An Epic Depth Masking Hack for Apps That Don’t Have It

Depth masks are a superb finishing touch for any edit

Depth masks are, I think, one of the great finishing-touch post-processing tools for photographers. They are unique because they enable you to apply adjustments based not on some arbitrary linear gradient or subject mask, but on the way that light works in the real world. And as a result, adjustments applied via depth masks simply look better and far more natural.

The problem is that most cameras do not store depth data when taking a photograph - it’s pretty much just smartphones such as the iPhone and then only when shooting in Apple’s own HEIC format, not in Pro RAW. So photographers have simply not had access to one of the most useful masking tools of all.

Every photographer knows that masking makes or breaks a good edit, but gradients and brushes force us to manually recreate what physics already knows: how light behaves at different distances. The tool that could fix this has been sitting right there in our smartphones, but now there’s a way to use depth masks in most photo editors.