Now, there's no denying it.,
the new masking section that was added into Lightroom
and Camera Raw not so long
ago has made a huge difference when editing images.
Being able to automatically select
and then adjust certain parts of a picture, even down
to automatically selecting hair, face skin, eye
color and more, has not just cut down editing time,
but also given us way more creative possibilities.
So in this video, I want to show you
how we can use this technology to add realistic
lighting into our pictures, but even better than that,
do it with just one click using what can only be described
as intelligent presets.
Now, obviously, if you want light in a portrait,
it's always best to do it during the photo shoot,
but what if you didn't?
Or maybe what if you want to add more light?
In this example,
I want to add a light on the wall behind the girl.
First of all, I'll go to the masking
and choose radial gradient as my mask type.
Then I'll
click and drag out a radial gradient.
We can see where the gradient is by the red overlay.
Then I go to the mask adjustments.
I'll go to the tone section and just increase the exposure
a little.
This is now our light source.
Now, to put it behind the girl, all I have to do
is go to subtract and choose subject.
Now, you might think I would have gone
for the select people option with the mask,
but I'll show you why I didn't do that in a moment.
So now that I've used
subtract and subject, the light is behind the girl,
and because I used a
mask to do this, I can reposition the light.
I can even resize it, change the brightness of it,
and if I wanted to even change the color
using the controls in the color section.
Now, the reason I didn't choose
subtract and person is because of the chair.
Let me just delete this light
and mask and show you what I mean.
So starting again,
I'll go to the masking section and add a radial gradient.
I'll click to drag it out, then in the tone section,
increase the exposure to make the light.
To put the light behind the girl this time
I'll go to subtract and select people.
I'll click on her thumbnail
and make sure the entire person option is ticked.
But look,
when I turn that mask off and on, we can clearly see
the red overlay indicating what will be masked out,
and we can clearly see that it doesn't include the chair.
So then I click on Create Mask.
The light is now behind the girl,
but look what happens as I move it around.
We can see the brightness of the light on the wall
behind the girl, but also see that the chair in front of her
is being brightened too,
which obviously would not happen if this was a real light.
Now we can take this a step further and create a preset
so that we can create a light behind a person with just one
click in any picture, because we're using Adobe's AI
to recognize what the subject is to put the light behind.
So let's create that preset.
First of all, let's remove this mask where I use
the select people option and add the correct one.
I'll add a radial gradient, drag it out,
increase the exposure, and then subtract and select subject.
Okay, now that's
done, I'll go to the preset section
click on the plus symbol and then create preset.
I'll give the preset a name, choose
where I want to save it,
which in my case is just in the user presets folder.
Then in the settings I'll make sure that
the only option ticked is the masking checkbox,
and then click on Create.
That preset you can now see listed in the User Presets
folder.
So I'll remove the mask off this portrait
and then just use the preset to add the light.
I click on it and there it is.
And as always, I can adjust the size,
position, brightness, everything.
Now it's there I can add it to other pictures
if I want., so I’ll add it to this one.
Once it's added,
I can then adjust it to look how I want.
You can see how effective the mask is here
when I move the light from one side
of the portrait to the other.
Look how it seems to go behind them because of the mask.
So clever.
I'll just add it to a couple more pictures.
We'll go for this one here
and this one here
with more than one person in the picture.
And it still works great.
Now, like everything in editing, this isn't going to work on
every single picture, but it will work on most.
It won't work, or rather it won't look good though,
if you use it on a portrait where the background is dark
because even though you can add the light,
the masking is going to look completely unnatural.
So there you go,
that's just one way that we can use
the masking section in both Lightroom and Camera Raw
to add a light into a picture and have it behind the person,
if it wasn't done during the photo shoot.
But there you go, that's all I've got for this video,
so if you've liked it, if you've got something from it,
I'd really appreciate a thumbs up, and if you haven't yet,
click on the subscribe button
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But for now, that's me, I'm done.
I'll catch you in the next video.