A Magic Photo Pop Using Curves In Lightroom Masks
Recently Adobe added Curves to the set of adjustments available in Lightroom masking. And it’s great. The power of curves - localized to a specific area of your image. Pairing these two controls gives you an amazing amount of control over the tones in your image.
Curves in masks also opens up a host of potential for presets. I made a finishing preset to add a finishing pop to my images leveraging curves and luminance range masks. Here is a before/after of using this preset. The change is subtle yet helpful.
Before the Overlay Pop preset
After the Overlay Pop preset
Download the ‘Overlay Pop’ preset featured in this video.
La Jolla Black & White May 13 2023
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Sometimes you commit to a landscape composition, but the moving elements never come together perfectly in a single frame. The best wave might be in one photo, while another has better texture or movement elsewhere in the scene.
In this video, I’ll show you how I selected three seascape photos and blended their strongest elements using simple layers and masks in Photoshop. The masking is straightforward, and the same idea works in any editing software that supports layers.