Lightroom Masking - This is What You've Been Waiting For!

in this video we're going to look at the new incarnation shall we say of lightroom and this new update so i'm going to dive right into this and show you what i've discovered so far [Music] adobe has done something really really great with the new update and i'm going to run through two or three images here just to show you briefly what it can do and as you can see the panel icons have changed slightly but everything is still there as well but i'm going to jump straight into the masking because that's what everyone's interested in and this is the biggest update in years and it's absolutely phenomenal so what i'm going to do is i'm going to select subject and that will select anchor here and as you can see how well it's selected even missing out some of the areas of grass now i can add to that or i can subtract to that if i wanted to add to that i could just click the add button and i could add it via a brush linear gradient a radial gradient i can add to it via color range luminance range but what i'm going to do is i'm actually going to subtract because you'll notice it's selected some of the ear so i'm going to go in there and i'm just going to click subtract and i'm going to use the brush to subtract that i've just set everything at 100 for the speed of the video so i'm just going to go in there and subtract some of this area now i won't be too delicate with this shall we say uh just for the purposes of the video so now that the mask is selected i can choose to leave the overlay on or i can turn off it's entirely up to yourself when you come to edit even if the overlay is on when you come to edit it will turn off anyway so it's entirely up to you what i'll do is i'll leave it on for the purposes of this video and i'm going to lift the exposure just slightly push the contrast slightly highlights i'll lift them a tiny bit shadows are worth them as well so that's how quickly and easily it can identify objects with thin or in this case subjects within an image if i want to rename that i can rename that to anchor and that drops in there now i can create a new mask and my new mask if i go for select sky there isn't really a sky there so it probably wouldn't read it so i'm going to select the subject again and this is the new mask and it's detecting the subject it will be the same again now for this i'm going to change the background as you know that that area there is also selected so with this mask here i'll rename this to background i just double clicked on that and i'm going to click ok or hit return on your keyboard i'm going to subtract from this mask and again i'm going to get into 100 and i'll just quickly paint this out so there we go that that's that removed see at least you get the idea with and i'll go back there so i want this edit to affect the background and leave the previous edit that we've just done alone i don't want to touch that so you'll notice you have your background here and then the brush where i remove that area there and then the subject now if i go into the subject and right click i can invert that so now it's the background that's selected with this image because there isn't really a sky in it so what i can do now is i can go in and i can change everything in here i can go in and push the contrast and make it slightly contrasty i can add a touch of green warm it up even further i can go into the dehaze bring it like that texture and the clarity or i can do the opposite and i can push the quality right back so you can see that from there to there bring the shadows down a little bit as well now color wise it's not the greatest but at least you can see how the edit works with this i can also pull the saturation just back slightly but it actually needs to go further for this image so i'll leave that one at that and i'll just click done and then i'll show you the before and after now that you've seen the before and after what i can do is i can get back in and i don't like the background here so if i click in the background it shows me my subject i can go in there and i can lift the exposure and it won't affect anchor herself so you can see how versatile this is and as you can see from the before and after the difference is there as well and for this if i want to get back into anchor just click there and again to the subject and i can push the contrast even further just here around there so that was very very quick and really really simple to do for that one moving on i thought i'd go into a very very simple landscape for that so i'm just going to jump in here select the sky and you'll see how quickly it selects the sky as a simple sky though but you'll see how quickly it did select that there from here i'm going to turn the exposure down just around about there i'm going to push the contrast now this isn't an editing video this is just showing you what it can do i'm going to bring the highlights back slightly and push the contrast a tiny bit further i'm also going to warm it up slightly as well and mainly i'm looking at these clouds so i'm quite happy with that so that looks great what i can also do is if i go into sky i can go into these three dots here and i can duplicate the sky and watch the difference this makes so you can see that it's actually brought out more in here so we now have two sky layers if i turn that one off you can see the difference in that if you just look around that area you may notice as well it selected some of the areas up here but we can deal with that via the subtract i now want to create the foreground and edit the foreground so because of this if i choose select subject in this case it doesn't select the castle as well as i thought it would it actually selects an area here but possibly because of the shape or possibly because of the light and dark and the contrast within it it did select the castle but it also selected this but first i'm going to get in and rename this one to sky so we have that and that's that's okay there next i'm going to create a new mask and this time i'm going to select the sky again which it will do rather easily and if again to the sky right click invert it now selects the foreground so with this i can go into the foreground now and edit that to complement the sky that's there so i'll just do this rather quickly for this and i'm going to push the contrast a bit more i'm going to lift the shadows so you can see there everything that it's done if i click done just now and show you the before and after we started with that we now have that you may notice that some of the castle has been affected i'm going to show you how to get back to that though that castle has been affected by the first sky and then the second sky added to that and you can actually if i hover over the mask you can see that although it is selected some of it is still selected here so i'm going to get into the sky and i'm going to subtract for this i'm going to zoom in and i'm going to click subtract and i'm going to again i'm going to use the brush so if i do that and here and there we have it so i'm going to fit that back on screen so you see the castle is now back so what i can do now is i can get back into mask 1 which will be the foreground and so that you know it's the foreground there you go so what i need to do is rename that to foreground click ok so i can now play around with this to get it roughly where i want for this image and i'm going to dial in some dehaze to that just to give me a tiny bit of contrast perhaps a tiny bit of clarity so you can see the difference i'll quick done here and i'll go back into before and after so you can see the difference there already just by simply using the masks okay as you've probably noticed all the images i've used have had really really bold subject matter or bold sky so here's one with a little bit more complications in it so again back into the mask this time i'm going to select the subject we'll deal with the sky later because it probably will select the sky really really quickly there so we'll go in there and as you can see it's selected that is the main subject some of the bridge and the contrasted areas so let's add to that so if i go into the mask just by clicking on the mask click add again i'm going to go for the brush and i'm going to use the density at 100 for the purposes of this so i'm just going to paint right through here from that so i can just click erase and i'm just going to erase out the areas that i don't want and that's the contrast the areas underneath the bridge i don't want them to be affected so if again there as well and there and there so i now have the subject selected what i can then do is i can go in and lift the exposure if i'm quite happy with the sky i can do a simple edit and just lift the exposure on there push the contrast slightly i wouldn't even want to kill perhaps or push the cars very very slightly blacks i could raise so you get the idea you have so much versatility now especially with the select subject so i'm going to call that castle i'm going to create a new mask on top of that and as you can guess i'm going to select the sky here so with the new sky this is in real time and you can see how quickly that selected that again i'm just going to go in and edit this there's nothing that i want to do with it that will affect the image too much so i can pull that right back and what i'm actually doing is i'm looking for healing as well around the castle because of the contrasty areas but i'm not seeing any at all i can lift the shadows in the sky i could recolor the sky if i wanted as well i can push it down over there and there so you can see the versatility within this i'll push a tiny bit dehaze in there so how does it deal with subjects in this case a watch and a rather dark environment i'll just go in and we'll see select subject and we'll see how and what it selects with this so that's the first time i've tried this one so it has selected that uh and so then i can go in and let's just tint this about blue and let's push the contrast in it and left the exposure slightly just so that we're drawing to the watch a bit more so that was a relatively simple and quick edit with that so i'm going to leave that just around about there that's me there is nothing more to do with that one but if i want to change the background as well again i would just go select subject with this type of image and mask two and what i'm going to do is i'm going to go into the select subject and invert it so it's now the background that's selected yes you'll notice that there are some areas but as you know i could go into subtract with the brush and just remove some of these areas so that it doesn't affect anything more than the background so you get the idea with that i won't paint into that too much now i can go in back into the subject and i can bring the exposure back i can push the exposure i can dial in more blue than the watch just to complement it i could add some magenta into the shadows pull it back and make a different blue verging in the aqua put more contrast into it so you can see how easily it works with this subject matter as well for this one i thought this is part of a bracketed sequence and i thought it'd be interesting to see how to use some more of the tools to bring this back up we could simply go in and lift the exposure and lift the shadows up and lose the sky and put a gradient in but i thought what i would do is i would see how the mask works for this so i'm going to select the sky for this one and again straightforward one it should be able to select the sky straight away yep and it has so for this i can dial the sky down slightly add a touch more blue to it bring the exposure down let's add a touch of magenta just for fun and we have that but you'll notice because that's selected the sky it has selected here so everything here that we have if i go in here and turn that off you can see it's also darken this area here so how do we get around that well what we can do is we can actually add another gradient we can intersect with other things so if i click on the mask and i go into the sky and i right click on the sky and intersect mask with let's go for radial gradient for this one and i am going to pull that radial gradient just there because i want to keep how bright that is just around that area just for this example now what it's done as you'll notice it's that's been left dark and it's lighting this if i click invert it still leaves that in there so i still have the ability to darken everything without i'm going to add more magenta to this just to highlight what's happening that allows me to work and keep areas of the image or work with thin areas of the image as well and it allows me to keep the intensity of that glow i plus been able to manipulate the sky to what i want for it and i could warm it up i could take it back can dial in some more magenta if you follow comp stumps on instagram you'll know what i mean by dialing in more magenta uh so i could do that and i could dial that in like that and that leaves that there so so if you imagine an intercept for this i've added the sky selected the sky and edited the sky but i wanted to keep a part of the sky and this will be the same for mountains trees anything at all you can intersect with and that was basically click on it right click and then intersect with and you can have the brush linear gradient radial gradient color range or luminance you can go into any of these and tweak them as you see fit so what i'm going to do again is i want to whiten up the foreground here and a better name that one sky i need to get into the habit of that so now what i want to do is i want to affect the foreground in this and as i say this is a part of a bracketed series so just want to see how it's going to actually interact with this i'm going to create a new mask i'm going to select the sky in this case again simple sky and it's just an invert now that it's selected the sky if i click on the mask and i'll rename this one straight away and this will be foreground hit return now that i've renamed it click on there and then right click on sky 1 and invert and that will show me my selection of the foreground from here i can go in and push exposure i can adjust the contrast slightly lift the shadows push the highlights slightly not too much i bring back the blacks and i may even warm it up slightly to about there so that's for a bracketed image and with this i've managed to maintain everything in here now this is entirely editable even beyond what i've just done uh so i could go back into the sky and as you can see everything's there if i get into sky 1 and click on it what i can do is i can darken that down lighten it up add more magenta bring that back warm it up slightly just so that we're maintaining the integrity of it as well can also go in and dehaze to bring back some of that so i'm going to click done with this and i'm going to show you the before and after so that's the before and after now this is very very visible here that i've kept that especially when you see this but the good thing is what you can do is i can go back in and go into the sky and go into the radial i'm gonna hold down alt and just bring that up there ever so slightly and bring that back down and then we should see that effect so now that i have that if i want to add a slight vignette to it i'm going to zoom out and because i'm not so keen on the vignettes in here i'm going to create my own so what i'm going to do is i'm going to go into the create new mask click there and i'm going to go for a radial gradient i'm going to draw that over the image take that out even further just about there and i'm going to turn off the overlay i'm going to darken it slightly very very slightly so what i didn't do there was i didn't rename my vignette and i'm just going to go in there and rename this and click ok i'm going to close that just now and very quickly speak about brushes and radial filters and everything else that you had available with the previous version of lightroom we'll be glad to know that they're still available if i go into the mask and create new mask this time i'm going to go for brush and so the custom menu is going to appear if i click the drop down of the custom menu all the old brushes that i created in the previous version of white room have migrated onto this one so what i'm going to do is i'm going to go for a soft shading brush soft light brush and then here i'm just going to paint that in right you're gonna see a massive difference here because of the setting that that's at so you can see how that brush has worked there but what i can do they are still totally and utterly controllable so you won't lose any of your previous saved brushes save radio filters save gradients or anything hopefully you enjoyed that and hopefully it lets you see just a little part of what the new masking feature in the lightroom can do i am really looking forward to getting into some serious editing with it because so far i've been blown away before it can do i personally think it's going to change editing and well done adobe thanks for watching there will be future videos using this that is a definite and i'm looking forward to editing the next batches of images with it thanks again for watching and i hope you enjoy the new lightroom update i'm sure you will see in the next video [Music]

Channel: Gary McIntyre Photographer

Views: 4,342

Keywords: lightroom masking tutorial, lightroom masking brush, lightroom masking slider, lightroom masking, adobe lightroom, lightroom auto mask, masking in lightroom, lightroom mask, lightroom update 2021, lightroom update, Lightroom masking ai, lightroom masking update, lightroom masking new, auto mask in lightroom, lightroom select subject, lightroom select sky, lightroom october 2021 update, lightroom 11, lightroom 2021 whats new, range mask, Lightroom tutorial

Id: D7PPvlxWJrg

Length: 22min 12sec (1332 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 26 2021