At first glance, you might think that Adobe is cannibalizing its own demand for Photoshop by making Lightroom a more comprehensive editing suite, particularly with regard to photographers. In actuality, Photoshop has been adding many new features itself that leave it separate from Lightroom. Today's Lightroom when compared to Photoshop from 10 years ago would be a far closer affair for most photographers. However, Photoshop is busy adding bells and whistles in the form of AI and Lightroom is quietly tweaking its tools for its niche: the processing of raw photographs.
In this video, Nigel Danson discusses how the curves tool — which has now been a staple of the editing suite for some years — has the addition of masks. That is, you can use the curve tool within masks to make localized adjustments. This may seem like an innocuous improvement, but in actuality, it can allow photographers to do some of their more difficult edits without leaving Adobe Lightroom.
I've been intimidated by and struggled with tone curves in general. Thanks to Nigel, I think I'm gaining a better understanding. I have some fresh pictures that I will go back to and see what can be improved using masking + curves. Exciting!