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Range Masks

Lesson 26 from: Editing and Organizing your Photography in Lightroom

Jared Platt

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Lesson Info

26. Range Masks

<b>In this lesson you will learn the power of Range Masks to select and work on very specific areas of your photos.&#160; Whether you need to adjust the color of the sky or a particular shadow or highlight, the Range Mask tools will make targeting very specific areas in your photos easy and fast.</b>

Lesson Info

Range Masks

1 Now speaking of masking, 2 there are some pretty interesting masking tools 3 that are available inside of Lightroom 4 that are not selecting sky or buildings 5 or people, things like that. 6 But instead, we call them range masks 7 and they can be combined with anything as well. 8 So for instance, in this image, 9 I really like the blue versus the orange. 10 I think those two competing colors are pretty awesome 11 in this photograph, you can see 12 that the shadow areas on the building, like right 13 around here are really cool. 14 But I love the way the orange sunlight just kind of filters 15 through like the window. 16 It filters past some of these areas. 17 It like filters through these corridors 18 between the buildings. 19 I just love it. 20 So one of my favorite images, and I can go in 21 and enhance that feeling by doing some masking. 22 So in the rain or in the masking area, if I go 23 and create a radial gradient 24 and in that radial gradient, I'm just gonna go like this 2...

5 and I'm gonna try and put that gradient. 26 So I made the gradient 27 and now I'm going to just out hover outside of the gradient 28 and it gives me that same kind of u-shaped arrow. 29 I'm gonna grab it and I'm gonna drag it this way 30 and I'm gonna pull it across so that what I'm trying 31 to do is mimic sun seems to be coming from 32 around here somewhere 33 and kind of going through this building. 34 And so I'm just trying to mimic that. 35 So I've got that general area selected 36 and now I'm gonna try 37 and, you know, get the right trajectory. 38 That's probably about right. 39 So that's where I want to affect, 40 but I don't want to affect everywhere. 41 I only want to affect the area that is already warm. 42 So now I'm gonna go up and instead of clicking on subtract 43 or add, I'm going to go to the triple dot button, click on 44 that, and I'm gonna intersect with a 45 radial no, sorry, with a color range. 46 So I want to choose color range 47 and intersection allows me to have two different rules 48 and both of them have to be true in order 49 for the mask to work. 50 So it's like a Venn diagram where the two things overlap. 51 That's what gets affected. 52 So I'm going to choose color range, 53 and now I need to choose a specific color range. 54 So I can choose this orange over here, 55 or I can choose this orange over here. 56 And the idea is that I'm going 57 to basically draw a square around the color range. 58 So I'm just gonna go like that. 59 That general color is what I'm looking for. 60 Now notice that even though I selected over here, the red 61 of the selection is only over here. 62 And the reason for that is that both have to be true. 63 This is if I hover over here, 64 there's the color range that I chose. 65 And here is where the gradient is. 66 And both of them have to be true. 67 So it has to be orange like that. 68 And it has to be within this gradient in 69 order for it to work. 70 And I can then move this gradient around 71 like this in order to manipulate where it's gonna go. 72 And once I have that in play, I can also increase 73 or decrease this color by changing the amount. 74 So when I click on the color range, 75 so now I was working on the gradient 76 and now I'm working on the color range. 77 If I look over here, 78 this amount area allows me, sorry, 79 not the amount area, 80 but this refine area up here allows me to choose 81 how much it spills outside of that color 82 so I can increase or decrease. 83 See how when I decreased zero, then 84 nothing over here is getting affected. 85 And as I spill, it starts to get, 86 as I spill, it starts to get more and more. 87 See how the now the building's starting to light up 88 and all of that red is just the mask. 89 That's not the color that we're making it, 90 we're just finding the mask there. 91 See how it's starting to spill into those kind 92 of shadowy areas. 93 That's what I want. 94 I want that light to spill forward, 95 but notice that 96 it's spilling here along this corridor, 97 but then when it goes to the blue area of the building, 98 it leaves it alone. 99 That's what we want 100 because we want to mimic the same feeling 101 and now we're gonna play with it. 102 So I'm gonna take the light or the exposure 103 and bring it up, see how I'm just, 104 that sunlight is getting a little brighter now in that area. 105 And then I can go into the color area 106 and I can warm it up just with the temperature, see that, 107 and I can maybe add a little magenta in there 108 and I could even go in to the hue 109 and kind of shift it a little bit so 110 that it's a little bit more warm rather than green. 111 I'm really liking this. 112 Lemme go back to the light area 113 and maybe kind of bring up the highlights some 114 and maybe we could bring up the shadows a little. 115 Oh, that's nice, yeah. 116 But notice because see that shadow that's right here 117 that's coming down like this, 118 there's like a triangular shadow here. 119 That shadow is not getting warmer, it's staying cool. 120 But this area up here is getting nice and warm. 121 That's a fantastic way to do this. 122 So this allows us 123 to target very specific areas in a photograph 124 because we have all of these masking options. 125 So you can select the subject, the sky, the background, 126 which is everything except for the subject. 127 You cans select very specific people 128 and very specific things on the people. 129 You can select very specific objects you can brush in 130 or brush out, remove stuff 131 or add stuff to a particular mask. 132 You can do it with a linear gradient, 133 which is a linear gradient is simply just grab and drag 134 the mask across. 135 Up here is 100%. 136 Down here is 0% of whatever mask you're creating. 137 You can create a color range or even a luminance range. 138 So you can affect just dark areas or just light areas. 139 And all of those things can be done in combination 140 with each other by clicking on the add 141 or the subtract option or going up to the triple dot 142 and inverting the masks or intersecting the masks. 143 So all of those things together give you the perfect 144 opportunity to utilize a lot 145 of power inside of masking.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials

Adaptive_JP_LR_Presets.zip
Jared_Platt_-_Editing_and_Organizing_Photography_in_Lightroom_Photo_Examples.zip

Ratings and Reviews

Tim Byrne
 

Great job, Jared! You have delivered a master class for anyone beginning a journey into Lightroom, presented in absolutely clear and relaxed style. And for those with more experience with the program, every old dog can learn a few more new tricks. Teaching software is tough. Jared does it by breaking down each function and including not only the what, but the how and why as well. And each step is amplified by crystal clear photos which are manipulated with the function at hand. Bring a pad of paper, some snacks, and a cup (or two) of coffee. He is relentless in his presentation. You might watch this course as a freebie, but buy it to be able to refer to it for specific steps and processes. I've been using Adobe products since the mid 1990s and this is the best instructional presentation I've taken. ABSOLUTE WINNER1 Thanks, Jared

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