Subject Glow via Foreground-to-Transparent Radial Gradient + Inverted Mask

A compositing technique for adding a colored glow behind a subject, built entirely from Active Selection Auto-Loads as New Layer Mask:

With the subject selection active, set the foreground color and choose the Foreground to Transparent gradient preset with a Radial shape.
Draw a new Gradient layer — the active subject selection auto-loads as its mask, so the gradient initially only shows inside the subject's silhouette.
Invert the mask (Ctrl/Cmd+I) — this is the pivotal step, flipping the gradient so it shows everywhere except the subject, i.e. as a glow radiating from behind it.
Switch the layer's blend mode from Normal to Linear Dodge so the glow color interacts with and brightens the underlying background tones instead of sitting as a flat, opaque overlay on top.

The technique is a direct extension of how gradients and adjustment layers inherit an active selection — the invert step is what converts "edit constrained to the subject" into "edit constrained to everything but the subject."

Lightroom Mobile Implementation

The same inverted-mask spotlight principle applies directly in Lightroom mobile, using different tool names than the Photoshop radial-gradient version:

Gradient tool (linear local adjustment): drag from an image edge inward to mask off a distracting bright area (e.g., a bright floor) and pull Exposure down within it.
Elliptical/radial mask: draw an ellipse around the subject, then invert it (the icon that 'looks like a diagonal black and white cookie') so an Exposure drop applies to everything outside the ellipse — darkening the surroundings while leaving the subject untouched. This is the Lightroom-mobile equivalent of the foreground-to-transparent radial gradient + inverted mask combo.
A second, non-inverted mask placed directly on the subject raises Exposure there, brightening it.
Critically, the same subject mask is also pushed warmer via the Temperature slider — brightness and color temperature are two independent levers that both pull the viewer's eye, not brightness alone: 'whatever I make the warmest part of the image, the viewer's eyes are gonna go there too.'

The underlying mechanism rests on the global vs. local adjustment distinction: a global adjustment changes the whole image, a local adjustment (Gradient / Elliptical / Radial masks) changes only the selected region — the spotlight effect depends entirely on staying local. The presenter frames the goal as invisibility: 'if you're subtle enough about it, and if you can hide it enough, it just looks like a good image.'

See also Motivated Light (Restrained Secondary-Highlight Suppression) for how to handle secondary bright areas that shouldn't be fully suppressed during this kind of edit.

Lightroom Mobile: Layered Radial-Gradient Build

The same subject-glow-via-inverted-mask pattern also shows up in Lightroom Mobile, built with the Radial Gradient masking tool instead of Photoshop's foreground-to-transparent gradient (source: "How To Use Radial Gradients in Lightroom For Stunning Photo Edits").

Layer, don't max out one gradient. Apply the radial gradient over the light source multiple times at increasing sizes (small → medium → large), adding more exposure and warmth on each pass rather than pushing a single gradient to an extreme value.
Secret-sauce combo for realistic flare: exposure alone "doesn't really give us a feeling of the sun" — pair it with warmed temperature (+15 to +20), a touch of tint (+5 to +7), and reduced dehaze (about -10) to mimic the haze/contrast-loss of shooting into light. Dehaze is bidirectional and delicate here: pushed positive it oversaturates the sky unrealistically, pulled negative it desaturates and merges the sun's warmth into the sky — small negative nudges read best.
Feather almost fully soft by default so mask edges are invisible — treated as a near-universal default ("I would never use it" hard-edged), not a situational choice.
Invert the mask for the "everything else" half of the pattern: draw one large radial gradient covering roughly two-thirds of the frame around the light source, back off the feather slightly, invert, then darken exposure/highlights and cool temperature/tint — reinforcing warm+bright (subject) vs. cool+dark (everything else) contrast. Stated principle: "the eye goes to what is brightest and warmest," so the inverted pass does as much work as the glow build itself. See also Vignette as Subliminal (Should-Be-Invisible) Eye Guidance and Global Normalize-Then-Style Baseline Before Local Masking for the rest of this edit's workflow.

Из тем: Lightroom Mobile: Masking, Sliders & Simulated Light