How to BEST use LIGHTROOM'S NEW MASKING TOOLS: Tips & Tricks

what's cracking youtube i'm photographer tk north here in lightroom today because we have some huge new updates to lightroom and lightroom classic if you haven't seen it yet that of course is auto masking for both selecting the sky selecting subject as well as the whole way we use radial filters graduated filters brushes has totally changed it's a lot more intuitive now displayed a bit like layers in photoshop so these new masking tools make it so easy to select our subject make adjustments just to the subject without affecting the rest of the image same with the sky they're going to save us so much time these features do work really well but as you can imagine sometimes these hit the mark sometimes they're not always spot-on they're not always perfect so i've got a few tips to really get the most out of using these tools now it doesn't matter whether you're using lightroom or lightroom classic now these updates have come to both which is really exciting as well let's jump in and get started so the first example here i just want to show you how easy it is to select your subject of course this will depend on the image but usually it will provide a great starting point and you can go and touch it up if need be to mask your subject usually you would have to either brush it out or use something like a radial filter now if you come up to masking which is all under this circle here so click on that here are all our different options for masking to auto ones select subject and select sky and then a few other options the first thing i want to show you if we go select subject we can see on this one it's done an okay job it's done most the subject really well but it's missed this area in between the legs i'm just going to undo that and show you if you expose your image for the subject so now my subject's exposed and you can see all the detail in the subject and then i select subject boom you can see it's actually done a lot better job and this is something i found out from experimenting if your subject's exposed correctly it will do a better job then you can go down and darken the image again and your mask will still be there so now i can go and change some of the settings on this mask just to brighten up the subject so there just with a few clicks we've gone from this to this it is really exciting really easy to use doesn't always work this perfectly so let's jump into some more examples of how to get the most out of these tools all right so let's jump into a full example this one i'm going to pop a quick preset on to start with just boost that color a little bit next that we can do to go in and kind of make our subject stand out a little bit more i'm actually just going to bring down the exposure on the entire image and we're going to go in and select our subject again so select subject give it a second and this one has actually done a really good job even on the hand there you can see even the hair's done a pretty good job if we wanted to go and tidy that up remember we can usually you will have to this one is just a really good example so we can do subtract brush and then just go out and brush any area we didn't actually want it to grab just like that in the same way you can add so i could go down to brush and add in any area and then we can go and adjust our subject from there so for this one i'm just going to bring it up a little bit in terms of the exposure bring up my shadow as a fraction as well and that's looking nice i might even just bring up the clarity a little bit just to make my subject stand out so if i turn that mask off you can see again nice and subtle but it just makes the subject stand out a little bit more don't go too heavy with these it is tempting i know myself i'm often going on the heavier side with edits but if you push these too much it's just going to look unnatural and sometimes it'll look a bit like a green screen so don't go too hard try and keep your edits reasonably subtle and it will still have a big impact on the overall image so the next thing i want to do on this one i'm actually going to go and add another one i'm going to select subject again but this time i'm going to come down to invert you can see that's going to select the entire area behind the subject and i'm actually just going to soften that a little bit so i'm going to bring clarity down i'm going to bring my texture down and i'm actually going to make it a little bit cooler as well just to make the subject really stand out i'm just going to bring the overall image a little bit warmer to boost those skin tones this just makes the skin tones stand out a little bit by bringing down the background and making it a little bit cooler the only thing here i don't want to make this pole too soft so we're going to go in and subtract and we're going to go brush i might turn it on so i can see what i'm doing so tick show overlay and i'm just going to brush out the pole here you can see how this is doing a really good job and that's because i have auto mask turned on if i turn this off you can see [Music] it's much harder i'm not actually following those lines so this is a bit of a cheat make sure you have auto mask on it will use the ai to kind of help you paint between the lines i wish i had this as a kid i've always been impatient so anything that makes you be able to do these things easier is great for me so go down there and mask out the pole that just means we're not losing any of that detail in the poll so turn that off you can see this whole layer it's actually been quite subtle it's just softening the background there a little bit so the last thing i want to do in this image is add one more mask i'm going to add a radial gradient this time so i used to use radial filters all the time and i'm still going to this one i just want to boost the light source at the top here so i'm going to boost the exposure bring up the temperature a bit bring down clarity to soften dehaze a little bit maybe boost that light a little bit more make it a little bit bigger and i'm pretty happy with that hit enter if i turn them off each individually we've got that radial filter adding that light from the top we've got that kind of softening of the background and then we've got also that bringing out the subject a little bit that one again quite subtle but does a really nice job at making our subject stand out so this next example obviously street photo usually with our street photography we're going to find our subject doesn't stand out as much as usually when you're shooting a portrait image so you may think lightroom is going to struggle a little bit more to find the subject which probably is true but you can still go and tidy it up using your brushes it's still going to save you a whole lot of time this one i'll do a little bit differently let's apply a preset first got kind of my portrait presets here which i actually might use that one looks pretty nice so let's test out lightroom and see how it goes finding this subject with a little bit more going on we'll go select subject [Music] and actually it's done a pretty good job it may need to be tidied up a little bit so we'll go subtract brush clean that up [Music] if you do want to change the color of your overlay because it's blending in a little bit you can do that here as well so next thing i want to do is basically brighten the subject make it stand out a little bit more so i'm just going to bring up the exposure i want to bring up the clarity make it kind of a bit sharper around the subject bring up the whites a little bit even on that just to make it kind of pop a little bit it's going to reduce the contrast a tiny bit and you can see the mask off mask on it's done just a subtle job to boost our subject there the next thing i want to show you on this one i'm actually going to add in radial gradient i was going to say radial filter because that's what they used to be called in classic let's go radial gradient i can get out of this and just hit shift m which is the shortcut as well then just click wherever i want to add my radial filter so for this one i want to boost that light that's naturally coming from the tram but keep it behind my subject so really easy to do that now with these new tools i'm just going to boost this to start with i'm going to boost the light up i'm going to make it a little bit warmer behind the subject a little bit of haze there negative clarity and negative texture this just makes it a little bit dreamier makes that light nice and hazy but you can see it's really affecting the subject there so this is a really nifty trick i'm going to come up to subtract again select subject and that's going to remove the area where the subject is just like that if i move this around you can see i've got this light now behind my subject where i can move that's not going to affect the subject at all you can see before with just the preset after this image is standing out a little bit more we've got this nice glow behind our subject there so moving on to a landscape image here so we can use our select sky tool this tool really shines here for editing your landscape images because often like this one we expose to keep all the detail in the sky which means the rest of the photo including the foreground the pagoda here can end up quite dark so i'm going to use the select sky tool and let's see how that does it's done an okay job i think it's got a little bit of extra here but i'm going to invert it on this occasion so by inverting this now we've selected the entire image other than the sky so we can go ahead and bring up the exposure of the rest of the image bring up our shadows a little bit and we have exposed the overall image nicely i've just lost a lot of detail here in fuji so we can fix fuji here i'm just going to add in another subtract come down maybe a radial filter would be good on this one and just bring that radial filter around mount fuji there that's fine because it's still keeping this nice kind of low cloud and mist there so i'm happy with that you can see the overall image is exposed nicely the next thing i want to do with this one is actually change a little bit of the color in the sky make it look a bit more like sunrise sunset bring out some of this color that we can see a little bit in the clouds so again i'm going to add in another select sky mask this one i am just going to very quickly tidy up by using subtract and brush again [Music] all right to change the color i could use this hue slider here but i'm actually mostly going to use the white balance sliders here i'm going to make this warmer and bring in a little bit more magenta you can see the sky is already looking a little bit more like a nice sunrise sunset if i turn off this mask you can see how we've changed the color in the sky the only thing i don't like here if i turn the mask off again we've lost a lot of this nice blue in the sky so i'm going to turn that back on i'm going to come down to subtract this time i'm going to come down to color range this is our little dropper selector tool you can see click anywhere to sample colors i'm going to sample this blue in the sky and it's actually going to subtract that blue from our mask so you can see we've still got color there in the clouds turn that off it's just affecting the clouds now we've got this blue back in the sky we can refine that to blend it in a little bit as well and then we can tweak it a little bit if we want we might want to just bring in a little bit of negative texture to soften up make that nice and dreamy in the sky so now we've exposed that image nicely you can see before and after the entire image is exposed nicely there's a little bit of color added into the sky so these tools are really handy for all your landscape edits we can go ahead and finish that edit with the tone curve adjusting colors however you see fit so last example here i've got a really nice shot of a couple here i'm just going to boost the overall exposure a little bit before we start the edit again i'm going to come up and select our subject this one has done a pretty good job it's maybe missed a little bit in between the hair here otherwise it's pretty perfect of course i could go and adjust this a little bit but we already know how to do that so i'm not going to waste time showing you that let's go ahead and just brighten it up a little bit in terms of the subject so exposure shadows maybe bring up the clarity maybe bring up the whites and just reduce the contrast a little bit [Music] so you can see before after or if i turn this mask off just brought out our subject nicely this one again i want to go in and adjust that whole area behind the subject without affecting the subject so again i'm going to go create new mask select subject and then invert it and it's going to select that entire image other than the subject again we can tidy that up with add and subtract if we needed to so for this one what i want to actually do is keep the saturation there in the subject just reduce it in the background so this saves so much time it really makes your subject stand out i haven't changed the skin tones at all in the same way if i wanted to tweak the white balance and just change the color of the sky a little bit it's not affecting my skin tones at all so this is so handy i can even just soften the sky there a little bit just to make this image feel a little bit more dreamy just some subtle adjustments there and i'm really happy with this of course you can go and make further adjustments from here i haven't touched any of the rest of the sliders yet but this is so exciting i've already got a really nice edit there and i haven't done anything else to this photo other than those masking tools there we have my tips for getting the most out of these new tools in lightroom hope you did find this video useful remember to subscribe if you did keep creating keep growing i'm tk north i'll catch you in the next one bye for now [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: TKNORTH

Views: 5,506

Keywords: lightroom, lightroom update, lightroom 2021, lightroom sky mask, lightroom subject mask, adobe lightroom, lightroom classic, lightroom cc, lightroom masking, lightroom auto mask, lightroom select subject, select subject, select sky, photo editing, lightroom presets, lightroom tutorial, how to use lightroom, how to use new lightroom masking, lightroom classic tutorial, photo editing tutorial, tknorth, tk north, lightroom editing, lightroom tips

Id: n6ZmGbN88Z0

Length: 15min 6sec (906 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 01 2021