SUPERCHARGE Your Targeted Adjustments With RANGE MASKS in Photoshop’s Camera Raw and Lightroom

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The range mask in Camera Raw refines a targeted adjustment by luminance or color, so a Graduated Filter or Adjustment Brush only touches the pixels you want.

It arrived in Camera Raw 10, the October 2017 release that shipped with Photoshop CC 2018, and the same controls work in Lightroom Classic.

It is for anyone who has darkened a sky and watched the buildings darken with it, or boosted a boat and boosted the water around it too.

By the end, you will darken a London sky without touching the towers, and enhance the yellows on a boat without touching anything else.

What You Will Learn

• How to darken a sky with the Graduated Filter without darkening the buildings under it
• How the Luminance Range slider decides which pixels get the adjustment
• How to see the mask in black and white while you drag a slider
• How to target one color with the Adjustment Brush and the Color Range Mask
• How to sample a range of colors instead of single points
• Where the same controls live in the Masking panel today

Requirements

Keyboard Shortcuts

Step 1: Add a Graduated Filter to the Sky

Open the London photo in Camera Raw. The goal is to darken the sky and add some blue to it, without changing the towers or the bridge.

Everything in this tutorial also applies to Lightroom Classic. The video calls it Lightroom Classic CC, and the tools work exactly the same way there.

Select the Graduated Filter. Click its icon in the toolbar, or press G (Windows) or G (macOS).

Click at the top of the sky and drag down toward the horizon. That draws a gradient. The adjustment is strongest at the top and fades out as it moves down.

Now go to the sliders on the right-hand side. Drag Temperature to the left to add blue, so the sky is not so gloomy. Then drag Exposure to the left to darken it.

Look at the towers and the bridge. They sit inside the gradient, so they picked up the same blue and the same darkening. That is not what you want.

This is the problem a Range Mask solves. The gradient is your rough selection. The Range Mask refines it using the luminance or the color already in your photo.

The same refinement works on a Radial Filter and on the Adjustment Brush. Make the rough mask with any of the three, then let the Range Mask clean it up.

Step 2: Refine With the Luminance Range Mask

Scroll to the bottom of the Graduated Filter panel and find Range Mask. Click the dropdown and choose Luminance.

Two sliders appear: Luminance Range and Smoothness. Start with Luminance Range.

Click and drag the slider to the right. You are changing the gradient and the adjustment at the same time, and the bridge and towers start to come back.

Here is what is really going on. You are building a mask that says: if a pixel is this shade of gray or darker, do not apply the effect.

Drag all the way to the right and the effect almost disappears. Everything darker than that point is now excluded, and that is most of the photo.

Back off until the towers and the bridge are dark enough to be excluded, while the sky is bright enough to keep the effect.

Leave the white point alone. Dragging the right-hand end of the slider starts excluding the bright sky, and the sky is exactly where you want the effect to land.

Now make an adjustment. Drag Exposure or Temperature, and the change lands mainly on the sky. The towers are affected much less.

Step 3: See the Range Mask in Camera Raw

The slider works, but you cannot see the mask it builds. Hold Alt (Windows) or Option (macOS) and click the Luminance Range slider.

The photo turns into a black and white mask. It is a gradient from white at the top to black at the bottom, which is exactly what the Graduated Filter drew.

White and bright areas get the full effect. Dark and black areas get none. The areas at the top have the maximum effect, and it gradually disappears as you go down.

This is a lot like a layer mask in Photoshop. White reveals, black conceals. Here it reveals and conceals the effect applied by the sliders in the panel.

Keep holding Alt (Windows) or Option (macOS) and drag the Luminance Range slider to the right. The luminance values of the photo start popping up in the mask.

The bridge and the towers turn dark. Dark in the mask means no adjustment, so they are now protected.

Hold the same key and drag the white point instead, and you will see the sky darken in the mask. That would remove the effect from the sky, so leave the white point where it is.

Seeing the mask is what makes the range mask in Camera Raw easy to control. You are no longer guessing from the photo.

Step 4: Smoothness and the Mask Overlay

The second slider under Range Mask and Luminance is Smoothness. It adjusts the contrast of the mask.

Hold Alt (Windows) or Option (macOS) and click the slider to see what it does.

Drag Smoothness to the right and the mask has less contrast. The transition from white to black gets softer.

Drag it to the left and the mask has more contrast. There is a harder edge between what gets the effect and what does not.

Use it to fine-tune how your effect fades across the luminance range you selected.

While you work in this mode, the red overlay of the Graduated Filter can get distracting. Uncheck Overlay in the panel and it disappears.

The best thing about the Range Mask is that it is nondestructive. At any point you can bring back the overlay, move the gradient, and change how the mask works.

Step 5: Paint the Yellow With the Adjustment Brush

The second type of Range Mask uses color to refine the targeted adjustment. Open the photo of the colorful boat.

The goal is to enhance the yellows on the boat and in its reflection on the water, and nothing else.

Select the Adjustment Brush. Click its icon, or press K (Windows) or K (macOS).

Paint over the yellow areas, including the boat and the reflection. You will not see any change yet, because none of the sliders on the right have moved.

Make an extreme adjustment, like a big Exposure change, so you can see the stroke. Every pixel you painted over changes, not just the yellow ones.

You only want the yellow. That is the job of the Color Range Mask, which comes next.

You do not have to be precise with the brush. The Range Mask does the precise part, so a loose stroke that covers all the yellow is enough.

Step 6: Switch the Range Mask to Color

Scroll down to Range Mask, click the dropdown, and choose Color.

Select the eyedropper and click the color you want to keep. In this case, that is the yellow on the boat.

The moment you click, the adjustment only affects the yellow. The water and the rest of the boat go back to normal.

Below the eyedropper is the Color Range slider. It increases or decreases the range of colors affected by the color you selected.

Hold Alt (Windows) or Option (macOS) and click the Color Range slider to see the mask. Drag to the right to expand on those colors. Drag to the left to keep mainly the colors you selected.

One click rarely covers every shade of yellow. Hold Shift (Windows) or Shift (macOS) and click with the eyedropper to add another sample.

Camera Raw allows five sample points in total. Click a sixth time and Photoshop tells you it cannot add any more samples.

With more samples in place, hold Alt (Windows) or Option (macOS) again and drag Color Range to fine-tune the adjustment.

For a Photoshop workflow that uses the Color Range Mask on a Smart Object, see the trick for quality masks in Camera Raw.

Step 7: Sample a Range of Colors Instead

Even five points can miss a lot. In the video, the samples skipped many shades of yellow, and selecting all of them one point at a time is very difficult.

Start from scratch. Press K (Windows) or K (macOS) twice so the pin shows, select it, and press Delete (Windows) or Delete (macOS).

Paint over the yellow areas again. As before, the stroke adjusts every color you paint over. Go into Range Mask and select Color.

This time, click and drag with the eyedropper across a patch of yellow. That samples a range of colors instead of a single one.

Notice the icon is different. A range sample shows a small rectangular marquee under the eyedropper. A regular sample point does not.

Hold Shift (Windows) or Shift (macOS) and click and drag to add more ranges. You can also mix single points and ranges. For a boat with this many shades of yellow, ranges work better.

Hold Alt (Windows) or Option (macOS) to check the mask. The yellows around the boat should be almost completely white.

Then drag Color Range to the left a little, so the blue tarp on the side of the boat drops out of the mask.

Now make the real adjustment. Bring Exposure back to something sensible. Then raise Saturation, Sharpness, Dehaze, and Clarity to make the yellow stand out.

Frequently Asked Questions

Range Masks in Camera Raw and Lightroom

A Range Mask turns a rough gradient or brush stroke into a precise selection, using the luminance and color that are already in your photo.

The names have changed since 2017, but the idea has not. Whether you use the Range Mask dropdown or the Masking panel, hold Alt or Option, watch the mask, and let the photo do the selecting.

Watch the full tutorial above to see both photos edited in real time, and comment on the video with how you plan to use it in your workflow.

New to Lightroom? Start with the free Lightroom course for beginners. It was recorded in the cloud-based app then called Lightroom CC, which Adobe has since renamed Lightroom.

Pro Training

Selections and Masking Mastery

Complete course includes 2.5 hours of step-by-step lessons, 6 structured modules, downloadable practice files, and custom Photoshop brushes. Everything you need to master selections and masks in one place.

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• The Trick for Quality “Masks” in Photoshop’s Camera Raw!
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