Masking complex outlines can be a slow and fiddly business, but there are tools to help, and once you’ve got your mask, there’s a lot you can do with it.
Tutorials
How to carry out Single Image Edits in Luminar 4
You can open and edit single images in Luminar, and you don’t have to import the entire folder they are stored in first. It’s still important to understand what Luminar is doing, though.
Nik Collection presets: Even on a Cloudy Day (Color Efex Pro)
You can learn a lot from experimenting with manual adjustments and individual filters in a program like Color Efex Pro, but you can learn even more by dismantling a preset to see how its individual parts work together.
How to get started with Analog Efex Pro
Analog Efex Pro is one of the plug-ins in the Nik Collection. It works as a plug in with Lightroom Classic and Photoshop but it can also work as a standalone program or as an external editor with all sorts of other programs like Capture One, Exposure X and more. It’s designed to recreate the […]
How to mask effects in ON1 Photo RAW
Masks can quickly get confusing in ON1 Photo RAW. It’s not the tools themselves which are confusing, but the fact they can be used in three different places: Local adjustments: These are applied to the image as a whole in their own ‘Local’ panel. In other words, they are not associated with any specific layers […]
How to get started with Silver Efex Pro
Silver Efex Pro is one of the best-known plug ins in the Nik Collection and widely regarded as the premier tools for fans of black and white photography. There are lots of really good ways to create black and white images in all sorts of software, but even now Silver Efex Pro has a magic […]
How to use masks in Luminar
Often you want to apply an effect or adjustment to a whole picture, but not always. Sometimes you only want to apply it to part of the picture, and this is where the Luminar mask tools become really useful.
DxO PhotoLab Graduated Filter, Control Points and Repair tool in action
This step-by-step editing walkthrough shows a number of DxO PhotoLab tools in action, principally the Local Adjustment tools, including the Graduated Filter and Control Point tools.
Lightroom tone curves explained: Tone Curve vs Point Curve vs Target Curve adjustments
Curves adjustments are one of the key tools in photo editing, and Lightroom offers three ways of making curves adjustments. What’s more, the curves tools look different in Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic CC. Complicated? Not once it’s explained…
Dawlish Beach in black and white, with Exposure X5 adjustment layers
This project turns a regular color RAW file into a strong black and white image in Exposure X5. It uses a number of different tools so it’s a good chance to see how these work and how they can be used together. It’s also a good example the kind of image which works well in […]