UNDERSTAND ADJUSTMENT LAYERS AND BRUSHES
The power of Photoshop exists in its ability to make more elaborate, targeted edits using layers, each of which can be individually controlled
Most photographers use Photoshop, Lightroom or Capture One to edit their files, although there are a number of new apps on the market that are very attractive and well priced. Fortunately, when it comes to learning how to use layers, adjustment layers and adjustment brushes, the basic technique is exactly the same and can be applied to most image-editing software. Any differences are limited to the way the menus and tools operate in your preferred software.
There are some advantages in learning how to use Photoshop rather than Lightroom or Capture One because of the extra control you have over masks and the types of adjustments you can make.
For instance, if you need to make a very precise mask that reveals a hill or tree but hides the landscape behind, creating a channel or luminosity mask in Photoshop can be quite quick and painless, with a resulting mask that is very accurate. In comparison, Lightroom and Capture One will also do the job, but you will need to make sure you use a very small brush and it can take a lot of time to finesse the mask.
We won’t get into the complexities of creating precise masks here because, when it comes to enhancing the light, we can often work with large, soft brushes to create the masks we need. In other words, we don’t need to do detailed outlines of objects in our photographs, rather we can use wide, simple brush strokes to create masks that mimic the effect of sunlight in the landscape. And the reason is simple: when the sun shines through a break in the clouds, it usually creates a pool of light with soft edges.
This is the basic principle behind enhancing the light with layers. We add an adjustment layer, draw a mask over the layer to look like sunlight, and then lighten the image that is not covered by the mask to create our light. We’ll show you how to do it in Photoshop here, but if you want to do it in Lightroom, instead of layers you use the adjustment brush. And for Capture One users, you use layers as outlined on the previous pages.