Still Not Sure How to Use Lightroom’s New Masking Tools? This Will Help You

If you're still not sure exactly how to use masking in Lightroom, this will answer all your questions.

In recent articles here and here on Fstoppers, we have seen how far Lightroom has come as a standalone tool. Traditionally, Adobe's Lightroom software has been seen primarily as an organizational tool best suited to sorting and cataloging images, while its partner in the Adobe suite, Photoshop, was used for the heavy lifting involved with complex editing jobs. However, with recent updates, Lightroom has become a far more capable editing tool in its own right, and a lot of that has to do with masking. But when I talk to a lot of photographers, they're still unclear how to utilize Lightroom's new masking features to its full potential.

That's why this great new video brought to you by aows is so helpful. It takes you through the editing process for multiple images and guides you specifically on how to use the new masking tool in Lightroom. Along the way, you'll learn about other tools to assist you in the process, such as linear gradients, radial gradients, and using brushes for more accurate selections. As the masking tool is quite new to Lightroom, just trying to get your head around the dialog box can be confusing in itself, which is what I found so helpful here. If you haven't tried out this tool yet because it seemed a tad confusing, this will make things much clearer for you. Give it a watch, and let me know your thoughts in the comments below. 

Iain Stanley's picture

Iain Stanley is an Associate Professor teaching photography and composition in Japan. Fstoppers is where he writes about photography, but he's also a 5x Top Writer on Medium, where he writes about his expat (mis)adventures in Japan and other things not related to photography. To view his writing, click the link above.

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