There are a lot of moving pieces to concert photography. You have to be in the right place at the right time, your settings need to be solid, and once you’re away from the show and in front of your computer, you need to process the photos to really make them shine. For myself and many other photographers, Lightroom has been the main tool for photo processing. The thing about Lightroom is that for a long time, adjustments were mostly global—i.e.; any changes you made were applied to the entire photo. Recent versions of Lr now have robust masking tools, which allows you to make localized adjustments and keep track of them. I’m going to go through some examples of how I’ve used masks in my work, but there are even more features types available than what I’ve listed here. The features and steps that I mention here are current as of Lightroom Classic 14.3.1; the location and behavior of the tools may change in later versions.

Where to Find the Masking Tool

From the develop module, the masking pane can be opened by selecting the rightmost icon above the basic pane. You can also press Shift + W as a shortcut to the tool. This will prompt you to add a new mask, and offer several options. Keyboard shortcuts will appear in parenthesis where applicable. 

• Subject
• Sky
• Background
• Landscape
• Objects
• Brush (K)
• Linear Gradient (M)
• Radial Gradient (Shift + M)
• Color Range (Shift + J)
• Luminance Range (Shift + Q)
• Depth Range (Shift + Z)

The first five of these options are AI-assisted, in that they use AI to detect and approximate which part of the image is the main subject, the sky, the background, etc. The examples in this post will focus on the linear gradient, background, radial gradient,  and color range masks, plus one more that I’ll get to later.

Mask types

Mask adjustments

Common Controls and Settings

Before I get into the specific types of masks, I want to just briefly discuss some basics of using the tool. These shortcuts and options will function the same no matter which mask type you use.

When you’ve added a mask, a pop-out menu will appear labeled Masks. This will show all of your masks and their types. You can click on the eye symbol to hide/unhide the mask effects. The overlay appears as a bright red by default, but you can make it any color by clicking on the color swatch in the lower right corner of the masks menu. Pressing O will toggle the color overlay’s visibility on and off. By default, areas covered by the overlay will be affected by adjustments made to the mask, but this behavior can be changed in the color overlay settings. The color overlay settings appear in a menu accessed from the 3 dots in the lower right of the masks menu. In addition, every mask you create will have its own menu to duplicate, hide, or delete it from your photo. 

Once you select a mask type, some familiar looking tools will appear: tone, color, point color, curve, effects, and detail all appear in the main tools on the develop module. This means that after you’ve added a mask, you can make a bevy of changes that only affect the masked areas. Please note that your global adjustments will affect the entire image, including any areas that have been masked. For this reason, I tend to leave masking for last in my workflow. With all of that out of the way, let’s move on to the mask types.

Linear Gradient (M)

This creates a mask that is perpendicular to the direction you drag the cursor. In the example below, I clicked at the bottom of the photo and dragged upwards to make a gradient that goes across its entire width. Note that I’ve changed my mask’s overlay color to a semi-transparent blue instead of the default red. 

The linear gradient mask overlay can be seen here in blue

The gradient has handles that can be moved to adjust the mask’s position, angle, and size, as well as the intensity of the gradient’s fade. For this photo of Bleachers, I wanted to even out the exposure of the crowd that was standing further back in the venue. The linear gradient mask was perfect for that. You can see the before and after below.

A before and after of using the linear gradient mask

Background

This AI-assisted masking tool attempts to identify the background of the photo and create a mask for it. For this photo of Vince Staples, he was performing in front of a red LED screen, and I found that adjusting the colors globally was having an unpleasant effect on the look of the performer. Using the background mask allowed me to isolate the screen behind him and make the color more vibrant and true to what it looked like in person.

A before and after of using the background mask

Radial Gradient (Shift + M)

This tool can create a circular or elliptical mask. Click and drag outward—this will make a mask with the area you clicked as the center point. If you hold Shift before you click, this will force the mask to be a perfect circle. You can move, rotate, and reshape the mask using the handles. Clicking the invert checkbox will change the mask so that the adjustments are applied to everything outside of the circle rather than inside. I’ve done that below with the photo of Bastille.

The radial gradient mask overlay can be seen here in blue

This photo was taken during a moment when there was a strong spotlight on the crowd, so there was a major difference in exposure between everyone under the spotlight and those just outside of it. I used a radial gradient to bring out the fans in the shadows without losing the impact of the spotlight, and I think it gives the image a better since of scale, instead of an oval floating in darkness.

A before and after of using the radial gradient mask

Color Range (Shift + J)

As the name implies, the color range mask tool allows you to select a color range to apply your masked adjustments to. Admittedly, I haven’t used this one too often, but for this photo of Sleigh Bells, I found the background to be a little too overpowering. I didn’t want to use a background mask because I felt it would look too unnatural in a situation like this.

Use the tool by clicking on a color within the image, or you can drag a box around a section of the photo and it will include those colors in the mask. You can then use the refine slider to adjust the intensity of the mask’s effects. The results here are a little more subtle, but I personally think it made the background less distracting.

A before and after of using the color range mask

The People Mask

Remember how I said I’d mention one other masking tool? Below the range masking tools, you’ll find a drill-down menu labeled People. This will attempt to detect the people in a photo, and then give you a series of masking options for each person. Those options are:

• Entire Person
• Facial Skin
• Body Skin
• Eyebrows
• Eye Sclera
• Iris and Pupil
• Lips
• Teeth
• Hair
• Clothes

You can choose which elements you’d like to mask, and whether or not you’d like them to be combined into one mask, or generated as separate masks that can be adjusted independently. For this photo of St. Vincent, I used two masks: one for the background, and one for her hair. Again, another subtle change, but one that I think is for the best.

A before and after of using the hair mask from the people menu

A note about the AI-assisted mask detection: if you use the remove tool after you have applied one of these masks, you will see a red dot appear under the masking tool. This means that the adjustments you made may have affected one or more of your masks. You can refresh the detection by clicking on the mask, then clicking on the Update button.

Any mask you create can be adjusted by clicking the add or subtract buttons on the Masks menu. This will allow you to combine mask types into one and really refine your selections.

The warning message and update button

Adding to an existing mask

Whenever I have the time, I try to incorporate these tools into my workflow to make things stand out just a little more. Give them a try for yourself and see what you can do.

If you’re more of a visual learner, Julieanne Kost made a very detailed walkthrough of all the options (including the ones I didn’t cover) that you can check out right here. Additionally, Phlearn’s 30 Days of Lightroom playlist covers masks on days 5 and 6.