Camera Raw is amazing and gets more amazing every day. It’s become my go-to place for adjusting images. The local adjustment tools, such as the Adjustment Brush and Gradient Filter, are amazing for making adjustments exactly where you want. The geniuses at Adobe have found a way for them to work even better and that’s with luminosity and color range masking. All that means is that you can now paint within the lines much better than before, thanks to the latest Photoshop CC update. (Yes, you’ll need Photoshop CC to do this, or Lightroom Classic.) To activate this feature, make your adjustment with one of the local adjustment tools. At the bottom of the tool’s panel, you’ll see a drop-down menu for Range Mask. Choose Color to refine the selection based on differences in color, or choose Luminance to create a mask based on differences of dark to light.

This tip originally published in Colin Smith’s Photoshop Tips column, in the January, 2018 issue of Photoshop User magazine.