or every person as a single mask.
You need face parts — skin, eyes, lips, hair, teeth, facial hair — without brushing them in.
The subject is clear enough that the AI can find them, and you want speed over hand-painting.
Don’t force an AI person mask when the problem is a hot wall or a muddy sleeve. That’s Control Point territory (covered in the next video in this series).
The job in one sentence
Run the AI mask, pick the person (or face part) you meant, adjust exposure/color/clarity inside that selection, check the edges, ship — or bail if the mask is lying.
That’s it. The skill is knowing when the selection is good enough to edit, and when it isn’t.
How I work people masks
Generate the AI people mask on the frame. PhotoLab 10 can find multiple people and let you take one, several, or all.
Pick the subject you meant — not “everyone vaguely near the action.” One clean subject select beats a soft blob that includes a teammate’s shoulder.
Edit inside the mask — lift exposure, warm skin, pull clarity, quiet the jacket. Keep moves modest; AI edges punish big swings.
Inspect the edges at 100%. Hair, jersey logos, overlapping arms, and busy backgrounds are where the AI usually frays.
If the edge is wrong and you’d spend longer fixing it than fixing the light, stop. Switch to a Control Point or Control Brush. Don’t polish a bad mask into a worse edit.
On sports and editorial jobs, speed matters more than a perfect selection. A usable mask in ten seconds beats a “perfect” one that ate your delivery window.
Face parts when you need them
Full-person masks are the daily driver. Face parts are the finesse pass:
Skin — even tone, slight lift, without crushing the eyes.
Eyes / iris / whites — small exposure or clarity moves; easy to overdo.
Lips / teeth / facial hair — when the frame is a real portrait and the face is the story.
Use face parts after the person mask has already put the subject in the right ballpark. Don’t start a sideline job by masking teeth.
When the AI is wrong
The AI will miss. Crowds, motion blur, weird angles, hats, overlapping bodies — you’ll see bad edges.
Rules I use:
If you can see a halo or a cut-through from across the room, the mask isn’t ready.
Don’t paint for twenty minutes trying to “save” an AI selection. Bail to Control Point or Control Brush and finish the local light.
Depth Mask is still better when the job is distance (subject vs background plane), not identity.
The video goes over live examples so you can see a clean win and a moment where I’d switch tools instead of forcing it.
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