This picture is very important.

I use masking on all of my images, because it gives me control over where the edits go. All edits do not look good if they are applied equally across an entire image. That’s where masking comes in. It’s like painting. You just take a brush (or another masking tool) and apply the edit to specific parts of an image.

But the most important part of masking is ensuring that it blends into the rest of the image. That is where a gradient comes into play.

Below is an example of a gradient in action. I took a gray page and added a -5 exposure adjustment to it, turning it black. Then I made a swipe across it with a brush, to mask/paint in the black to that specific area only. I did this twice - the top one is with a wide gradient on the brush, and the bottom one is with no gradient on the brush. See the difference?

The top brush mask blends the edges smoothly, which means my edit in that area will fade into the adjacent parts of the photo and the edge of the mask will not be noticeable. The bottom one has an abrupt line where the edit ends. This will be VERY noticeable in an edit and will look strange.

I can’t emphasize enough how big of a deal this is when editing. I hope this helps!

I cover all of this, and more, in my new course Lighting the Landscape. It’s dedicated to creating stunning landscapes, and using masks is a HUGE part of this. Check it out!