OneShotOne18 wrote:
Perhaps I'm making this harder than it really is. When masking is done I read that it has a lot to do with transparency and filters. I can watch how to videos all day and just do not understand why anyone would white or black out a photo.Bottom line, what is the purpose? Is there a simpler solution until " I get it"? I apologize for having to drag y'all down to such low depth of my lack of knowledge.
Let me show you an example where I used layers & masks....
This image was shot under extreme lighting conditions. The subject was under a roof and shaded. The background is sunlit outdoors. No camera made can handle such an extreme range. And there's no neutral density filter that can be used to balance things, due to all the unique shapes involved. So what I did was double process the image. One version I adjusted for the primary/shaded subject (left), the other image I tweaked exposure and color balance to recover some of the background. (I was working from a RAW file, which has more latitude for adjustment than a JPEG.) I made these two different versions in Lightroom (using "virtual copy").
Then I opened both, made a copy of the background version and laid that on the primary subject version as a new layer.
Next I created a "mask" on the background version and used a black brush to "remove" portions of the image to reveal the bottom layer. Doing this effectively deletes the "incorrect" portions of each version, leaving only the "correct" areas from each which will make a single image (after the layers are flattened). This is the result:
Once I completed the mask for the above, I felt the background was a little too strong, so before I flattened the image I adjusted the background layer "transparency" to reduce it a little bit in the final composite.
The reason for using masks is because you actually aren't "erasing" part of the image with the black brush. In a sense you're just "hiding" it to reveal whatever is behind. With a mask, if you make a mistake you can simply switch to a white brush and "paint it back". You also can use a soft edged brush for better blending too.
And you can set a white brush to a low percentage like 10% and create a gradation effect with multiple strokes that recover only a portion of what was removed. Each stroke across an area re-reveals the effect a little more. For example, in the above image I could have made yet another adjustment layer and mask to selectively remove the bluish cast on the ground under the subject with a gradation. (In this case, it wasn't necessary.)
It's possible to get similar results with an eraser. But if you use an eraser instead of a mask and make a mistake, what's been erased is gone so you have to start all over with a new layer.
Above was done with a single image, because the subject was moving. If it were a stationary subject such as a scenic image, the multiple images with different adjustments can be made in-camera, for even better results that "double processing" like I had to do for the above.
Layers and masks can be used for many things. Besides the above where I selectively adjusted exposure and color balance, it's also an accurate way to apply a variety of effects selectively to an image. For example, I use it at times to blur down a background while sharpening the primary subject... or even to apply sharpening only to the subject while not increasing the sharpness of a background.... or even at times to apply different amounts and/or types of sharpening to different portions of a subject. I had to deal with very shallow depth of field in the following image, so did sharpening differently for portions of the horse's face and somewhat less on it's neck and shoulders, and none on the rider's gloved hand and background.
I've also used layers & masks to apply a "photo filter" to only part of an image. I've also used it to desaturate much of an image, converting it to black and white, while keeping part of it in color. There are many other possibilities, so I'd encourage you to learn to use layers & masks.