The Sharpening Mask in Lightroom

What does the Sharpening Mask do to your photo and how to use it in Lightroom?

I probably don’t need to say what sharpness does to your photo, right? It obviously sharpens it, it gives it that extra edgy contrast that makes your photo pop! The problem is, when you sharpen it, you usually bring up ALL the details in your photos, and what that means is, if you go too far with this tool, you will get an over-sharpened grainy and messy photo.

Here is where the magic happens! The sharpening mask will allow you to crank the sharpening up ONLY to the parts of the photo that you would like the sharpening to happen, which means, you can make your pictures much sharper without adding grain to it! Isn’t it amazing?

Just AS amazing is how EASY it is to do this! Simple trick, check this out.

Select the sharpening box by adding at least 1% of sharpness to “amount”. Click and hold Alt on your pc or option in your macbook or iMac while you move the Masking slider. Then you will be able to select more or less parts of the image where you want your sharpness increased. The mask will help you to avoid adding sharpening to out of focus areas such as the background and as a result, the fine detail and noise will not be emphasized on these areas.

You are set! That is all!

Check out the video and see how this works with images.