How To Create A Glow Effect With The Radial Gradient Mask

The best way to learn how to use masks in Lightroom Classic is to practice. Today I’m going to show you how I developed two photos using masks. The aim is to show you a masking techniques you may not be aware of – using a Radial Gradient to add a glow effect to your photos. It also gives you a taste of what’s in my new ebook Mastering Masks (it’s discounted until the end of November, so go take a look).

Note: I’ve used Lightroom Classic for this demo, but you can also do it in Lightroom desktop, Lightroom mobile, Lightroom web and Adobe Camera Raw (ACR). The layout of the sliders is different, but the tools are the same.

Each photo is also available on my Adobe Community profile, so you can try out the techniques yourself using the Remix tool.

Masking example 1: The Garden House

I’m starting with a photo that I made in the Garden House, a garden in south-west England. It’s a great location for photography if you live nearby or are passing through. It has twelve acres of beautiful gardens surrounding an early 19th century house originally built for the vicars of a nearby village. The location in the photo is the walled garden, a photogenic part of the garden built around the remains of a 16th century vicarage.

You can see the versions without local adjustments (top) and with local adjustments (bottom). The only difference is that I’ve used masks to make local adjustments to the second photo.

I used four masks to make local adjustments. This is what they look like in the Masks panel.

Before you start masking, it’s a good idea to think about what you want to achieve. In this photo my main aim was to emphasize the feeling of warm sunlight spilling over the distant wall into the garden. That’s the glow effect I mentioned in the introduction. Now let me show you how I did it.

Mask 1: Sky

I started by clicking the Create New Mask button and selecting Select Sky. That gave me this mask. In case you’re wondering why the photo is black and white, it’s because I set the Overlay Mode to Color Overlay on B&W, which shows a red mask on a black and white background. I use that because it makes the mask easy to see.

Anybody who’s used Select Sky knows that Lightroom tends to create a mask that overlaps the horizon. You can see it when I zoom into the photo. Lightroom included the tops of the trees and part of the ruined building in the mask.

There’s an easy fix for that. I don’t know why this works, by the way, just that it does. Click the ellipse (three dot) icon next to the mask, and select Intersect Mask With > Select Sky from the menu. That usually improves the coverage of the sky mask. In this case you can clearly see the difference.

Note: You can intersect masks in Lightroom desktop, but not Lightroom mobile or Lightroom web.

Then I moved the Highlights slider left (to -28) to darken the sky a little. That’s the only adjustment I made using this mask.

Learn more: How To Intersect Masks In Lightroom Classic

Mask 2: Sky inverted

Next I clicked the ellipse (three dot) icon next to the Sky mask again and selected Duplicate and Invert Mask from the menu. When you do this Lightroom creates a duplicate mask with zeroed sliders. It also inverts the mask. So in this case the new mask covered everything except the sky.

I set Clarity to +25 to bring out the textures. That’s the only adjustment I wanted to make to the foreground.

Mask 3: Glow

Next I placed a Radial Gradient over the top left of the photo. This is the most important mask, that one that transformed the image by adding warmth and light. The Radial Gradient was the ideal tool for this. You can see the mask and the gradient in the screenshot below. I set Feather to 83 for a smooth transition.

The screenshots below show the settings I used to get the glow effect.

The idea was to:

• Make the masked area brighter (with the Highlights and Black sliders).
• Make the masked area warmer (with the Temp slider).
• Make the masked area softer (with the Clarity and Dehaze sliders).

This effect is easy to replicate and you can use it with lots of different photos.

Mask 4: Glow inverted

Finally I duplicated and inverted the Radial Gradient mask I had just created (ellipse icon > Duplicate and Invert Mask). You can see the mask below.

I set Highlights to -27 and Shadows to -11 to darken the area covered by the mask. Using the inverted mask creates a smooth transition across the photo from light to dark, helping to create a natural effect.

Here are the before (top) and after (bottom) versions again so you can see the difference the local adjustments and masks made to the photo.

You can click here to view this photo on my Adobe Community profile. You can remix it to practice the masking technique and download the settings as a Develop Preset to use on your own photos.

Masking example 2: Portrait

You can use the glow effect with many different photos. Here’s an example of how I used it with a portrait. You can see the before and after versions below. The before version has some masking and local adjustments, but no glow effect. The after version shows the glow effect.

With this example I wanted to apply the glow effect to the background, but not to the model. It was meant to look as if the light was shining on the background. That meant I had to refine the mask. Here’s the initial mask created by the Radial Gradient.

As you can see, it partially covers the model. To fix that, I clicked the Subtract button and chose Select Subject. Lightroom subtracted the subject (the model) from the Radial Gradient mask, giving this result.

I won’t go into the detail but otherwise it works the same way as the Radial Gradient mask in the first photo.

Click or tap here to view the photo on Adobe Community and see all the masks and settings.

Masking example 3: Flower

Here’s an example of how I used the glow effect with a flower photo. You can see the before (left) and after (right) versions below.

I combined the techniques used in the other photos. I created a Radial Gradient mask to create the glow effect, then duplicated and inverted it to darken the other part of the photo. The difference is that I subtracted a Subject mask from both masks, so that the flower wasn’t affected. You can see both masks below.

Click or tap here to view the photo on Adobe Community and see all the masks and settings.

Hopefully the examples in this article have inspired you to try some Radial Gradient masking yourself. You can use it with just about any photo, but it works best when it emphasizes a light source or highlight that’s already present in the photo. That way the effect looks natural. Don’t forget you can learn more about masks in my newest ebook Mastering Masks (more info below).

Mastering Masks

Lightroom’s masking tools have changed the way photographers develop photos forever. My newest ebook, Mastering Masks, teaches you how to create stunning photos using masks and local adjustments. It covers all the latest tools and techniques covered, plus there are fourteen Case Studies for you to follow along with. 

Click here to learn more or buy