A simple but very effective masking tool where you create a circle or an ellipse to cover the area you want to adjust. You can move the mask, change its shape and position it precisely to get the effect you want. You can also adjust the mask ‘feathering’ – how smoothly it blends in with surrounding areas.
So many of the advances in photo editing software right now use AI, principally AI noise reduction (good), AI upscaling (if you need it) and AI subject masking – ESPECIALLY AI subject masking. Sometimes it’s useful, sometimes it’s not. I’ve used it a lot, on all sorts of images, but for most of the edits I do, most of the time, I use a much simpler approach based around carefully positioned radial masks.
Selections and masks are subtly different, and the ‘parametric’ masks in non-destructive editors give more flexibility than ever.
The Radial Filter tool is new in Lightroom Classic and Lightroom CC and it can quickly transform the appearance of your pictures. You use it to create an elliptical shape which protects the centre of the image and changes the appearance of the outer areas. It might sound like a glorified vignette tool for drawing attention to…
The editing tools in Lightroom 5 are steadily improving to the point where many photographers won’t need any other software for their day-to-day image enhancement, and the new Radial Gradient tool in the Develop module takes this one stage further. It offers a way to quickly highlight the focal point of your pictures, subdue backgrounds…