Adobe Camera Raw 18.3.1 adds better masking and color grading tools

Adobe Camera Raw 18.3.1 sharpened the raw editing workflow where photographers feel it most: mask edges, local color, and white balance in extreme light. The May 23 update added Feather and Edge sliders for AI masks, three-way color wheels inside Masking, and a Temperature range that now drops to 1500 Kelvin, a useful floor for candlelit scenes and other very warm files.

The masking changes are the most immediately useful. The new refinement controls apply to Sky, Subject, Background, Landscape and People masks, giving editors more control over how selections land before the real grading begins. That matters on the kind of jobs where a mask is close but not quite clean enough, such as a subject against a bright sky, hair slipping into a background, or a landscape edge that needs softer falloff instead of a hard digital cut. Adobe’s 2021 masking redesign was described as the biggest selective-editing change since Lightroom 2, and this release keeps pushing that same idea forward: do more of the precision work without leaving the raw editor.

Color work inside masks is the other shift that will save time. Camera Raw 18.3.1 adds three-way color wheels directly in Masking, so local color grading no longer has to wait for a separate pass or a broader global correction. That lines up with Adobe’s earlier framing of Color Grading as an extension of Split Toning, but the practical difference is bigger now that the controls sit inside selective edits. A photographer fixing a cool face, a green cast in a background, or a sunset that needs one region pulled warmer can stay inside one toolset instead of stacking workarounds.

The update also arrives in a Camera Raw cycle that has moved fast. April’s Camera Raw 18.3 release added more than 12 film-inspired presets, anamorphic desqueeze, projection correction and depth range masking. February’s 18.2 update added WebP support. Julieanne Kost posted her tutorial on May 19, just before the 18.3.1 release, and Adobe is already asking users for feedback through its Community forum while also flagging new cameras, lenses and bug fixes in the build. For photographers editing mixed-light files, heavy masking jobs or color-sensitive portraits, 18.3.1 is the kind of update that changes how quickly a file reaches final shape.