In last week’s video, I showcased the new curve features in Lightroom. You can watch that here. But this time we go a bit deeper te see how to make thsoe tools faster. I also show you the latest 4.6 update of Elegance Lightroom Masks.

I’ll show you how to use those curves in Lightroom Mask Presets

PS: You can get my Elegance presets here OR login here to download your free update.

You don’t edit better by doing everything manually.

That’s pure myth from people trying to sound important.

I’ll show you in today’s video how that works and what’s new in 4.6, Because in 2023 if you don’t use presets for this stuff Lightroom effectively punishes you with fewer features. You ge more and faster by making presets or using advanced presets like Elegance..

So Don’t start from zero. It’s pointless!

The reason for that is that whether we’re talking about advanced development presets like Silver or Street’ist, or masking of skin and details, Lightroom like Photoshop before it is built is fast.

So Adobe is creating features as I show you with the preset adjustment sliders that let you work much faster and get an exact result if you DO NOT manually start from zero with the sliders.

The right process in Lightroom

Sort your best images so you are not distracted by the duds. Start with your base photo. Edit it with your presets for your look be it film or black and white etc. Use ethe amount slide to dial it in. Copy as needed to another photo.

Take your best work that you want to mask and use the same procvess using Speed Lightroom Masks and the amount sliders. Then copy that to other photos as needed.

Results speak louder than words.

Put this to work and watch tegh qaulity of your edits, the time you save and the constsiantly of each body of work improve overnight. I’ve been teachiong Lightroom since V1 and these features from the past 2 years are really taking it to another level.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Gavin Seim

If you’re not using my Elegance Speed-Masks and don’t want to, then you need to make your own. So I’ll show you. This is the only way you should be masking in Lightroom. You get better masks about 10x faster. I mean that 100%!

In today video I’ll show you how to make your own Speed Mask presets and the latest update to my own local adjustments preset pack, Elegance 4.

Lightroom’s powerful masking tools can be slow and cumbersome. But now with Speed Masks

You can get the Elegance 4.5 presets here. And if you already have Elegance 4, this is a free update so login and grab it.

Control what you want.

Masking in Lightroom takes a lot of forms and sometimes it transforms everything while others it’s as simple as controlling tone in a sky.

IN this case I use Street’ist presets for the main look and just dialed back the sky using an Ai speed preset. INtersecting grads into you Ai sky selections like I do in Elegance 4.5 makes thenm more natural.

Control 10 layers at a time.

As I showed in the video with this we had all these layers and by using them as a Speed-Mask develop preset you’ll be able top adjust them as one turning the effect intensity up or down. This is a huge control boost for masks in general that most people don’t even know they are missing if they don’t use the Speed Mask presets.

Don’t go too far with masks.

No matter what app you edit with, going too far on a masked edit is the sure fire way to make a photo look fake. In in a time when Ai is creating fakes of everything, I think natural is a good thing.

You should isolate your background but that doe snot mean darken it two stop. Remember Masking is to digital what burning and dodging was in the darkroom. use it wisely.

You can see in this wedding photo how we used the Ai masks but more for atmosphere than to isolate one thing. The mix allows us to us the master slide to decide how far we wanted that to go.

Have fun with these and let me know what you think – Gav