Sometimes you want to limit your adjustments to a very specific area, perhaps an object or a color, or only affect certain tones (luminance). In this Lightroom Auto Mask and Range Mask tutorial, I’ll show you how to mask anything very quickly and accurately. In my last video tutorial, I went over the basics of using the Adjustment Brush to add effects to portions of your image. In this video, I’ll show you a couple of ways of using auto masking and range masking when you want to isolate the areas you want to adjust. These options are available in Lightroom Classic with the Adjustment Brush, Radial Filter, and Graduated Filtern in the Develop Module.
Checking the Auto Mask box helps you “color” inside the lines” — it helps keep your brush from spilling over into areas where you don’t want the effect to appear.
Range Mask is another way to selectively apply effects to your image. You can do this by targeting color or luminance to mask the area where you want to apply an effect.
Watch the video below to see how easy it is to make precise masks in Lightroom Classic. Also, check out my related video tutorial on the Adjustment Brush