Adobe Camera Raw

Lightroom's New Masking Tools Finally Fix the Thing That Was Driving Me Crazy
Video Tutorials

Lightroom's New Masking Tools Finally Fix the Thing That Was Driving Me Crazy

I was editing a landscape shot last week, a late-afternoon frame with a ridgeline cutting across a gradient sky, and I hit the same wall I’ve been hitting for years. The luminance range mask was doing most of the job, but the edge blending looked like it had been cut out with scissors. I’ve built enough workarounds for this problem that I stopped noticing how annoying it was. That’s a bad sign.

Lightroom's Quietly Dropped Two Masking Features That Change Everything About Local Adjustments
Video Tutorials

Lightroom's Quietly Dropped Two Masking Features That Change Everything About Local Adjustments

Last month I was editing a shot from Percy Warner Park, golden hour light cutting through a dense tree line, the kind of image that looks effortless until you try to isolate the sky. I dropped a linear gradient over the top third, pulled down the highlights, and the result looked exactly like what it was: a hard-edged box sitting on top of my photo. The tree branches bleeding into the mask looked painted.