If you’re unfamiliar with Lightroom’s powerful masking filters, you’ve come to the right place. That’s because these easy-to-use too will make a huge difference in the quality of your post-processing results.
Today’s eye-opening tutorial from the Nav Edits YouTube channel may be brief, yet it’s a comprehensive guide with everything you need to know. You’ll learn how unlock the power of Masking filters and see how flexible they can be—with or without AI. The lesson includes using a variety of very useful features like the Add/Subtract options.
Instructor Nagesh Vasu, based in India, specializes in image-editing tutorials for Photoshop, Lightroom, Snapseed, and a variety of other popular apps. By watching this 10-minute episode you’ll be able to start enhancing your images today with Lightroom’s versatile Masking filters for a wide variety of purposes.
As Vasu explains, “Lightroom’s Masking filters are tools that let you selectively enhance parts of a photo to adjust things like exposure and color in specific areas within the frame” while leaving the rest of the image untouched. The payoff is that you’ll have far more control with all of your edits.
Vasu covers a lot of ground in a hurry, so you may want to take a few notes for future reference. He explains the difference between Linear and Radial Gradients and illustrates exactly how they work. You’ll also learn how to use Lightroom’s Brush filter for accomplishing a wide variety of tasks.
Other key topics include the concepts of Color Range and Luminance Range with a step-by-step demonstrations of everything they can do to quickly enhance a photograph. The video concludes with a discussion of Select Subject and Select Sky, along with the aforementioned Add/Subtract features that provide precise control.
By the time you’re done watching you’ll be ready to greatly improve your workflow with these “essential” tools that you’ll find valuable time after time. There much more to see on Vasu’s instructional YouTube channel, so be sure to pay a visit whenever you have time.
We also encourage you to watch the tutorial we posted recently, describing how to use five Photoshop and Lightroom Plugins that one notable landscape photographer says he “can’t live without.” And some them are free!
Most photographers strive to “get it right” in the camera so they don’t have to resort to serious post processing to fix the image. Unfortunately that’s often difficult—if not impossible—when shooting outdoor scenes with a wide range of tones that exceed the density range of their cameras.
Here’s the problem in a nutshell: if you expose for the highlights, the shadows are crushed and devoid of detail. Conversely when exposing for the shadows, highlights may also lose detail because the bright areas of the scene become blown out. In both cases it’s a difficult task to fix these poorly exposed images during the editing process.
And even when you expose for tones in the middle, you’re likely to encounter problems with both highlights and shadows. So what’s the secret to creating a well-balanced image that looks like what you observed through the viewfinder?
One straightforward solution is to capture three images of the same scene, each using different exposure settings; one targeting highlights, another for midtones, and the third exposed for the shadows. Once you’ve done that it’s a simple matter to merge the multiple images in Photoshop to achieve a single photograph with perfectly exposed highlights, shadows, and all the tones in between.
If this technique sounds overly complicated Barry Beckham will assuage your worries in the six-minute tutorial below, demonstrating how easy it is for photographers of all skill levels to get the job done. He specializes in tutorials for amateur shooters that demystify seemingly difficult tasks, and this episode is a great example.
Beckham begins with a trio of images each with “half the exposure of the previous one”—with the original shot made using the exposure recommended by the camera. The first image isn’t what you’d call great, the second has unacceptably dark shadows, and the highlights in the third shot are clearly too bright. In other words, without merging all three in Photoshop, you’re left with a choice of compromises—none of which provide the type image quality you want.
By following Beckham’s clearly described instructions for merging your trio of photos, the result you’ll achieve will exhibit the benefits of all three—with none of their image-killing drawbacks. And once you get the hang of it, which doesn’t take long, you’ll find yourself using this technique frequently for all sorts of outdoor photos you shoot in difficult light.
After watching the video explore what’s available on Beckham’s instructional YouTube channel, especially if you’re rather new to the photographic game. By doing so you’ll be able to easily and quickly elevate your shooting and editing skills
On a related note, we also suggest watching the recent tutorial we posted from another accomplished expert, explaining how to shoot dramatic landscape photographs when the sky is a boring, featureless blue.
Bright blue featureless may be great for a trip to the beach, going on vacation, taking a bike ride, or hiking in the great outdoors. But when it comes to nature and landscape photography, well, not so much.
Of course it’s always possible to swap skies during the editing process, but many serious shooters hesitate to do that. If that sounds like you, the following tutorial from a notable British landscape photographer is just what you need to get the job done in the camera.
Instructor Henry Turner describes himself like this: “I’m just a normal guy with a child-like desire to explore our beautiful planet with my camera.” Sounds like many of us, right? In this behind-the-scenes tutorial he demonstrates five effective methods for capturing great images when the dramatic, billowing clouds we desire are nowhere in sight.
Tip #1 involves setting the camera to capture images in b&w. He explains that “what we’re trying to do is just embrace the contrast—especially when we’re out in the middle of the day.” This a departure from the typical approach when we want to avoid high contrast scenes, in favor of quiet side light or dramatic back light.
When confronted by plain blue skies, however, Turner urges you to not consider high contrast as the enemy. In other words, “don’t let shooting in monochrome be an afterthought.” By doing this, that “uninteresting” blue sky can be rendered jet black. And that makes for some very dramatic imagery. By adding a polarizing filter you really can’t miss when thinking and shooting in b&w.
Another approach for deemphasizing featureless skies, particularly when photographing seascapes or other scenes with water, is shooting with long exposures. This isn’t about creating motion in the sky because they aren’t any clouds. Rather, by using slow shutter speeds to smooth out flowing water, and composing accordingly, the viewer tends to ignore a boring sky. This technique can impart a feeling of simplicity or minimalism to an image as well.
In fact, Turner suggests combining the two techniques above to achieve “some really wonderful images.” At this point you’re barely a quarter of the way into this lesson and Turner’s remaining three techniques are just as powerful and easy to achieve. By the time you’re finished watching you’ll smile broadly the next time you confront a blue sky.
There’s much more to learn about landscape photography techniques on Turner’s popular YouTube channel, so be sure to pay a visit and explore everything else he has to offer.
And don’t miss the tutorial we posted with another top pro, explaining how to improve your landscape photographs by using foreground elements to guide a viewer’s eye to the most important part of a scene.
