With every Lightroom update, the overall power of the application increases. This could not be more evident than with the release of their newest tool, Range Masks. The need to create masks in order to create highly refined selections has always been one of the main reasons I had to move an image from Lightroom over to Photoshop to finish an edit. Also, the need to create highly-selective masks targeting very specific components of an image has almost become a standard practice with every image that I edit. When you make global adjustments, you might be effectively correcting one area of your scene, but at the same time you could be negatively impacting another.
This is where having the ability to create a highly-targeted selection to a specific area of your photo is critical. The ability to do all of this under the proverbial hood that is Lightroom is huge! In my opinion, the less I have to bounce an image from one editing software to another the better. So, the more I can accomplish in Lightroom the better.
Focused Local Adjustments
As we mentioned earlier, making global adjustments to an entire image is fine in some situations, but you often need to make refined local adjustments. For instance, you may want to increase the shadows in one specific area of your foreground, but keep the shadow levels unchanged across the remainder of your image. This is where the Lightroom Range Masks tool comes in super handy. With the luminance or color range mask, depending on the scene, you can make a highly-refined selection only targeting the foreground of your scene while leaving the remainder of your image untouched.
Range Masks are a great way to bring out the details and colors in every part of your landscape image while also selectively balancing light and exposure to create natural looking photos. Read More>
Mark