FREE Photo Editing Masterclass Part 2: MASKS (VIDEO)

Last week we brought you the premiere episode of a free online photo editing masterclass from our friends at the PHLOG Photography YouTube channel. That one demonstrated Lightroom’s most basic tools.

Today’s second episode, explaining how to use masks, is far more detailed, so we suggest jotting down a few notes for future reference. In the 16-minute tutorial below you’ll learn everything you need to know about using “Lightroom’s most powerful tool.”

Instructor Christian Mohrle is a German landscape photographer and image-editing expert. He introduces Part 2 of this important series like this: “Learning how to use Masks in Lightroom will drastically improve your editing skills,” and he promises to go through every key aspect of masking in detail.

In short, if you’ve been uncertain about how to harness the power of this “essential” technique, that’s about to change now. Before getting started we urge you to download the demonstration image using the link in the description beneath the video, so you can follow along in real time as Mohrle walks you through a myriad of masking methods.

Masking is particularly important when editing landscape photos that typically contain a wide range of tones from bright highlights to deep shadows. Unlike more basic global adjustments, masks enable you to selectively make precise modifications to different parts of an image to arrive at the perfect balance.

As you’ll see, by using a variety of Lightroom’s tools, you can create masks that target specific colors and tones in an image for a spectacular result that would be difficult (or impossible) to achieve with any other method.

This comprehensive lesson explains the difference between linear and radial gradients, how to create sunlight and vignetting effects, using Luminance Range masks for enhancing shadow and highlight detail, and techniques for improving a sky. This is just a small smattering of what you’ll learn about using masks to greatly improve your images, so take a close look.

There’s much more to see about shooting and editing outdoor photographs on Mohrle’s popular YouTube channel. So be sure to pay a visit and subscribe.

And if you missed last week’s first episode in this amazing instructional series, you can find it here.