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highlights-adjustment

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Highlights Adjustment

Highlights adjustment refers to the selective editing of bright areas in a photograph to balance exposure and recover detail. In landscape photography, the sky and other bright regions often require independent tonal control to prevent blown-out highlights while preserving detail in darker areas. This targeted approach allows photographers to maintain natural-looking exposure across the entire image without affecting shadows or midtones.

Using Lightroom Classic’s Landscape Masking

Lightroom Classic provides dedicated masking tools designed specifically for landscape work. The Landscape mask automatically detects and isolates bright areas such as skies, allowing adjustments to be applied only to these regions. To use this feature, open the Masking panel in the Develop module and select the Landscape mask option. The software will generate a mask preview showing which areas will be affected by your edits.

Once the mask is active, adjustments made to the Highlights slider will only impact the masked regions. Reducing the highlights slider darkens bright areas and can recover blown-out detail in the sky, while increasing it brightens underexposed highlights. Users can fine-tune the mask accuracy using the Range and Feather sliders to ensure natural transitions between masked and unmasked areas. The Invert option reverses the mask if needed, allowing adjustment of darker regions instead.

This masking approach eliminates the need for manual selection tools or graduated filters when balancing exposure in landscape images. By isolating highlights, photographers achieve more controlled results while maintaining the overall tonal structure of their photograph.

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