Color grading tools

Masks

Change one part of the photo, such as a sky or a face, with linear and radial masks that have their own exposure, contrast, colour and saturation.

Masks Pro let you adjust one part of the image and leave the rest alone: darken a bright sky, lift a face, warm one corner.

Adding a mask

Open Masks and choose Linear or Radial. The mask appears on the photo, and you drag it into place there.

Linear is a gradient with three lines. The change is at full strength beyond the first line, fades through the middle one, and is gone by the third. Drag either outer handle to change the angle and how gradual the fade is, or the pin in the middle to move the whole gradient. Starting from the top makes it a graduated filter for a sky.
Radial is an ellipse. Drag the pin in the middle to move it and the four handles on its edge to change its width and height. Feather sets how soft the edge is; the dashed ring shows where the fade starts. Invert changes everything outside the ellipse instead, which makes an off-centre vignette.

Pick a mask in the list, or click its pin on the photo, to adjust it. Turn on Overlay to see where it applies, tinted red. The overlay is only on screen and never ends up in an export.

What a mask changes

Each mask has its own Exposure (in stops), Contrast, Temperature, Tint and Saturation. They apply on top of the rest of the grade. You can have up to eight masks, and where they overlap, both apply.

A mask depends on where a pixel is in the frame, which a LUT can't know. Masks are in image and video exports, but not when you export a LUT. On video, a mask stays where you put it; it doesn't follow a moving subject.

Masks belong to the photo, so they aren't part of a saved look. Applying a saved look keeps the masks already on the photo.