To mask or not to mask?

Masking is a term that you may not think applies to Capture One Pro 7, but as you have seen in my previous blog posts it is certainly possible to selectively edit areas with Local Adjustments.

So indeed this is a kind of masking, but are there other ways we can selectively adjust images?  Take a look at the image above. It has quite a prominent blue sky, but it didn’t look as rich as this in the unedited photo.

All it took was a simple Color Editor adjustment and a change in the ‘Lightness’ slider to simply bring the tone down to something more pleasing.  No need for any kind of Local Adjustment.

Often the Color Editor gets overlooked as a way to change the appearance of a color and not just the hue.  Also in the above image the red flag was picked as well, to richen the red a little.  Again, no need for any local adjustment.  So think about if an area of your image needs adjusting, or if it can be dealt with using one or a few color edits as opposed to needing to draw a mask.

When to use Auto Masking?

During workshops and seminars I often see people instantly going to the Auto Mask feature and then spend more time than necessary trying to mask around complex objects, when all it could take is either a simple edit like above or a quick combination of a Local Adjustment Mask and a color edit. Normally for the last option the mask need only be ‘rough’ one, so it is extremely fast to do!  We will look at that technique at the end.

However, the Auto Mask can certainly be a really useful feature and I do use it on occasion when the above-mentioned techniques don’t work.

How the Auto Mask works

The image below may well benefit from an Auto Mask, if I want to separate the background from the flower a little. Auto Mask works by detecting differences in color and contrast in an image file to find the edge of a subject, and this is a good example.

Here is the image with some basic corrections but I wouldn’t mind darkening the background a little. As the background is made of multiple tones it doesn’t work so well to use the Color Editor as in the above example.

So instead I will use the Auto Mask function of the local adjustments brush. Normally, Local Adjustment masks are simply brushed on with varying size and opacity.  If you want to know more about using Local adjustments then there are plenty on the blog you can read up on. To check them out, try searching for ‘Local Adjustments’ in the upper right corner on the blog.

During masking:

After releasing the mouse or pen:

I continue around the edge until the mask looks like this:

To fill in the mask, I can use the Fill Mask command in the Local Adjustment Tool:

Now the mask looks like this:

There is a small error in the upper right-hand corner and in the bottom right, but it’s easy to clean that up with the erase brush.

Finally, I can invert the mask and darken the background to my liking!

Finally, a really useful technique is to use a Local Adjustment in combination with a color edit. I use this image below a lot, captured by my friend Malcom Bryan in Beijing, as it illustrates this point perfectly.

Here it is with some basic adjustments:

What I want to do is edit the color of the red ballon a little in the background, but there is a problem!  If I select it in the Color Editor and make an adjustment, it also effects the balloon seller’s skin tone. We can see this by turning on the View selected color range option in the Color Editor. This turns any part of the image, that will not be affected by the edit, to monochrome. I have adjusted the range and smoothness carefully to just include the balloon, but it still effects the skin tone as well!

So by using a really rough Local Adjustment mask, I can select just the area in the top left-hand corner, select the red tone only and then the skin tone will be left unaffected.

So, that’s three different ways you can select areas for localized adjustments. All with different uses but all equally useful!

Best regards,

David

David Grover

David Grover is part of the Capture One team, bringing you help, advice and education on a variety of subjects and platforms. David can be found on most weeks delivering live Capture One Webinars or anytime on our YouTube Channel.

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