# Masks & Local Adjustments

> Edit one part of a photo without touching the rest — brighten a subject, recover a sky, or separate foreground from background to direct the viewer's eye.

Source: https://darkroom.co/help/edit/masks-local-adjustments
Section: Edit
Updated: 2026-06-10

Most edits change the whole frame at once. Masks let you change *part* of it — brighten just your subject, pull back just the sky, warm just the foreground. This is the step that separates a corrected photo from a deliberate one: by lighting some areas and quieting others, you guide the viewer's eye exactly where the story is.

Open a photo, tap **Masks** in the Edit view toolbar, and add a mask with the **+** button. Every mask carries its own full set of adjustments, so you can stack several — each doing one job — and see them as preview thumbnails in the mask list. Masks are a [Darkroom+](/darkroom+) feature; foreground and background editing on Portrait photos remains free.

![Mask preview thumbnails in Darkroom on iPhone and Mac](https://darkroom.co/assets/images/posts/2023-06-13-mask-previews.jpg)

*Preview thumbnails make it easy to tell your masks apart when you're stacking several.*

## Masks that understand your photo

When you open a photo, using AI, Darkroom builds understanding of the scene right on your device — privately, and fast enough to fit your normal workflow. That powers a set of automatic masks that used to require painstaking manual selection:

- **Subject** isolates the main subject so you can make them pop. **Foreground** and **Background** split the scene front-to-back, ideal for separating a person from their surroundings.
- **Depth Range** targets a slice of distance in the scene, and can be inverted to edit everything *except* that slice.
- **Smart Masks** on Portrait and ProRAW photos go further still, isolating **Sky, Skin, Hair, Glasses,** and **Teeth** where the capture data supports it. Drop Clarity inside a Skin mask to smooth complexion while keeping eyes and hair crisp, or brighten Teeth a touch for a portrait at someone's best.

![AI-generated subject, foreground and background masks on a photo](https://darkroom.co/assets/images/posts/2022-04-masks-ai.jpg)

*AI masks bring subject and depth selection to every photo, not just Portrait shots.*

## Masks you draw and define

When you want to place a selection yourself, two families cover almost everything:

- **Gradient masks** — **Linear** for skies, horizons, and foreground falloff; **Radial** for subjects and vignette-style attention, with adjustable feathering and the option to invert so you edit everything outside the oval.
- **Range masks** — **Color Range** selects by hue (widen the range to pull in neighboring colors), and **Luminance Range** selects by brightness, so you can target only the bright or only the dark pixels.

The real power is combining them. A Linear mask plus a Luminance Range edits only the bright sky and leaves the horizon untouched; a Color mask plus a Luminance mask catches only the bright blue pixels; Subject plus a little Clarity and Exposure lifts a person cleanly off their background.

![Linear and radial gradient masks in Darkroom](https://darkroom.co/assets/images/posts/2022-04-masks-gradient.jpg)

*Linear and radial masks are the manual foundation; combine them with range masks for pixel-precise selections.*

## Working with masks

Each mask's actions live behind the **•••** button: add, invert, duplicate-and-invert (great for grading foreground and background as a complementary pair), delete, or reset just that mask's edits. The workflow that holds up best is to correct the whole image globally first, then add your most impactful mask, then smaller supporting ones — keeping each adjustment subtle, since local edits stack into something artificial fast. If a masked look travels badly to another photo, use selective paste in [History](/help/edit/history) to copy your edits *without* the masks.

## Related

- [Make Local Adjustments with Masks](/blog/2022-04-masks) — the full feature tour
- [Mask Previews](/blog/2023-06-13-mask-previews) — telling stacked masks apart
- [Portrait editing](/help/guide/portrait-editing) — for a mask-driven portrait workflow
- [Adjustment Sliders](/help/edit/adjustment-sliders) — the edits you apply inside each mask