Super handy stuff – the masking tools are a real game-changer. Thanks, Terry.

Have a great Monday, ya’ll.

-Scott

The post Using Lightroom’s Masking Tools for Adjusting Clothes and Facial Hair appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

Once you choose the Brush tool (click the Masking icon, and from the pop-down list of tools, click on ‘Brush’), the Brush cursor (as seen above) shows you the actual size of the brush (the smaller circle inside). The larger outer circle shows the amount of feathering [edge softening] applied to your brush. When you see a big gap between the larger outer and inner circles, you have a lot of feathering applied (it’s a soft-edged brush). If the two circles are very close together, it’s a harder-edged brush.

Above: To shrink the size of the brush (the feathering amount moves in tandem with it), press the left bracket key on your keyboard ( [ ) to shrink the brush size and the right bracket key ( ] ) to make the brush size larger (these keys are just to the right of the letter “P” on a standard QWERTY keyboard).

Above: If you want to leave the brush size as is but change the amount of feathering (as seen above), hold the Shift key and use the same left and right bracket keys.

Above: You know that Edit Pins that appear on screen when you paint over an area? Well, you have some options over how they appear.

First, you can show/hide them by pressing Command-H (on Mac) or Ctrl-H on Windows. Next, in the left corner of the options bar along the bottom of your image, there’s an option which lets you choose when the edit pins appear.

Always: (the one with the checkbox, shown here) means the pins are always visible, even when your cursor isn’t over the image.

Auto: your Edit Pins automatically hide when your cursors moves away from the image area, so if you move your cursor over to move any of the Adjustment Brush sliders, they auto-hide.

Selected: It only shows the pin you’re currently working on and hides the others. This is a pretty decent choice because once you’re working on a different pin, why do you need to see the others all the time? Sometimes, you might, but not usually.

Never: This one is kinda obvious. It never shows the Edit pins.

Above: One more — if you want to see the area you painted over (the mask), you can either:

(a) Move your cursor over the active pin, and it will display the mask as a red tint, as seen above.

(b) Press the letter “O” on your keyboard, and it keeps the mask turned on (like you see above) so you can see the mask as you paint.

Here’s a helpful little one-minute video I did a while back (when the Brush tool was still called “The Adjustment Brush”), where you’ll get to see some of the tips you just learned here in action, but there’s also a tip in there for folks using Lightroom on a laptop that is really helpful. Check it out below:

OK, I hope you find one or more of those helpful. Have a great Monday, everybody!

–Scott

P.S. BONUS TIP: If you’re using Lightroom Classic and you hold the Option Key (on Mac or the Alt key on PC), it switches you to the Erase brush, which is handy if you’re painting and you spill over onto an area you didn’t mean to paint on – you can just brush that spill away while holding that key down.

The post Tips For Using Lightroom’s Masking Brush appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

That is one flippin’ handy tool, right?

Have a great Monday, everybody!

-Scott

The post This Lightroom Tool Does Not Get The Love It Deserves! appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

Above: Here’s the raw image out of the camera. Here’s a link to download the Raw image if you want to follow along:

STEP ONE: The image is a little crooked, so head to the Transform panel (called the Geometry panel in the cloud version of Lightroom), and under ‘Upright,’ click on Auto (as seen here). By the way – you generally get better results from Upright if you first apply a Lens Profile in the Lens Correction panel (called the ‘Optics’ panel in LR cloud), but since the photo was taken with a mirrorless camera, it assigns the proper lens profile automatically for you).

STEP TWO: To get a better starting place, I generally choose the ‘Adobe Landscape’ Raw profile from the Profile pop-up menu at the top of the Basic panel (as shown here).

STEP THREE: Hit the ‘Auto’ button at the top right of the Tone section. It analyzes the photo and tones the image, and it generally does a pretty good job of at least giving you a decent starting place.

STEP FOUR: The Foreground looks okay, but the sky is kind of washed out. Click on the Mask icon (it’s the gray circle with the white dashed line around it), and when the Add New Mask panel appears, click on the ‘Sky’ button (as shown here) to select just the sky. The sky will appear in a red tint so you can see what it masked.

STEP FIVE: Now that the sky is selected, my go-to sky fix is to (a) lower the Exposure until the sky looks good, (b) Increase the Contrast so the dark parts of the sky get darker and bright parts get brighter, which makes the color looks more saturated, and (c) I increase the Whites amount quite a bit, so the clouds don’t look gray from the exposure being lowered so much.

STEP SIX: I finish things off by raising the Texture to bring out some detail in the foreground and bumping up the Clarity just a hair (more detail), and lastly, I lower the Vibrance amount added by the ‘Auto’ button earlier so the colors don’t look too bright (it’s mostly a problem with greens – they start to look neon-ish, so you could go to the HSR / Color panel and lower the Saturation of the yellows and greens, but this is just quicker and easier – as long as the sky still looks good after you lower the overall Vibrance).

Above: Here’s a before/after (you just press the letter ‘y’ to see this side-by-side view. Press ‘y’ again to return to the normal view.

Well, there you have it. Hope you found that helpful. Have a great weekend, everybody!

-Scott

The post “Seven Clicks To Done” (a Little Masking Goes A Long Way!) appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

There ya go!

Have a great Lightroom Tip Tuesday, everybody!

-Scott

The post How To Get Vibrance When Masking appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

There are few things I’ve seen lately that make me want to grab my camera, run out the door, and start shooting, but that is one – what inspirational work from a living legend, and there are just three spots left for this literally once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Nail down your spot at Kelbyone.com/workshops

Handy Little Masking Tip

One of my most used masking tools is the Linear gradient (I use it to darken or lighten larger areas of the image), and this is just a quick little handy tip to speed things up, mostly because I usually drag the gradient the wrong way the first time, then I hit undo and drag the right way. Or, you can just do this:

I want to darken each side of the church to the left and right of the bride, When I dragged this linear gradient out on the it masked way too much – the mask goes right over the bride, so she’ll be darkened when I lower the Exposure amount.

The tip is: just press the apostrophe key on your keyboard (to the left of the Return key), and it flips the gradient for you, like you see below.

Ahhhh, that’s more like it. Now, when I lower the exposure, it is just the left side of the church that gets darkened, and it graduates to transparent where the bride is in the center aisle (see below, where I did both sides).

One more thing – thanks to everybody who attended our two day iPhone Photography Conference. We had over 1,400+ photographers attend the event, and it was just an incredible experience. Thanks to all of you, our sponsors, instructors, and our amazing in-house crew. Next up…well, you see in about a week (KelbyOne members found out today).

Have a great weekend, everybody!

-Scott

The post An Incredible Learning Opportunity for Just Three More People (and a handy masking tip) appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

ABOVE: here’s what I’m talking about. I lit our subject with just one flash, and her pants are at least as bright (if not brighter) than her face – the light doesn’t fall off – she’s evenly lit, which is not what we’re generally looking for (lighting-wise).

STEP ONE: In Lightroom, click on the Masking button and then click on “Select Subject” (as shown here).

STEP TWO: When you click select Subject, a red tint appears over your subject (as seen above). If you make an adjustment now, it will affect all of here, so we need to subtract the parts we don’t want to effect.

STEP THREE: To remove something from our mask, click the ‘Subtract” button just below your mask in the Masks panel (shown circled above). NOTE: if you don’t see this button, click on “Mask 1” and the Add and Subtract buttons will pop-down. Now go down into that menu and choose “Linear Gradient” (as shown above).

STEP FOUR: What we want to do is create that fall where her face stays the same, but it gets gradually darker as it moves down, so take the Linear Gradient too; click right near her neck and drag down (as shown here) and it removes her upper 1/4 from the mask (as seen above).

STEP FIVE: Now scroll down to the Tone controls and darken the exposure by dragging the Exposure a little to the left, and pull back the highlights a bit, too (dragging to the left), and that creates the falloff. You can see her pants are no longer the brightest thing – you’ve got that nice fall-off we’re looking for. Her face is the same brightness it was before, and by selecting subject first, it doesn’t affect the background (which it shouldn’t).

Above: Here’s a side-by-side view where you can see the difference. When you do this, the whole thing takes less than a minute, but it makes a world of difference lighting-wise.

Have a great Monday, everybody! (try not to think about what happened in the playoffs).

-Scott

P.S. I’m speaking at the FotoClave photography conference Feb 17-19, 2024 in San Ramon, California. I have a keynote presentation and a regular track session and aboth about travel photography, and I have a lot to share, so I hope you can check out the conference. There are loads of great instructors, including the incredible Frans Lanting. Hope you can make it Here’s the link with more details.

The post How to Easily Create Lighting “Fall Off” in Lightroom Using The New Masking Tools appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

Here’s wishing you an awesome weekend – here’s hoping your team wins (unless of course, your team is Georgia). #rolltide!

-Scott

The post Lightroom Masking Tip For Better Portraits appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

STEP ONE: Start by clicking the Masking button, then click “Sky” (as shown here).

STEP TWO: The red tinted area above shows you the sky as been masked. Now, just below the list of masks in the Masks panel, to the right of the word ‘Select Sky’ click on ‘Invert’ (as shown here).

STEP THREE: By turning on the Invert checkbox, it switches your masked area to the opposite of what was previous masked (you masked the sky, so inverting it selects the foreground), but in this case (and many like it), it also selected the subject (the arch). So, we have one more step to do to remove the arch from our masked area. In the Masks panel, click the ‘Subtract’ button at the bottom of the panel (if you don’t see the ‘Add’ and ‘Subtract’ buttons, click once on Mask 1 in the Masks panel and they will appear. From the list of things you can now subtract from your current mask, choose ‘Select Subject’ (as shown here).

STEP FOUR: Once you choose to subtract ‘Select Subject’ from your mask, you’re left with the foreground selected (in this case, the cobblestone street surrounding the arch). If you look closely at the resulting mask, you can see it also still has the buildings on the back left, and trees on the far right as part of the mask. If you wanted those removed as well, click on Subtract; choose ‘Brush’ from the pop-up menu and paint over those areas to remove them so only the cobblestone areas are selected.

There ya have it – pretty darn quick and easy. Here’s wishing you an awesome Monday!

-Scott

P.S. Don’t forget, the Photoshop World Conference (featuring a TON of Lightroom training sessions) is coming in just a few weeks, and we have three full days of Lightroom, Photography, and Photoshop training from a roster of the best teachers on the planet. Get the details, and reserver your spot over at photoshopworld.com

The post Select Your Foreground In 3-Click Using This Masking Technique appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

Seriously, that tool kicks absolutely butt, but for some reason, it just doesn’t get the love (or the use) that it should. Give it a try, and you’ll fall in love with it – it’s that good!

We’re just four days away from my “Ultimate Photography Crash Course” full-day seminar. It’s Tuesday, August 15th; live online, or come and spend the day with me in person in Orlando at the Orange County Convention Center.

Check out this short video with the details:

Tickets and more info at kelbyonelive.com/seminar – I hope I get to see you in person there (or online).

Have a great weekend, everybody! #GoBucs!

-Scott

The post One of The Most Underrated Tools in All of Lightroom (Spoiler Alert: it’s a masking tool) appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.