Luminosity Masks

[elsa hoffmann]

For those of you using Luminosity masks - here is an action which you can run - saves you building Luminosity masks every time from scratch.

There are 3 actions in the package -
Bright (brighter/brightest etc)
Dark (darker/darkest etc)
Midtones (midtoner/midtonest etc)

They are extremely useful especially if you do landscapes

downloadable for free from
http://www.bwvision.com/photoshop-action-sets-downloads-luminosity-masks/ - Joel Tjintjelaar
as I cant attach a .atn file here 

if you cant download - I can e-mail it or private message it

[armando_m]

hmm... so I downloaded the thing , tried it and it created a bunch of channels, now I have to read the page to see what do with them ...

interesting page Elsa! Thanks for sharing it

[elsa hoffmann]

herewith some tutorials on how Luminosity Masks works

http://goodlight.us/writing/luminositymasks/luminositymasks-1.html

http://digital-photography-school.com/exposure-blending-using-luminosity-masks-tutorial/

Essentially it works like this:

If you have an image - and you only want to work (edit) the brightest parts of the image - you create a luminosity mask (via channels - then save the selection) and whatever adjustment you do will ONLY affect the brightest parts of the image. The opposite applies to the darker parts etc. So if you only want to lift the shadows - you use the darker mask.

It is extremely useful and particularly since it is fine tuned and very specific to what you selected. Invaluable for landscapes I think.

[Jørgen Ramskov]

I'm not using Photoshop, I've stayed in LR for now, but isn't these similar to using the highlights, shadows, whites and blacks sliders in LR?

[elsa hoffmann]

Jørgen - no - it is not quite the same. Control is totally different and also - you only make a mask with the luminosity masks in channels - which means you can do anything to that mask.(not only shadows and highlights) It is often something one uses when isolating fine hair from a background. Its very fine tuning - or could be.