An in-depth Guide on how to use the Range Mask in Lightroom and Camera Raw
In this article, I want to give you guys an in-depth overview of one of the most powerful tools inside Adobe Lightroom and Camera Raw.
The range mask feature was introduced back in February 2018 and was updated continuously, which made it even better over time.
I personally don’t read a whole lot about it on the internet; hence I thought it would be a good idea to cover this topic in my photography blog.
If implemented the right way, your editing will get much more comfortable.
What is a range mask?
First of all, let’s answer the obvious question - what are range masks?
They’re a powerful method to create an accurate selection based on tonal values inside Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw.
I personally use the latter so that I will explain everything based on Camera Raw. Since both programs run the same engine, there won’t be any difference in terms of usability only in the user interface.
You have the option to work with masks based on colors or the luminance of your files.
In my opinion, that’s a great way to edit locally and to target just the intended image parts with individual adjustments.
These selections are highly customizable and can be used in a variety of ways in your post-processing workflow.
Now let’s dig a little deeper and talk about how to use them in the following paragraphs.
How to create a range mask
First, let me show you how to create a range mask in Adobe Camera Raw. It’s actually quite simple as you only need to use a local adjustment like the radial filter or a graduated filter.
Once you applied the filter to your image, you now have the well-known options like adjusting the saturation, contrast, clarity, and so on, but range masks help you to get even more precise with your editing.
Simply click on the drop-down menu next to where it says “range mask” and select if you want to create a selection based on the color or luminance.
They both are really powerful, and it depends on the image itself which one you want to choose. I’m going to demonstrate to you some sample situations later on in this article.
Simply hover over the area you want to sample and click on it. Lightroom/Camera will create an accurate selection based on what you just picked.
You have the possibility to refine it by using the color or luminance range slider. It basically narrows or expands your selection by adding or removing similar tones or colors.
The great power of this tool unfolds when adding multiple selections with your eyedropper by shift-clicking on other areas of your photo, which all add up to a broader color mask that you can work with.
Check the screenshots below to get a better understanding of this technique. Press Ctrl + z to remove one eyedropper at a time instead of clearing it all. You can
A similar effect can be achieved by using the eyedropper to draw a rectangle around a certain image part to grab all the tones or colors within it.
This mostly makes sense when you’re selecting an image part with lots of similar colors or tonal values; otherwise, you could end up with a crazy looking mask that adjusts almost every single color or tone in your image.
Working globally or with simple radial, filters would then be the better choice.
The difference between Color and Luminance
So let me show you the difference between a color and luminance selection based on the screenshots below.
There are a few differences I want to clarify now. The color range makes it possible to select 5 different color tones to add them up to one broad selection.
However, the luminance mask selects ranges of tonal values, which can be adjusted by using the “luminance range” slider.
The smoothness slider in the luminance section helps you to adjust how broad or narrow you want your mask.
You can either make a hard selection from only certain tonal values - please keep in mind that this can cause some weird looking effects, depending on how strong of an adjustment you're making - or you can choose that your adjustment is feathered out to the whole radial/graduated filter selection.
I generally like to feather it a bit above 50 because of the more compelling look.
The color slider in the color range mask section has almost the same effect, but it’s selecting the different shades of colors that you sampled.
For example, when you pick a red color, it feathers out to all other colors, which include shades of red as well, no matter if they’re darker or brighter.
You can also narrow it down to the purest tones of red, but this often creates some weird looking selections which won’t add any benefit to your files.
It depends on the image itself to see which selection makes more sense to use, but as you can add as many radial or graduated filters as you like, it’s not a problem when you create multiple adjustments based on colors and luminance at the same time.
Check the video to watch me using the range masking tool
How to adjust contrast and texture using range masks
Alright, now let’s dive a bit deeper into how to use range masks.
Here I’m going to give you some examples of how to use them to enhance contrast and micro-contrast/textures in your images.
As I mentioned before, it’s super easy to make a selection using the eyedropper tool. Let’s say I want to brighten the foreground rocks in the sample image without touching the chunks of ice.
First, drag a radial filter or graduated filter around the area you want to edit and then make a selection of the tonal values you wish to enhance. Make sure to use a smoothness of around 50 to avoid strange effects.
The luminance range slider indicates which tonal range you selected with your eyedropper, and it can be adjusted further by using the sliders on the left/right side.
It basically mimics your histogram as the left part represents the darks, and the right does show the highlights.
When you move the dark slider to the right, you’re telling Camera Raw that you want to exclude any tones which are darker than the ones from the position of your slider.
The same applies to the highlights but only in the other direction.
So that means you can enhance the eyedropper selection to make your adjustment only target the mid-tones without touching anything else.
In my example, it’s crucial to exclude the highlights as they would otherwise apply your adjustment also to the pieces of ice
I also want to maintain the contrast in the darkest darks, so I will drag the black slider a bit more to the right to only enhance the dark mid-tones.
Of course, I could simply use a radial filter and raise the shadows, which would work totally fine, but the strength of a range mask is that I can also add clarity, contrast, and whites all at the same time without affecting the chunks of ice.
So my advice is to use a range mask if you want to make multiple adjustments to a specific area without touching nearby subjects.
When you only intend to darken shadows, then, of course, the shadows slider is the more comfortable option.
In the second example, I want to target the highlights instead of the darks to enhance the wave action in the foreground.
We again use the radial filter to mark the area which I want to adjust, and then I’m going to select the white part of the water.
Now we can further customize the selection by using the luminance range slider again.
We want to exclude the brightest highlights, so I’m dragging the right slider a bit more towards the left to make sure that I’m not touching the tones to the right from it.
We can also move the dark slider a bit more to the right only to target the white parts of the waves, not the blue/darker ones.
When you check the “mask” box, Photoshop shows us the detailed selection that we just created. Now we can simply raise the exposure and also add some clarity to enhance the structure of the water.
If we only used a simple radial filter, we could have used the white slider to adjust the highlights, but we would have also touched the dark parts of the water a bit, and the clarity adjustment would target the whole radial selection. So not ideal if we want to work super precise.
So what about the color range mask? We can also use it to enhance contrast, but that - as always - depends on the image.
How to enhance colors using range masks
There is, of course, also an excellent use for color masks other than editing contrast, and that’s - to your surprise - to enhance colors!
In my opinion, it works great when you have specific colors in your image which stand out from all the others so that they’re an easy target to create a selection.
The good thing about the color range mask is that you have the option to pick up to five different color tones with your eyedropper to create one broad selection of colors.
I personally don’t use that many sample colors because I mostly want to target just a specific part of my image; otherwise, I could use a simple radial filter to do the job for me.
The image shown in the screenshots below is a perfect example of the proper use of the color range mask.
You can easily adjust the green leaves by using the eyedropper without touching the lupine flowers.
A luminance mask would be a bit difficult as the leaves and the flowers have similar tonal values.
Once we created our masks, we can now adjust the saturation, brightness, and so on. After that’s done, we can do the same with just the flowers by using the eyedropper again, but this time we’re going to sample the blues and purples.
In this case, we might have to make two selections to get all the colors of the flowers as they’re not just pure blue.
So to sum it up, in my opinion the color masks are the best to isolate certain subjects of your image to make precise adjustments to them.
This is especially useful when subjects do have the same tonal values but different color tones.
Are range masks better than luminosity masks?
Lastly, I want to answer a question which I got asked a while ago. Are range masks better than luminosity masks?
In my opinion, they’re not better but definitely a perfect addition to your editing toolbox as they open up new options inside Adobe Camera Raw. Luminosity masks allow you to combine them with every single adjustment layer inside Adobe Photoshop.
Whether it’s color balance, hue/saturation, curves, levels, and much more, you can even combine them with a Camera Raw filter adjustment, which is also another powerful way to edit your images.
However, if you quickly want to add local clarity to only a specific tonal value or if you want to target a particular color and immediately brighten it, then the range masking feature comes into play.
As a final word, I want to state that there is no real better or worse, as they both have their own right to co-exist in your editing workflow.
Alright, guys, I hope you enjoyed reading this article about range masks! So what about you? Have you used them before, and how do you like them?
Feel free to ask me any questions you might have by directly contacting me or use the comments section down below!
Cheers,
Daniel Gastager