How to Mask Anything in a Snap Using Lightroom’s Auto Masking

Lightroom’s Auto Mask feature lets you intelligently target edit towards specific portions of photos. While the standard tool is useful, there are more advanced ways of using the tool that can take your editing to the next level. Here’s a great 13-minute tutorial on the subject by Signature Edits.

One big tip is that by zooming out in your photo and using a giant brush that covers the entire image, you can make photo-wide selections of certain things in the photo with a single click.

So instead of spending minutes carefully painting a scene, you can instead make the same selection in just moments and then clean it up after. The video also shows how this trick can be refined and used for various situations.

“This Lightroom trick literally changed the way I edit forever,” Signature Edits says. “I had no idea how easy it was to create masks in Lightroom, and no idea how masking in Lightroom works as a Photoshop replacement for MANY applications.”

You can find more videos by Signature Edits on its YouTube channel.