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Someone recently pointed out in one of the forums the 30 Days of Photoshop tutorials and I would like to thank him for doing so. After doing the 30 days I found that I had ongoing problems with getting the hang of masks and of deciding where and when to utilize them. They make a lot of sense for certain types of photography but it seems they are not nearly as beneficial to the processing of wildlife photography in particular. Perhaps I am mistaken. How important are masks to you and when and why do you choose to use them? Just curious.

Certainly no PS expert. But how i use masks in bird photography is to adjust the whites and darks feather areas to reveal some detail. After doing global image adjustments, I may want to either tone down whites or pull up darks. I make an adjustment layer to make the needed effect, invert the AL mask to black, and use a reduced opacity white brush to brush through the black mask limiting the adjustment to only the specific area or tonality I want to play with. Once the AL is restricted to that particular area or tone, I can reopen the adjustment to fiddle with it some more.

There are probably hundreds of ways to do this selective adjustment. I find this method easy to use.

Richard

I just want to say you guys made me laugh... mostly at myself! I read "PC" and "masks" as wearing face masks to the point of doing so while out in the field, alone...

And it took me a couple of reads to "get it."

joseph motto wrote:[snip] I found that I had ongoing problems with getting the hang of masks and of deciding where and when to utilize them. They make a lot of sense for certain types of photography but it seems they are not nearly as beneficial to the processing of wildlife photography in particular. [snip]

Anytime you want to make local adjustments to your photographs, you can use layers and masks. It has nothing to do with the types of photography you are doing. You may not make local adjustments to your wildlife photos, other people may and do. They're your friends when it come to adjustments.

joseph motto wrote:Someone recently pointed out in one of the forums the 30 Days of Photoshop tutorials and I would like to thank him for doing so. After doing the 30 days I found that I had ongoing problems with getting the hang of masks and of deciding where and when to utilize them. They make a lot of sense for certain types of photography but it seems they are not nearly as beneficial to the processing of wildlife photography in particular. Perhaps I am mistaken. How important are masks to you and when and why do you choose to use them? Just curious.

Using masks or brushes for selective adjustments is important to me with wildlife or bird photography. Applying an adjustment across an entire image when it's only needed in specific areas is a good way to wreck an image, IMO.
An example of where I use it concerns dark animals or in cases where the eye is hidden on dark fur or feathers. I brighten the eye or fur/feathers so some detail can be seen. Too much and it looks flat or artificial, but a little goes a long way.

I can't remember the last time I processed a photo, any kind of photo, without some layer masks either in Capture One or Photoshop or both. I do everything in layers, even prior to RAW conversion.

E.J. Peiker wrote:I can't remember the last time I processed a photo, any kind of photo, without some layer masks either in Capture One or Photoshop or both.  I do everything in layers, even prior to RAW conversion.

I love how Capture one works now, although it mystifies me why there is no blur tool?

Scott Fairbairn wrote:

E.J. Peiker wrote:I can't remember the last time I processed a photo, any kind of photo, without some layer masks either in Capture One or Photoshop or both.  I do everything in layers, even prior to RAW conversion.

I love how Capture one works now, although it mystifies me why there is no blur tool?

There is actually a pretty easy way to do that.  Create a layer of the area you want to blur, use negative clarity as needed and reduce structure to -100

Ok, thanks, I'll try that.

E.J. Peiker wrote:

Scott Fairbairn wrote:

E.J. Peiker wrote:I can't remember the last time I processed a photo, any kind of photo, without some layer masks either in Capture One or Photoshop or both.  I do everything in layers, even prior to RAW conversion.

I love how Capture one works now, although it mystifies me why there is no blur tool?

There is actually a pretty easy way to do that.  Create a layer of the area you want to blur, use negative clarity as needed and reduce structure to -100

Thanks for the tip, that seems to work well. Not as convenient as a blur brush, but it's a good workaround.

E.J. Peiker wrote:

Scott Fairbairn wrote:

E.J. Peiker wrote:I can't remember the last time I processed a photo, any kind of photo, without some layer masks either in Capture One or Photoshop or both.  I do everything in layers, even prior to RAW conversion.

I love how Capture one works now, although it mystifies me why there is no blur tool?

There is actually a pretty easy way to do that.  Create a layer of the area you want to blur, use negative clarity as needed and reduce structure to -100

Excellent tip, E.J., I'll definitely have to try that.  Thank you.

Scott Fairbairn wrote:

E.J. Peiker wrote:

Scott Fairbairn wrote:

E.J. Peiker wrote:I can't remember the last time I processed a photo, any kind of photo, without some layer masks either in Capture One or Photoshop or both.  I do everything in layers, even prior to RAW conversion.

I love how Capture one works now, although it mystifies me why there is no blur tool?

There is actually a pretty easy way to do that.  Create a layer of the area you want to blur, use negative clarity as needed and reduce structure to -100

Thanks for the tip, that seems to work well. Not as convenient as a blur brush, but it's a good workaround.

It's very easy to implement that as a blur brush, Simply create a new empty layer, set your Fill on that brush for about 5-10%, set clarity to -100 and structure to -100, now brush in the blur where you want it - the number of brush strokes over the target determines how much of the effect.  Since none of this is destructive you can play with any of the values at any time and even change the opacity of the layer if you decide you went too far.  Another trick that many use is to make all adjustment layers of any kind with the opacity set to about 70% and then go ahead and make your adjustments the way you usually do.  Now if you want just a bit more or just a bit less of whatever adjustment that layer contains, you simply bump up or reduce the opacity at any time.

Back to Joe, all of the things discussed above regarding Caoture One works in Photoshop too, it's just that there you are doing it after RAW conversion rather than before.