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http://photo.bruha.net/
welcome to the Basic Luminosity Mask tutorial
this type of mask is a basic tool for advanced photo editing
Basic Luminosity Mask can be created in Adobe Photoshop by using one from three possible approaches
these approaches are simple even for beginners in Photoshop
First approach started by selecting RGB channel from Channel palette
drag RGB channel by mouse and move it into icon for loading selection
you can see that approach lead to the selection of lighter parts of the image
we remove selection by shortcut Ctrl+D
now we show second approach by holding key Ctrl+Click on RGB channel
the result is the same one. remove selection by Ctrl+D
the third approach is based on special keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+2 which also result in the same result
now we save selection as special channel
by using special icon Save selection as a channel
clicking on the icon, the selection is saved as channel with grayscale representation of image tones
you can see that Photoshop selects lighter parts of image, in this example areas with snow
now we remove selection
and return colors into image
and now we show usage of this mask
at first we rename mask from Alpha 1 to something more reasonable, for example 'Lights'
the mask can be used by loading channel back into the image as selection
there are three approaches how to do it
first approach is using by keyboard shortcut Ctrl+6
the second approach means dragging channel onto icon for loading selection
the last approach is based on holding key Ctrl+Click on the channel 'Lights'
now we have selection in the image and therefore we can start editing the image
insert a new Curves layer
we change blend mode of Curves layer to the Luminosity mode which ensures
that editing would affect only luminosity and colors would not be altered
now we have new Curves layer in place
and the layer has grayscaled masks
the mask, specifically lighter and darker parts, determines where changes will be visible
the lighter areas represents parts where changes will be more visible
and the darker areas protect tones from changes
it means that black pixels in the mask block the changes
and white pixels allow full impact of changes
now we use this mask to return details into areas with too bright snow in the foreground
this means we dimm tones
by dragging curves, we adjust points of RGB curve appropriately
now we check the impact, you can see we make too bright tones darker
we can also enlarge effect of changes by deepening contrast in the mask
we can apply the curves or levels adjustment to the mask
the levels adjustment is more quicker tool so we apply this type of adjustment to the mask
you can see that applying levels adjustment means more contrast mask
so we let the contrast mask in place and check the impact on the image
you can see that impact of Curves layer with more contrast mask is little bit deeper
we finalize mask by blurring mask which help to smooth-out tones in the mask
and which brings more details into image
so zoom the image to see the impact
now we select mask and apply blur filter
select Filter menu, Blur, Gaussian Blur, blurring by 25 pixels is enough
of course, the blur value depends on the image, sometimes you need less, sometimes more
it depends on concrete image
now we check the impact, we can see we get more contrast in the snow
and more details are also visible
which can be proved by checking history, applying of blur to the mask brings additional details to the image
this is about everything what could be say regarding the usage of basic luminosity mask in photo editing
in the next tutorial we show you how to create another types of luminosity masks
which help us to edit only part of images depending on tones types
so we will be able to edit only lights, darks or mid-tones
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