By Charlotte Reeves

We're BIG fans of Adobe Lightroom here at Unleashed Education, and one of the most useful Lightroom editing tools available is the ability to apply masks to certain parts of the image so you can adjust them separately from the rest of the image.

Gradients are great for enhancing the image by "painting with light" - our term for darkening and lightening certain areas of the image to either reduce or enhance the importance of different regions. This helps to draw attention to your main subject and improve image flow.

In this week's slightly-longer-than-normal Editing Toolbox video, Charlotte takes you through how she uses masks in Lightroom, applying gradients, brushes and subject selections, to improve the look and feel of the image. On not just one, but FIVE different images - so you can see how quick and easy it can be!

If you like these quick tutorials, you'll love our premium Unleashed Edits - full start-to-finish editing tutorials in Lightroom and Photoshop. These are available in our membership (along with a tonne of amazing pet photography education). We hope to see you there!