Sky Masks, Color Range, and Drama: What Joel Grimes Taught Me About Adobe Camera Raw's New Masking Tools

There’s a specific problem I run into constantly as a composite artist: I need granular control over a sky without touching the subject, or I need to isolate a rock formation, a building, a piece of fabric, without painting a mask by hand for an hour. Photoshop’s masking tools are powerful, but I’ve started doing more and more of that heavy lifting earlier in the pipeline, right inside Adobe Camera Raw, before an image even hits a layer stack.