- 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
Editing Landscape Images
Just like we’re able to use the AI-masking to select individual parts of a person (like their facial skin, clothes, hair, etc.), we can do the same thing for landscape images, and have it select things like mountains, water, trees, grass, and even man-made things, like a house or a bridge (which is called “Architecture” in the list of masking items). Here’s how it works (but if you did the People masking earlier, you kinda already know):
Step One:
Here’s our original image, and in this case, we want to make the castle stand out more, make the water shinier, bring out some detail in the natural ground, and make the sky darker and more dramatic. Start by clicking on the Masking icon (the circle with the white dotted lines around it, in the toolbox right below the histogram) to reveal the Add New Mask panel with the masking tools, and then click on Landscape (as shown here).
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Step Two:
It takes a few seconds for it to detect which landscape features this particular image contains, but once it determines those features, it lists them in the Landscape Mask Options panel. (Note: Since this panel reflects what the AI detects in the image, you’ll see different options depending on the image. For example, if it detects snow in the image, you’ll see a Snow checkbox.) To have it mask just the castle here, turn on the Architecture checkbox (as shown in the inset here), and the castle will appear in a red tint (as seen here in the image), letting you know what the AI masking selected.
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Step Three:
Click the Create Mask button at the bottom of the panel, and now any sliders we adjust will only affect the castle. Let’s increase the Exposure a bit to make the castle brighter (here, I dragged it to the right, nearly a full stop), increase the Contrast amount (to around 55), then increase the Shadows amount (to 23) to open up the shadow areas on the castle, and then increase the Whites amount (to 72) to help bring out the lights on the castle.
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Step Four:
Next, let’s work on making the water shinier. Click on Create New Mask at the top of the Masks panel, and choose Select Landscape (as shown here, bottom left). Then, in the Landscape Mask Options panel, turn on the Water checkbox (as shown here, bottom right), and the water appears in a red tint. Now, click the Create Mask button to mask the water.
TIP: Using Landscape Presets
Adobe has some interesting Landscape presets based on the seasons. In particular, you may want to check out the Adaptive Landscape presets (there are eight of them). What’s nice is they automatically detect things like the sky, water, foreground, etc., and they’re actually pretty good (see page 250 for more on these).
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Step Five:
To make the water shinier, scroll down in the adjustment sliders to the Effects panel, and increase the Clarity amount (I dragged it to the right to 90). You can see what a difference it made in the water here, by adding all that midtone contrast that Clarity brings.
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Step Six:
Once again, click on Create New Mask and choose Select Landscape, then in the Landscape Mask Options panel, turn on the Natural Ground checkbox (as shown here), and the ground areas appear in a red tint (as seen here). Now, click the Create Mask button to mask those natural ground areas.
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Step Seven:
With the natural ground areas masked, let’s increase the Shadows a bit (to around 35), so we can see a little detail in those areas that were formerly almost black. Now, one last time, click on Create New Mask and choose Select Landscape, but this time turn on the Sky checkbox in the Landscape Mask Options panel, to mask the sky, and then click the Create Mask button. To make the sky look better, lower the Exposure amount about a stop, then increase the Whites a bit (to 51), so the clouds don’t get too dark. Lastly, to make the sky a bit bluer, scroll down to the Color panel and drag the Temp slider to the left (to –33), and if you want to add a little magenta to the sky (just to make it more interesting), drag the Tint slider to the right (I dragged it to 32, here) to finish things off. Below is a side-by-side before and after.
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