Masking & Photo Editing

I’m hoping to keep writing more of these fun little posts and snapshots into photography and art. Today I wanted to talk about Photo Editing. Something I don’t do enough because I don’t often feel like sitting behind a screen after spending 8 hours working behind a screen all day.

Despite this, editing is as important as actually taking the photographs. In the past it would have been in a darkroom, and today it is on a computer, but we can make changes in a way that allows you to essentially change the color tones, but also change the lightness and darkness of areas.

One area I think everyone should get really familiar with is masking. Masking is going to allow you to bring out or mute portions of your photograph in such a way that you can control the eye a little bit more. It isn’t about making drastic changes (usually) so much as making a bunch of smaller changes.

These smaller changes add up over time and allow you to take an image like this:

And turn it into an image like this (note there are other changes in here as well):

The newest version of Lightroom even lets you do masking decently without the need for photoshop. Though they do bundle this in their Saas product as well. However you mask, it is a tool you should experiment with to give you everything from vignettes to new light angles in your photos.