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Layers & Masks – A Camera Raw/Lightroom To Photoshop Presentation
By Tim Clifton
Tim Clifton has concluded his two-part Zoom presentation; however, there are tons of free online tutorials on the power and usefulness of Layer Masks. If you have an Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Subscription, you have both Lightroom and Photoshop for $9.99 + tax per month or $119.88 + tax per year. Upon occasion, you may find yourself needing to do something that Lightroom may not have the capability of doing which is more easily done in Photoshop. Maybe you want to try compositing, or using other tools to help make your photos look the very best they can be.
Take your photos to a whole new level. Increase the Judges' scores, Popular Votes, and Photographic Points your photos receive during competitions by making your photos look the best they can be! Watch free-online tutorials about Layers and Masks using Photoshop. Check out Blake Rudis at Free Photoshop Tutorials - f64 Academy
Layers and masks are very helpful for a wide variety of photo editing techniques: They help control what you want to do in certain areas while leaving other areas unaltered. Limiting exposure adjustments to specific areas is also a common editing necessity. For example:
- Darken your background so it does not distract from the subject and/or lighten the subject to make it more eye-catching.
- Limit what areas of the photo you want to be sharpened and/or blurred.
- Apply more or less Topaz DeNoise to some areas and not others (to remove ISO noise).
- White balancing a photo that has a mix of both
 warm sun and blue shade.
- Easily create a vignette, feather the edges, and lower the opacity to control how light or dark the edges are with a layer adjustment mask.
Unlike using the dodge and burn tools, making changes with layer masks allows you to perform what is called "non-destructive editing", meaning you can always make further adjustments and undo some or all of the editing changes you make to your photo. They create a new separate layer and can be quickly dragged into the trash if you don't like the results.   You are not stuck with them, especially if you made a mistake--oops! We've all been there--done that!
Tim has provided some PDF files showing the workflow for the images he worked on at the past two Zoom tutorials.
To download these 4 PDF files, click on the file names below:
Using layer masks can make an amazing difference in many areas of your photos from exposure to compositing, blurring, sharpening, and many other editing tasks. Photos are provided by Tim Clifton. A special thanks to Tim for taking the time to conduct these two great Photo Editing Zoom Presentations! Keep an eye out for more presentations in the future.
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