Luminosity Masks

[stunsworth]

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Also, depends on what your earlier definition of high and dark or whatever

 

Can't rember off the top of my head, but the action produced several channels, each one with a different cut off. I'd guess they go from about the darkest 5% or so to the darkest 20%. I then play around with the one I feel appropriate for what I'm trying to achieve.

 

I'll post an example later showing the effect. The range of pixels selected can be seen in curves layer I create from the channel/selection.

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[Guest WPalank]

Here's what you get when you Load Tony's Actions as a PS Extension. I'm very visual so necessary:

 

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Clicking on the red will give you this:

 

 

Then you click through till you see the mask you want. (White REVEALS and Black CONCEALS).

Find the one that is masking or highlighting what you want, go to the bottom of the Channels Palette and click the broken circle thingy and that specific one is now loaded. Click on the RGB Channel, failure to do so will show only a Quick Mask once you select the Layer again. I typically hit Command H which will hide the Marching Ants.

To see the selection, just click on the Mask (always B&W) next to the image in the Layers Palette.

Want to see the Mask instead of the image? Option/Alt click on the Layer Mask.

 

Or something like that....

 

Tooo much stuff in the way? Hit the Blue Button and you are back at point 0. Nothing harmed.

 

Trickier to load as an Extension in CC, but either Sean or Tony walks you through it. They may have it fixed by now. Do what they say.

[stunsworth]

Here's what you get when you Load Tony's Actions as a PS Extension. I'm very visual so necessary

 

The actions I run aren't as sophisticated as the ones you use. But essentially the two are doing the same thing. Creating a mask based on luminosity and then loading the mask as a selection.

[sanyasi]

I highly recommend creating your own actions rather than relying on Tony Kuyper's actions. I am not trying to get around paying Kuyper for his work, but building the actions myself greatly helped me understand what is going on. I did this to build and save the channel selections. So far I haven't done this to create curves to match each channel selection because I don't use all of them all for every photo. When building the curves, it is also important to label each curve using the name for the corresponding channel selection. Doing so makes it easier to go back to a selection to fine tune its curve.

 

Also, if I am getting this right, if you are going to build more than one curve, it makes sense to start with the one that included the largest selection, otherwise you undo some of your effort. Work large selection to small one, rather than small to large (Lights and then Super lights rather than Super Lights and then lights).

 

The luminosity masks are just the beginning. Luminosity painting and saturation masks take it all to another level.