The Masking Panel
Camera Raw and Lightroom are treated to a major editing update in their latest versions
Local adjustments have long been one of the best features in Adobe’s Camera Raw and Lightroom programs. But now things have moved up a gear with Select Sky and Select Subject, two hugely helpful new masking tools that sit alongside the existing Adjustment Brush and Radial and Graduated Filters. These new tools let you automatically target areas with a single click, so you can add drama to a blown-out sky, lift the tones in your subject and make powerful local enhancements.
The improvements don’t end there. The brand-new Masking Panel changes the way local adjustments are organised and edited. The old system would give each new edit a simple pin, but now there’s a dedicated panel that makes a group from each mask. Crucially, this allows you to add or subtract from the initial mask using any of the other local tools. Then there are the Color Range and Luminance Range commands that let you single out specific colours or brightness.
If you’re accustomed to using local adjustments, this new modular approach will take some getting used to, but it ultimately gives you greater control.
Helpful menus
The three-dot menu next to each mask group or tool offers several handy options for changing the mask. (You can also right-click a mask for the same options.) Duplicate is useful if you want to copy and invert a sky mask to cover the land instead. There’s also Intersect With Mask, which lets you create a new area of an existing mask that intersects with another area.
Select Sky
Like the similar tool in Photoshop, this button employs machine learning to analyse the image and isolate the sky for you, all within seconds. Once done, you’ll see a coloured mask overlay appear over the sky. This can be added to or subtracted from, to fine-tune what’s included. You can also click the three-dot icon next to the mask in the Masking Panel and choose Invert (or press X) to switch to target the land instead.
The Masking Panel
This panel shows your mask adjustments, similar to layer groups. If you add or subtract from the mask, the change will appear as a tool subset of the group. You can drag a tool from one mask to another, or to create a new mask (hold Alt while dragging to copy instead of moving). The Masking Panel can be moved around the screen or docked below the Histogram.
Range Masks
Color Range and Luminance Range let you target areas based on colour or brightness. Before, these features were tied in to the other local adjustment tools, but now you can use them either on their own or to add or subtract with other tools. When you choose Color Range, you can click to sample colours in the image, then Shift-click to sample more colours, and use Refine to edit the range of included colours.
Add and subtract
Previously in Lightroom and Photoshop, you could subtract from a mask by using the Brush Tool to paint over the image. Now the new Add and Subtract buttons offer more control. Here, we’ve used Select Sky, then inverted the mask to select the land, then used Subtract > Select Subject to exclude the figure so that just the land is masked.
Select Subject
If you want to adjust the colour, brightness or contrast of your subject, all you have to do is click this button and use the tonal sliders to enhance the area. Here we’ve used it to lift the contrast and clarity in our subject and bring out the vibrant colours in the clothes. Like Select Sky, this command seeks out and isolates your subject. You can combine it with the Subtract button to exclude the subject from a mask.