Store
Masking 101: The most powerful photo editing tool!
This video is a tutorial on how to properly use masking tools in photo editing, featuring examples in Lightroom and tips for different types of masks.
🔗 Chamonix Photo Editing Series https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6kUdfoIX4tw8_BC7ap3eh_cqizopAxek
🔗 Free Presets! https://loicbellemarealford.ca/store/presets/free-lightroom-presets/
🔗 Photos https://loicbellemarealford.ca/photography/2023/03/chamonix-lyon-full-album/
► WATCH NEXT
- Astrophotography video https://youtu.be/r0Rzd07gSd0
- Sony A7 IV Review https://youtu.be/54Ym0qk8mIc
- My iPad ruined my trip! https://youtu.be/2qUdSz79df4
► COME SAY HI!
https://loicbellemarealford.ca
► GEAR I USE ON YOUTUBE
https://loicbellemarealford.ca/gear
#photoediting #masking #lightroom
► MY MUSIC
- Affiliate link for Epidemic Sound: https://www.epidemicsound.com/referral/iu5gau/
hello everyone this is the last part of my series on editing the photos I took during my ski trip in Germany France and in this one we're going to be talking about demystifying the masking tools and this is very important if you want to bring your pictures to the next level let's get started by Rolling the intro for those of you into this channel I'm like benma Alford and young photographing filmmaker on the journey became better at this art just before we start I want to remind you that I'm going to be using my MacBook Pro and also Lightroom created these photos but it really doesn't matter what you're using whether it's your phone or tablet or a completely different device or a totally different software like polar photo editor my favorite free photo editing app also don't forget to stick till the end if you want to learn how to get my free presets that I use on all of the photos for this trip okay so up to now inside of our edits we apply the presets to get a base edit we treat them a little bit to get better settings then in the second video we talked about how you can use a plume stamp tool to remove distractions and make the whole shot just look better in general and this is the third and last step that I apply and it's adding masks to really make the pictures look better in the end and really help the viewer to look at the proper parts of the image so instead of here we're going to open the first image here and talk about water mask in the first place if we come inside of the app and we go on the side right here we're going to be able to have their different mask appear here instead of Lightroom mobile they're at the bottom of the app or if you using polar photo editor I think they're completely on a different tab but all of the apps have very similar features in the end for masking so first of all here we have some very basic mass for example linear gradient right here so this allows us to apply linear gradient or we could apply a radial gradient so these are the most basic types of masks that are out there and these are very important because they Define the parts here that are in red they're going to be able to Define different types of settings then the rest of the image you might have heard about local editing on your images and this is really important if you want to be able to tweak some parts of the images but not all of the other ones at the same time because a lot of the times when you're applying an edit to the whole image it makes some parts of image look worse and some parts of them look even better after the basic types of that we have here linear gradient and also Masters a bunch of different ones and this is going to very vary depending on the software using but here here we have an object one here you can simply come here draw on your image what you want and AI is going to detect what whatever you're trying to drop it wasn't perfect in this case but you get the point then there's a brush most tools have a brush that's a really simple one you can just like brush whatever the part you want to be editing finally here we also have a people so if there was somebody in my shot I could use that there's a sky option this one is really cool I use it all the time inside of my shots these days then there's color range so I could select a color here and say I want to select everything with a similar color inside of this shot and finally we have a luminance range so this could say I want to have everything that's very dark in the image or I want to have everything that is very bright so we can tweak your different settings here so on this shot I'm going to start here and delete all of the different masks and do what I do for most shots which are very basic edits here so first of all when you have a blue sky like here I usually don't like keeping a blue sky like this just because it's very boring and it's kind of distracting because here you have your Center piece of the image that you want to be showing but then at the top here there's not much interest inside of it so just to add a little bit more interest and bring your eye towards the subject so this is a concept that is very important you want to use Mass to mask out the parts that you don't want people to see as much so usually make them darker make them softer something like that and bring the eye towards the main subject of the image so in here we're going to add a mask from the top to the bottom here something very simple we're going to bring down the exposure you don't want to go too much because like looking like this this looks awful so you want to be very careful of just adding something that's very subtle that most people won't see I might add a little bit more feather here and like this this look just looks natural if we exit right here we're gonna see you don't really see it but subtly with your eye when you look at this image now you're looking more at the mountain and the colorful colors the second way I use this a lot is to create some vignettes you have to be careful with vignettes you don't want to be adding vignettes to every single photos but in this case where most of the things around the main subjects are pretty boring it's the same pattern and everything this can be a really good place where you could add a vignette and for this we're going to use a riddle gradient right here we're going to come here make a 9 nice and big so we have a really nice feather right here I'm actually going to increase the feather even more by using the on-screen tools and then we're going to come here and invert because we want to select the parts that are around here and we're going to make those parts darker so now we're going to just bring it down a little bit here and this is really going to help bring the attention to your subject and by using a radial Grid in here instead of using the vignette tools inside of Lightroom you're able to really Target the different parts of the image where you want to bring the attention so instead of bringing it in the middle of the shot you're bringing it exactly on the subject you want to have depending on the size where it's located and things like that so just from here so if we want to look at before and after you're going to see it's subtle but it does really help bringing your eye towards that subject now what we're going to do I think is really pretty helpful is go through a bunch of examples to show you how I applied masks to the different shots it's going to really get a good idea of what I'm doing what type of mask I'm using and what you can do with them to make them look better so if we start with the first shot right here my goal right here if we remove the mask right here was actually just to make sure that the sides here were a little bit less visible so you can really see the background because you want to have the eye go to the background right here so first of all we have a mask at the bottom right here this is simply making the exposure down a little bit on the pavement here then I think I painted with some brushes right here both sides of the place but actually use here what we call an intersect a mask so if I want to recreate this one I'm just going to quickly show you how to do this because this is something pretty cool you can do inside a Lightroom is let's say I only want signal it's like this part I can do a first video gradient here to select all of this side but now if I apply the mask here I'm also going to be including the bottom part here and we don't want that so here we can do the subtract option here using a little later linear gradient do a little bigger feather here and now I've selected only that part of this side here I actually could have tried using also the AI option here so the object here and try and paint this there um there's always a bunch of different ways of doing this so you could use different oils actually works pretty well here using this but the idea here was simply Bringing Down the Luminosity here on the side right here I actually just brought down the highlights here same thing on the right side did something very similar here where I just removed some of the highlights on both sides to bring the tension in the end here if you look at the second shot right here it's actually very simple on most of the shots I simply applied a mask to the sky so here I used a sky option and brought back down the exposure a little bit and brought the contrast because if you look at it before the skies are usually over blooming these shots and I want to make them look like if there's more dynamic range than there was actually when I was looking at the scene the next one here is one case where I have a little bit more of an extreme vignette so here we have the vignette if we look at it we're found here we're gonna see it's kind of a boring shot but here we have some some very strong leading lines going all around here towards the subject here of the bridge so here we can use a stronger vignette because it's really going to bring your eye towards what you want inside of this shot if you look at here I also have a mask on the sky again just bringing down some of the highlights bring some of the contrast just because they had nice clouds that were very moody so I wanted to bring things out when you have a sunset using mask can be a must right here because they allow really to get some of the details back from the sky so if you look at the sky mask we've had here we see we don't really get a sunset here so bringing this back really helps what you have to be careful is that if you're editing a sky right here and let's say you decide you want to bring this up make it super bright or something like that I don't know go crazy with it now because the rest of the shot is not that bright and your sky is too bright compared to the rest it doesn't really look natural so you have to be careful I mean same thing here if you go super dark bring back all this detail it doesn't really look natural because I had the rest of the scene doesn't match we want to go somewhere where here the colors are clipping a little bit but not too much much and overall look good another little trick here as I added a linear gradient at the bottom here remove the exposure a little bit this just makes it a little bit darker Here Without Really changing much but it just helps bringing your eye again towards the houses and the sunset I also applied it here at AI mask right here to allow to uh just add a little bit of exposure here inside of the house and also add a little bit of texture just to make them a little bit sharper in the end very similar idea in the next shot right here so we have here a radial gear gradient that goes on the mountain here actually I think this one is pretty important just to really darken a little bit of quarters and bring your tension here then I have here an object mask AI mask here that adds some texture inside of the mountain and the haze here you're going to see if we remove it it's really subtle here but again it just makes the mountains pop a little bit more and finally a mask on the sky I pretty much apply the mask on the sky in almost every single shot this next one is a photo that I edited a lot more you can see there's a lot more Mass right here so if we go through different ones first of all there's a radial gradient right here to add some detail for the amount in the background so here it's just making everything else darker because that's our main subject on this side here there's another one here where I bring down the exposure a little bit nothing too special this one the background is actually interesting I selected all of the background using the AI object and then brought the contrast up just to make it look a little bit punchier and had a little bit more contrast inside of it finally at the bottom here I'm adding a foreground mask right here one thing I'm doing here is simply reducing a little bit the highlights just to make it a little bit darker and again bring your attention to the back of the image if you look at the sky mask right here I went a little bit crazy and really made the clouds a lot darker this is important because in this set image it just makes it moodier and really shows how it was when I was there that day final mask here again removal even more some of the highlights here I play with the contrast a little bit more so these are all the things I applied on this image to make it look better this next one is actually interesting here because there's a very subtle little one so as usual there's one on the sky mask but again nothing very special here but if you look at this one right here it's just painted over here nothing very special with this one but what is pretty special right here is actually I use the highlights to bring them a little bit less inside of the view but the big thing that I actually do here is just in Brighton here I bring the clarity down completely so if we toggle it on and off you're gonna see that just it just makes the foreground here softer to the eye so you don't look at them as much you go to the part that at the back here where there's more contrast there's more things to look at because that's just not interesting so it's just a quick way of making this part less attractive to people and bring the subject out of the picture but the next one here definitely one of my favorite pictures of the trip and I was really happy to recover it using masks because you really can see the power on this one so if we look at the picture here before the masks first of of how we have a few problems here so on the sides here the sides are way too bright so this building here looks too bright the clouds are the trees here on the side also with the white are too bright and we don't really see the stars in the sky so I applied here a mask automatic mask for this guy right here and this allowed me to bring the stars out using the clarity tool I have other videos I talk about how to edit the skies inside of your videos as for photography shots so definitely go check those astrophographic videos if you want to learn more about that but what really really helped here is the mask that I have at the front here so here what I did was applying the invert of a sky mask so this is going to select everything that's in the foreground right here and then I applied the original gradient that I removed so I removed the center part here so this in the engine just applies a mask on the sides right here and allows me to bring down the exposure here and make these parts less of a distraction inside of the shot again I think you understood the theme up to now I love what you're doing in photo editing is just removing distractions and making your subject pop inside of the shot so this is a really good way here where it allowed me to get the shot again let's look at the before and after I think here The Masks are very important to make this shot look better same thing here another reason why using masks can be very useful is for when you have very high dynamic range and really tough shots to take you can use Mass to just make everything come out and look better so here if I don't apply a mask I cannot recover the parts of the background here because I already have the highlights completely down so in this case I can add a bunch of mascara and select different parts and through each of them go through and remove some of the highlights remove some of the exposure just to make sure that the background and the foreground work perfectly well together and look as if they were one if you look at the next shot right here this is actually one of my favorite shots of my trip very very simple but if we look without the mask here so there's simply one on the sky without it I think this sky looks too distracting but by removing this you really bring the attention on these clouds all over the mountain and this just makes it look a lot better this is one example here using the person object AI detection so this allows me to control the background here where I can bring down the exposure of the background a little bit and make the background look better and then I can apply some edits to the person in the shot and this is very important because if you look at the shot without the mask feel like the original one here there's not as much detail on my face and if I try correcting for me it's really hard then to correct for the background so having the twist mask working together just allows to get a better result one important thing if you're applying a vignette like right here and let's say you apply it too much and you apply it like this you might not realize especially if you're eating on your phone right away that it's looking pretty bad so one trick right here is simply go in and zoom out of your image completely and now look at your shot here if it looks weird because there's some parts that are very dark and darker parts are not as dark that's because you went too far with your radial gradient here so you want to come back here and adjust it and make it look more natural this is a good way of editing your photos and making sure that it's looking natural so if when they're small they're looking good if they're looking good when they're also big that means that you nailed your middle Gatorade again you want to make sure that these masking techniques don't make the picture look worse you want to keep the natural and not go crazy with them and make something that looks completely unnatural this is honestly one of my favorite shots of the whole trip I think it's a really nice one and again here some masking was required um but it's very simple actually I'm just applying some mask in the background here on this objects I used the object to find the tool and I'm basically removing some of the highlights so if we remove this mask we're going to see and it just helps bring out the mountain on the background a little bit I also bring the texture up a lot but actually I miss my focus a little bit so it's not as sharp as I want it to be this just helps bring out the mountain a little bit then I also apply a mask on the whole background here on the sky again Lightroom does a really good job of picking out the background and the foreground here and I'm just adding some contrast removing some highlights and this just allows to add more detail inside of the clouds here because I think without the clouds it's a little bit of a boring shot and adding more detail inside of the clouds just makes the whole thing a lot nicer so here the two masks are not as much to bring the attention on the subject and just making the whole image better looking and more interesting in the end here again it's another case where I use the people tool here here I just tweaked a little bit to make the highlights a little bit higher if we remove this one it's just I'm a little bit darker it's very subtle different here but it just allows me to be pop out a little bit more it's a picture this has to be a little bit longer than I expected but I hope that these examples helped you understand when I decide to apply a mask or Not In general the question I asked myself because I don't apply Mass to all the photos even though I did part for three quarters of the photos of this trip is I'm asking myself can I make the subject come out by making some of the parts of the image brighter darker and more contrast reduce the contrast or things like that and if the answer is yes that I could apply a mask somewhere to be able to get some better results I do it but this is really something you have to test out and try and play and see if what works or not because the more you're going to do this the more you're gonna know in the future when looking at a shot very quickly which type of mask you should apply how you can apply it and how you can improve your shot by using them so this is definitely take some practice to know when some masks are required or not inside of your images but I really do hope it did convince you that masks are super useful inside of your images decided for the other videos inside of this series there's going to be a link down in the description with the photos at different stages so there's gonna be the original photo then a photo with the presets the photo where the Clones applied and finally the final shot edited using the mask and all of the other editing techniques I talked about inside of those videos if you're interested in getting the free presets definitely go check out the link down in the description it's going to ask you to subscribe to my newsletter you can unsubscribe anytime if you don't really want to get them but I think I'm doing pretty useful for you because I'm going to be sharing some of the tips I have on my website every month but also the photos I publish on my website some photos I shared on Instagram also some photos and videos I'm sharing on YouTube so I think it's just a good way of keeping up to date what I'm doing and in exchange you get some free presets so I think it's a win-win for both of us if you enjoyed this video please let me know by hitting the like button below and definitely subscribe to my channel for more content on photography and filmmaking see you in the next one foreign
What is this video about?
Masks are honestly a game-changer in photo editing, and I want to show you why. In this video, I'm breaking down everything I know about masking—the different types, when to use them, and how they can transform your images from good to great.
This is the final part of my editing series from my ski trip in France and Germany. By now, we've covered applying presets for a base edit, using the clone stamp tool to remove distractions, and now we're tackling masks—the tool that really brings photos to the next level.
I'll walk you through the main mask types you'll encounter: linear and radial gradients (the most basic but essential), brush masks for precise control, and the AI-powered options like object detection and sky masks that save so much time. There's also luminance and color range masking for targeting specific tones or colors in your image. Whether you're using Lightroom, Polar Photo Editor, or another app, the concepts are the same.
The key insight behind masking is this: you're not trying to make every part of your image look amazing at once. Instead, you're strategically darkening, brightening, or adjusting contrast in certain areas to draw the viewer's eye to your subject and away from distractions. I show real examples of how I've done this across my trip photos—darkening boring skies to add drama, adding subtle vignettes to focus attention, brightening a person's face while controlling the background, and recovering detail in high-contrast shots.
I'll also share some practical tricks, like why you should zoom out when checking your vignettes to make sure they look natural, and how to use inverted masks to select specific areas. The golden rule: keep it subtle and natural. Going too far with masks actually makes photos look worse, not better.
The more you practice with masks, the faster you'll develop an intuition for when and how to use them. I don't mask every photo, but when I do, it's because I can see a clear way to make the subject pop or improve the overall composition. By the end of this video, you should have plenty of real-world examples to inspire your own editing work.