Lessons

Lesson Info

LRC Local Adjustments: Masking

1 So we're gonna go a little outta order again 2 because I have run into an opportunity to use another tool 3 that I haven't introduced you to 4 and it's probably a little out of the way 5 'cause we still haven't introduced you to a bunch 6 of these other tools 7 but we're gonna go up to the masking options. 8 So masking is this little circle 9 at the top right-hand side here 10 that has this dotted line around it. 11 So that is masks. 12 If I click on masks, 13 I get a whole bunch of different options. 14 Subject, sky, background, objects, brush, linear gradient, 15 radial gradient, range, and people. 16 So these are the options 17 that I have inside of the mask tool. 18 Right now I just wanna cover the concept of basic masking. 19 So I am going to create a radial gradient. 20 So I click on radial gradient 21 and when I click on any kind of mask, 22 it's gonna open up this little panel up here next 23 to the histogram that shows the new mask. 24 That new mask is not really gonna sta...

y there 25 until you do something with it. 26 Either you paint with it, you adjust something, 27 you gotta do something, 28 otherwise that's gonna disappear on you. 29 So once it appears, then we're going 30 to draw our radial gradient 31 and radial gradient just starts in the middle 32 and kind of fades out like this. 33 And there's a lot of different choices 34 that you can make with it, 35 the first one being the feather itself. 36 But I'm gonna make the radial gradient 37 so you can see what it is. 38 So if I click on her 39 and I drag out, I've just created a gradient 40 and what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna drag it out like this 41 so that it's really focused on her. 42 And then that, if I hover over it, 43 I can see the gradient itself. 44 But I can come here 45 and tell it to always show the overlay by clicking on that. 46 So now I've got that overlay always showing 47 and I can hit invert. 48 So there's several ways to invert. 49 So if I hit the quotation mark key, 50 it inverses the gradient. 51 The other way to do it is to go to the mask itself. 52 And now you can see that the mask 53 has a little thumbnail of the mask here. 54 And on the right-hand side, it's got a triple dot button 55 and a visual button. 56 So I can turn it on and off. 57 So if I wanna see the mask on or off, I just click on that 58 and hold, let it go so I can turn it off, 59 see what it looked like before, 60 then let go, turns it back on. 61 Right now we've done nothing so it's just red. 62 And then I'm gonna click on the triple dot button 63 and I can invert the mask there. 64 Same thing, but I prefer using the quotation key. 65 Okay, so you can see that I'm circling in on her 66 as the major focus of the image 67 and the rest of this stuff, 68 I just wanna darken down a little bit, 69 but I don't wanna darken it too quickly. 70 So I have this nice feather. 71 If I take the feather down to zero, 72 now you just have like a hard circle. 73 So the more you can feather it, the less likely it is 74 that anyone will see the feather. 75 So I've got it at 100%. 76 We're just gonna darken everything down 77 a little bit around her. 78 So the next thing that I wanna do 79 is I'm gonna unclick show overlay. 80 And I'm gonna go to the settings. 81 And every time, you create a mask of any sort, 82 you're gonna have a whole bunch 83 of options show up down here. 84 Everything above this basic area, 85 which we just went over, 86 all of this are different types of settings 87 that you can put into any mask. 88 I'm gonna double click. 89 Right below the feather, there's a preset option. 90 And I could choose any of these presets 91 to go along with my mask. 92 So a preset just allows you to get a bunch 93 of the sliders changed so that you don't have 94 to keep changing all those sliders over and over again. 95 But if I double click the preset area right here, 96 click on that word preset, double click it, 97 see how these have some settings on 'em. 98 If I double click that, it's gonna reset all the settings. 99 And then you have to see the mask 100 'cause if there are no settings involved, 101 it will always show you the mask. 102 And then I'm gonna take the exposure 103 and I'm just gonna bring it down a little bit. 104 See that? 105 So I'm just making this stone not quite so bright. 106 That's all I wanted to do. 107 But I didn't want to darken her at all. 108 So I just kind of brought the whole thing down 109 just a little bit. 110 And now I can kind of play around 111 with how far I let this vignette go out, right? 112 And where I want it to be. 113 So I'm just gonna put the center right on her face. 114 And now I've got a little bit darker everywhere 115 except for her. 116 The next thing I wanna do is another gradient 117 but now that I've created one gradient or one mask, 118 I have to go up to this new little area 119 that it's created, this little panel 120 and click on the plus button. 121 When I do that, I get the same list of options 122 for different masks, 123 but this time, I'm gonna use a linear gradient. 124 Instead of a radial, I'm gonna use a linear gradient. 125 Just like a radial gradient, 126 I have to click somewhere and drag to another place. 127 So I'm gonna click at the bottom of the frame 128 and I'm gonna go up to like her legs and I'm gonna let go. 129 So now I have a gradient here. 130 And again, if you hover over it, 131 you see the gradient in effect. 132 And if you go to the mask itself, 133 you can click on the triple dot and invert that 134 so that I could be looking at the entire top there. 135 I'm gonna hit the quote key again and invert it again. 136 So I'm looking at the bottom. 137 And then I go over to the amount slider here. 138 Right above it is the preset and I double click it. 139 And then I'm gonna take the exposure down on that one. 140 See how I'm getting rid of... 141 It's way too bright on that street. 142 And so I'm just bringing the street brightness down 143 so that now you're really looking in at her. 144 And then I can do the same thing. 145 Click another plus button, click on another linear gradient, 146 and I can take this top area down just a little bit 147 'cause it's a little bit too bright as well. 148 And so I'm gonna double click that preset again. 149 And then I'm gonna expose that down just a little bit. 150 Not too much. Gotta be careful. 151 Now, the interesting thing about masks is they don't have 152 to be independent of each other. 153 And so in this case, I actually wanna add a little bit 154 to this mask. 155 And I'm gonna actually hit Command + minus 156 to bring down the size of this mask 157 or the size of the photo so that I can see 158 where the masks are because this panel 159 was in the way of the corner. 160 And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go into this mask. 161 So I'm gonna click on the mask three that we just made 162 and it opens it up. 163 And you can see this is the only element 164 that's part of that mask currently. 165 And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna add to that mask. 166 So click add. 167 This time I'm gonna use a brush. 168 So now I have a brush to add to this mask. 169 And anything that I brush in is going to get the settings 170 that I have here. 171 So in this sense, or in this case, 172 it's gonna just be exposure down. 173 So I have my brush size 174 and I'm gonna kind of zoom in here now so that we can, 175 or not zoom in. 176 I'm gonna zoom in like this so that you can see. 177 And I'm gonna take my brush size 178 and increase the brush size. 179 And you can see I'm increasing the brush size 180 by simply clicking on the bracket keys, 181 which are kind of above the enter or the return key. 182 So brackets up, brackets down, right? 183 But you can see 184 that the feathering on this brush is a bit small. 185 So I'm actually gonna go back over here 186 to the right-hand side. 187 And I'm gonna grab, this is the brush, 188 as we work on a brush, the brush area opens up. 189 These are all the settings below the brush, 190 and I can choose the flow. 191 So that's how much is being laid down at any one time. 192 The density, which is how much could be laid down 193 over the course of any amount of time. 194 So 100% would mean I could at some point burn it 195 all the way down to 100% of whatever effect 196 of the minus quarter stop. 197 Or I could do 50%, so it could never get to minus 2.4, 198 it could only get to minus 1.2. 199 So I'm gonna bring the density up to 100. 200 I'm gonna bring the flow down to about 40, 201 and then I'm gonna bring the feather up. 202 I want it to feather more. 203 So 100% feather and that will work. 204 So now I'm gonna come in here 205 and I'm using my pen tool so that I can be accurate 206 and I'm just kind of changing the size of my brush 207 and I'm just gonna paint in this edge 208 so that it has kind of the same look as the top 209 that I've created with the gradient. 210 Okay, so now that I have a linear gradient 211 and a brush together, so let's look at that. 212 I've got a linear brush or I've got a linear gradient 213 and a brush together and they equal that mask together. 214 And if I hover over it, you can see where that mask is. 215 And it looks pretty good. I like the way it looks. 216 I can now play with it. 217 So I could come in here and really play 218 with the way that that looks. 219 But all I really wanted to do was just kind 220 of lower that just by a bit 221 so that it wasn't quite so bright. 222 And if I want, I can go in and keep painting. 223 I noticed that this was a little bit bright still, 224 so I'm gonna darken that down, increase my brush a bit, 225 and even get this wall just a little bit more. 226 And maybe even just kind of do a quick up and down here 227 and maybe right here as well. 228 So I'm just changing the size of my brush. 229 You can see me doing it. 230 I get a little bit here. 231 Don't need to do it there, a little bit right there. 232 A little bit more right there. 233 A little bit more right there. 234 Good, okay, so now I have a really nice darkening effect 235 on those areas. 236 And so if I were to then turn off all the masks, 237 so here's the mask eyeball, 238 and I can turn off all the masks at one time. 239 You can see the difference before, after, before, after. 240 She's not changing 241 but man, she's really popping out now 242 because we've done so much work on the surrounding areas. 243 So that is the basic concept of masks. 244 We're gonna talk about more masks in a while, 245 but in this case, I wanted you just to see 246 what the mask was, where they are. 247 And those are the most basic masks: 248 the brush, a radial gradient, and a linear gradient. 249 Those are the original kind of masks. 250 And so now you know how to do those.