The Power of Masking
- Five Handy Things to Know Right Up Front about Masking
- Editing Your Main Subject
- What to Do If It Doesn't Work Perfectly
- Getting Better Masking Results
- Better Looking Skies, Method 1: Select Sky
- Better Looking Skies, Method 2: Linear Gradient
- Better Looking Skies, Method 3: Masking Objects
- Better Looking Skies, Method 4: Preserving Your Clouds Using a Luminance Mask
- Five Really Helpful Things to Know Now About the Brush Masking Tool
- Painting with Light (Also Known as "Dodging and Burning")
- The Brush's Awesome Auto Mask Feature (How to Not Mask "Outside the Lines")
- Fixing the White Balance in Just One Part of Your Image
- Retouching Portraits
- Selecting People in Group Photos
- Editing Landscape Images
- Editing Your Background
- The Easy Way to Mask Anything (Not Just the Subject)
- Changing the Color of Something in Your Image (Point Color)
- Eight More Masking Things You'll Want to Know
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
unlocking the secrets of the masking tools
If you’re a long-time Lightroom user, you probably remember a tool called the “Adjustment Brush,” which we used to do what are called “Local Adjustments” (well, it’s only called that by people who hang out at swanky Lightroom parties and carry on about which color space they prefer and how they create their own custom monitor profiles. I know this phrase is so outdated that no one under the age of 40 would even recognize it, but “Gag me with a spoon!” Can I get a “Whoop, whoop” in the chat if you’re with me!?). Well, anyway, we went on for many years, happily living our Lightroom lives without ever using the term “masking.” It just didn’t exist in our edit routines, but now it’s all about masking. By the way, if you’re curious about where the term “masking” came from, it’s a holdover from a traditional darkroom technique where the photographer developing the film (in a dark room only lit by a dim, red light) would invite a friend or visitor into their darkroom, and they’d put photo paper into a mix of chemicals so strong they could instantly eat through aircraft-grade aluminum. They would say, “You’re about to see a photo being born,” and they’d have them stare into this vat of chortling chemical death, and while the visitor was caught up in seeing the image start to appear, behind their back, the photographer would put on a horrifying mask and pick up a large butcher knife. The photo that emerged from the chemicals was often a clown holding a sign that read, “You’re about to die!” and now all creeped out, they would turn around, revealing the menacing-looking photographer all masked up (hence the term “masking”) in the dim, red light, waving this big butcher knife, and well…it was quite a scene. There was a lot of screaming, hysterical crying, passing out, sobbing uncontrollably, etc. Gosh I miss those days.
Five Handy Things to Know Right Up Front about Masking
When you move a slider in the Develop module’s Basic panel, it affects your entire image, but if you want to work on just part of the image (maybe you just want to adjust the building seen in the image below), then you’d use a mask, so only the area you want adjusted gets affected. This will all make a lot more sense in a few minutes, but to start off, here are a few things that will help you get comfortable with the awesomeness of masking. Once you learn these things (along with the rest of the stuff in this chapter), you’ll find yourself making fewer trips over to Photoshop, because you can do so much right here in Lightroom.
#1: The Whole Red Tint Thing
When you use one of Lightroom’s masking tools, by default, the selected area (the area you choose to mask) appears in a red-tinted color overlay (as seen here, in the main image). As soon as you move any of the adjustment sliders, that red tint goes away, but you can turn this overlay off at any time by turning off the Show Overlay checkbox at the bottom of the Masks panel. You can also see your mask in other ways besides the red tint by clicking on the three dots to the right of the Show Overlay checkbox and choosing a different overlay option from the pop-up menu (as seen here, in the inset). I put three examples of the overlay choices at the top here: on the left is Image on Black, in the middle is Image on White, and on the right is White on Black.
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#2: Docking Your Masks Panel
When you create a mask, the Masks panel appears to the left of the right side panels, covering part of your image. You can move it around by clicking on the panel’s header and dragging it, but again, it may still cover part of your image. If that annoys you (like it does me), you can dock it near the top of the right side panels, so it appears like a regular panel. Just Right-click on the panel’s header and from the pop-up menu, choose Dock to Panel (as shown here), so it no longer takes up space when you’re not masking.
#3: The Hidden Add & Subtract Buttons
There are two buttons that allow you to add to the initial mask you created, or to remove an area from it, but sometimes those buttons are hidden. If you see the Masks panel on the left here, with only the mask’s name and no buttons below it, just click once on the mask and the rest of the panel, including the Add and Subtract buttons, will pop down, as seen here on the right.
#4: You Can Rename Your Masks
If you start adding a number of different masks, it starts to get a bit confusing as to which mask selects which part of your image. This is when renaming your masks with descriptive names becomes important. To rename a mask, double-click on the mask’s current name (i.e., Mask 1, Mask 2, etc.) in the Masks panel, and the Rename dialog will appear where you can type in a more descriptive name.
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#5: The Sliders Reset Automatically When You Create a New Mask
Once we have a mask in place, we make our edits using the adjustment sliders, which are the same sliders as the ones we use in the Basic panel (with one small exception: there is no Vibrance slider. But, if you drag the Saturation slider to the right, it uses Vibrance math to make the colors more vibrant, and if you drag it to the left, it uses Saturation math to desaturate [take away] color).To have the sliders all reset to zero when you create a new mask, make sure the Reset Sliders Automatically checkbox is turned on near the top of the panel (as seen circled here; it’s on by default). If, instead of creating a new mask, you’re adding to or subtracting from one (using the Add or Subtract buttons), you’re working on the same mask, so the sliders won’t reset (they should stay the same if you’re working on the same mask, right?).
