In this video, I'm going to show you how to use color and luminance to refine your targeted
adjustments in Photoshop's Camera Raw.
Hey everyone, welcome back to another very exciting tutorial, here at the PhotoshopTrainingChannel.com.
My name is Jesus Ramirez.
You can find me on Instagram @JRfromPTC.
In this video, I'm going to show you how to refine your targeted adjustments in Camera
Raw, using a brand-new feature called Range Mask.
This allows you to use luminance and color from your photo to create a mask, to fine
tune your targeted adjustments.
You will need the latest version of Photoshop and Camera Raw to follow along.
Okay, let's get started.
We're going to be working with this image of London.
What we want to do, is we want to make the sky brighter, without affecting the towers,
or the bridge.
Now, before I do anything, I do want to mention that this tutorial is, of course, on Camera
Raw.
But the tools that we're going to look at also available in Lightroom Classic CC.
They work exactly the same, so this tutorial also applies to Lightroom Classic CC.
We're going to start by selecting the graduated filter.
I can click on this icon or press G on the keyboard.
I'm simply going to make a gradient on the sky, because I want to make the sky a little
bit darker, and maybe add some blue to it, so it's not so gloomy.
Now that I've made that gradient, I can come into the sliders here on the right-hand side,
and make an adjustment.
I'll add some blue by clicking and dragging the temperature slider to the left.
I'm also going to make the sky a little bit darker, and drag the exposure slider to the
left.
Now that, of course, affects the towers on the bridge, and we would like for it not to
affect those areas.
We can use the Range Mask and use luminance to help us make those adjustments only to
the sky.
With the luminance slider, we can use a luminance values of the image to create a mask.
If I click and drag on the slider, you'll see that I'm making changes to the gradient,
and to the adjustment.
What is really going on here is that I'm creating a mask that says, if something is this shade
of gray or darker, then don't apply the effect.
If I go all the way to the right, you'll see that I pretty much disabled the effect, because
anything that is this shade of gray and darker, will not have that effect applied to it.
You can better understand what is going on between the scenes if you hold Alt, Option
on the Mac, and click on this slider.
You'll see that now I have a mask.
You'll notice that it's a gradient that goes from white to black.
This means that the white and bright areas will have an effect applied to it.
The dark, and black areas will not.
That is what the default gradient is doing.
The areas on top have the maximum effect applied to it.
It gradually disappears as you go down.
If I hold Alt, Option on the Mac, you can see that visual representation.
If I click and drag the luminance range slider to the right, you'll see how the luminance
values of the image start popping up.
You can see how now the bridge and the towers are darker.
That means that the effect will not be applied in those areas.
If I hold Alt, Option on the Mac, and click and drag on the white point, you'll see now
that I'm affecting the sky.
I don't want to do that.
I want the sky to be bright because anything that is white will receive the effect that
we applied.
Anything that is black will not.
This is a lot like a layer mask in Photoshop.
White reveals.
Black conceals.
In this case, we're revealing and concealing the effect applied by the sliders in the panel
here.
Now when I make an adjustment, you'll see that I'm mainly going to affect the sky, and
not affect the towers as much.
The other slider under Range Mask and luminance is smoothness.
You could also hold Alt, Option on the Mac, and click on the slider to get a visual representation
of what's going on here.
Notice how if I drag smoothness to the right, you have less contrast in the mask.
If I drag to the left, you have more contrast in the mask.
This is adjusting the contrast of the mask, and you can drag it to fine-tune how your
effect is going to be applied to the luminance range that you selected.
While working in this mode, you can also uncheck overlay.
That way the overlay disappears, and it's not distracting you as you make the adjustments
with the luminance range and the smoothness slider.
The best thing about the Range Mask is that it's nondestructive, so at any point, you
can bring back the overlay, make adjustments to the gradient, and make adjustments to how
the mask works.
Once again, when working with these sliders, I always hold Alt, Option on the Mac, so that
I can better see the mask that I'm creating, and what areas it is affecting.
Let me know in the comments down below what you thought about this new feature.
Also, if you have any ideas of how you're going to use it in your workflow.
Now there's another type of Range Mask that we could use.
This particular one uses color to refine the targeted adjustment.
I'm going to use this image to show you how it works.
We have this very colorful boat here.
And one of the things I want to do is enhance the yellows in this boat, and the reflection
on the water.
One of the things that I can do is select the adjustment brush.
I can click on it, or press K on the keyboard.
Then I can simply paint over the yellow areas, which include the boat, and the reflection.
You're not going to see any changes because I haven't made any changes to the sliders
here on the right-hand side.
I'm going to make extreme adjustment, so you can see that that brush stroke is affecting
all the pixels that I painted over.
But I only want my adjustments to affect the yellow on the image.
So, what I can do is, go into my Range Mask.
Click on the drop-down, and select Color.
Now I can select the eyedropper, and click on the color that I want to keep.
In this case, yellow.
When I click, notice that my adjustment is now only affecting the yellow.
Color range allows me to increase or decrease the range of colors that are affected by the
color I selected.
If I hold Alt, Option on the Mac, and click on color range, you can see the mask.
If I click and drag to the right, I expand on those colors.
If I click and drag to the left, I keep mainly the colors that I selected.
It's a good way of adjusting the range of colors that you want to select.
I can click four more times with the eyedropper, to add to my selection.
Camera Raw allows you a total of five sample points.
I'm going to hold Shift, and then click to add to my selection.
You can see that once I have five sample points, when I click a sixth time, Photoshop will
tell me that I cannot add any more samples.
Now I can fine tune my adjustment, now that I have more sample points.
If I hold Alt, Option on the Mac, you'll see the mask once again, as I drag the color range
slider.
Now the problem is that these sample points missed a lot of areas.
It can be very difficult to select all the different shades of yellow, just with those
sample points.
What I'm going to do, is I'm going to just delete my adjustment.
I'm going to press K on the keyboard twice, so I can see the white point here, so I can
select it and delete.
I'm going to start from scratch.
I'm just going to paint, once again, over the yellow areas.
Obviously, this is going to make an adjustment to all the colors that I paint over.
Then I can go into Range Mask, select color.
A better way of selecting the yellow on this image is by clicking and dragging a range
of colors.
I'm going to click and drag here, to select that range of colors.
Notice that the icon is different.
Now we have a rectangular marque icon, right below the eyedropper icon.
I can still add to that selection by holding Shift and clicking.
Notice that the regular sample point does not have that marquee under the eyedropper
selection.
I can even add more range of colors by holding Shift and clicking and dragging.
Notice how now I'm selecting a wider range of yellows by clicking, and dragging, and
making selections around that range of colors, instead of single points.
I can do a combination of points, and a range of colors.
I think that for something like this, a range of colors works better.
If I hold Alt, Option on the Mac, you'll see now that the yellows around the boat are almost
completely white, which is what I want.
But I want to decrease the color range so that I don't affect the blue at that tarp
on the side of the boat.
Now I can continue making my adjustments to the yellow on the boat.
I'm going to click and drag the exposure slider.
I only made that an adjustment so that the changes that I was making were noticeable.
Now I can maybe adjust the saturation, increase sharpness, dehaze, and clarity just to make
the yellow stand out.
Obviously, this adjustment is a bit too strong, but I wanted it to be obvious for this video.
As you can see, working with the Range Mask and color makes it really easy to target specific
colors, while working in Camera Raw.
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That's it for this tutorial.
I hope that you enjoyed it and that you learned something new.
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Thank you so much for watching, and I will talk to you again very soon.