Photoshop User - USA (2020-10)

“THINK DIFFERENT” ABOUT

SELECTIONS AND MASKS

> PHOTOSHOP USER

>^ OCTOBER 2020

[ 90 ]

Here’s a good example: If you’ve

ever worked in Adobe Camera

Raw (ACR) or Lightroom to pro-

cess your RAW files, you prob-

ably know there’s a Sharpening

feature. The issue with using the

Sharpening slider to enhance

detail in ACR is that it often exag-

gerates noise or adds banding in

out-of-focus areas of the image.

Not something we desire in our

output! To resolve this, Adobe

added a Masking slider. What’s

interesting is what the Masking

slider actually does. It’s a form of

edge detection that looks for con-

tours and contrasting elements to

define edges.

This is the image with which

we’ll be working because it shows

a clear out-of-focus foreground and

background with the textured sub-

ject of the can in focus.

A HANDY FEATURE, BUT NOT IN PHOTOSHOP

When this image is sharpened globally, affecting all pixels, it causes an issue where

the out-of-focus areas don’t stay smooth and blurry. This isn’t good if you spent

$2,000 on a great lens for shallow depth of field, and then you end up sharpening

the out-of-focus areas, right? To fix this, we mask out the areas we want to sharpen

and ignore everything else. Adobe tried to make this easier by creating the edge

detection capability of the Masking slider in Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom.

When you hold down the Option (PC: Alt) key while increasing the Masking value,

you get a mask preview. Following fundamental mask theory, the white areas of

the mask will be affected by the sharpening, and the black areas of the mask will

not. The more you increase the Masking value, the more aggressively it refines the

edge definition. Here’s a preview of what that looks like in both Lightroom and ACR.

They’re basically the same.

In this issue, I challenge you to ask yourself, “What are some features in Photoshop that I’ve

never used to help me make selections,” and then ask yourself, “How could I integrate that into

my workflow?”

The Perfect Selection

MARKHEAPS

Masking slider in ACR

Masking slider in Lightroom