TOOL SCHOOL MASTER THE NEW MASKING OPTIONS

The latest versions of Camera Raw and Lightroom give you better control over your masks

01 HELPFUL MENUS

The three-dot menu to the right of each mask group or tool offers several handy options for changing the mask – or you can 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.

02 THE MASKING PANEL

This panel shows your mask adjustments, similar to layer groups. If you add or subtract from the mask, the change appears 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.

03 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 instead, and used Subtract>select Subject to exclude the figure so that just the land is masked.

04 SELECT SKY

Like the similar tool in Photoshop, this button uses machine learning to analyse the image and isolate the sky, all within seconds. Once done, you see a coloured mask overlay appear over the sky. This can be added to or subtracted from to finetune 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.

05 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.

06 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.