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Take your photos to the next level with Lightroom’s luminosity and colour masks

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Luminosity masks are an extremely valuable tool within Photoshop, particularly for landscape photographers who are often dealing with high dynamic range scenes that can leave scenes looking a little uneven. Sure, you can leave it up to semi-automated HDR software to try and pull all that detail out of a raw, but luminosity masks allow you to do it with a very specific level of control.

Well, you may not know that Lightroom now has luminosity masks built right in, allowing you to make fine-tuned adjustments to different parts of your image, based solely on their existing brightness level. In this video, photographer Alex Armitage shows you how they work and how you can use them to even out your landscape shots.

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How to use masking and augmented sky in Luminar Sky Replacement

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A few days back, I compared Photoshop and Luminar AI Beta’s sky replacement feature. When I turned to Luminar AI, I struggled with a mountain that was too warm for my taste. It turns out, I managed to overlook an important sky replacement tool; the masking brush. In this article, I will show you how to use masking to improve the sky replacement algorithm. Further, I also have a closer look at what Skylum calls Augmented Sky.

Skylum’s goal with Luminar AI is to create a processing software for the casual user who doesn’t want to spend hours editing an image. The developers have designed the software to help photographers make quick and precise adjustments using the power of AI.

It’s time to employ masks and play around in Augmented sky.

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Use this quick tip to get more precise cutouts in Photoshop

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When you mask an object out in Photoshop, it may happen that you miss a few spots, no matter how hard you try. In this video, Jesús Ramirez of Photoshop Training Channel shares a simple tip, yet effective that will help you avoid this mistake every next time you’re making a cutout.[Read More…]

How to mask anything in Lightroom in a few seconds

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Lightroom’s Auto Mask option is a useful tool that can save you a lot of time. But this video from Signature Edits shows you how you can make the Auto Mask feature even faster and more efficient. This way you’ll be able to mask even very complex images in a few seconds, which will save you even more post-processing time.

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How to use channels to create masks in Photoshop – a comprehensive tutorial

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If you are doing any kind of compositing or digital work that requires masking and object extraction you owe it to yourself to watch this video. Stefan Kohler of RawExchange is giving an 80 minutes tour of masking and object extraction that goes from the very basics of masking all the way to techniques used high-end retouchers. And best of all, it’s 100% free. just head over and watch it on youtube.

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10 tips to make selections that cut out anything in Photoshop

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Photoshop’s selection tools seem to evolve and change with every new update. Techniques and technology evolve to make selections a little easier than they were before. At least, that’s the theory, sometimes they just get more frustrating. But, there’s still no one technique that works for everything.

This video from Nathaniel Dodson at Tutvid is a long one. At 37 minutes, you’re not going to be finding any instant fix magic bullets. But, he goes through several different selection methods to explain how they all works, how to use them and what kind of images they work best on.

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Ultimate guide to selections: the Pen tool

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I know there are a lot people out there who want to be better at Photoshop – heck, I’ve been doing this for almost half of my life and I want to be better! Well, I was really thinking about it and it dawned on me that more often than any other tip, I’m telling people they really should master the pen tool. It is hands down the most advanced and precise selection tool and if you boil Photoshop down to its simplest form, it’s a SELECTIVE photo editing software. So I thought to myself, “Hey self, why not really dive deep into selection tools – how to do them, when to use which one, and why they are so dang important?”

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How to get killer selections with Channels and Vivid Light

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Ever since wanting to focus on colour in my images I’ve found that often times due to budget or location, that I just quite simply cannot get the colours I’d like right in the camera. This means that I’ll often have to change colours in post and that, of course, in turn requires decent selections! There’s a million ways to do that in Photoshop, but I want to give you a kick start guide right here with a basic setup that I truly believe will change your life in selection if you’re unsure of this process.

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Your Next Smart Selection Could Be Powered By A Neural Network

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Admit it! object masking sucks. It’s not that it is impossible, even the hardest selections and masks can be created with some work (and some methods require less work that others). But, in general, masking is a hard and tedious work.

Researchers in the The Chinese University of Hong Kong working with Adobe Research are now showing some work that uses Convolutional Neural Networks to successfully mask portraits. The paper bears the boring name “Automatic Portrait Segmentation for Image Stylization” [PDF link], and it shows how selection and masking can significantly improve if the software knows that it’s making a portrait.

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