Hi.
Welcome back to the PhotoshopTrainingChannel.com
I'm Jesus Ramirez.
In this video, I'm going to teach you all that you need to know about luminosity masks.
Luminosity masks are masks that are created based on the luminosity of the image and to
help you target the shadows, mid tones, and highlights when you're making adjustments.
In this video, you're going to learn two techniques for selecting the different tones of the image.
We're going to start with a channel-based selection, and I'm going to show you how to
edit that selection so you can target all the different tones.
Then, I'm going to show you a second technique that utilizes color range, and it will also
help you select the different tones found in the image.
Again, these masks will allow you to make targeted adjustments to the highlights, mid
tones, and shadows of the image.
Giving you great control over how you adjust your images.
Okay, let's get started.
This is an image that we're going to use for today's project.
Now before we do anything else, I want to show you what a layer mask is, then we'll
move on to luminosity mask.
So in Photoshop, you can have layers of course.
And if you click on this icon here, you'll create a layer mask.
Notice that the layer mask by default is white.
With layer mask, white reveals, black conceals, and the different levels of gray give different
levels of opacity.
So by default, when you create a layer mask, everything will show.
The layer mask is 100% white.
If I select the Brush tool and paint with black, I can start hiding pixels.
If I paint with white, I can bring those pixels back and painting with gray will give me different
levels of transparency.
This gray gives me one level of transparency, and this gray gives me a different level of
transparency.
So with layer mask, different levels of gray give you different levels of transparency.
White will give you 100% opacity, no transparency, and black at 0% will completely hide everything,
and the different levels of grey will give you different levels of transparency.
So white reveals, black conceals.
So that's what a layer mask is.
In this tutorial, we're going to look at how to create a layer mask
based on the luminosity of the image.
So I'm going to just open up this document here, and I'm going to click on the Gradient tool.
I'm going to click
and drag while holding Shift to create a gradient that goes from
black to white.
In Photoshop, we have channels, the red, green and blue channels and they make up the image,
and we can see the RGB composite view here.
If I hold Ctrl Command in the Mac and click on the channel thumbnail on RGB, I will make
a selection out of the bright pixels.
Another way of doing that and the way that I prefer doing it is by pressing Ctrl Alt
and the number two, and I make a selection around the bright pixels.
If I create a solid fill layer and set it to red, this will show you everything that
is affected by my luminosity mask.
Notice that basically everything in the image has some sort of red tint applied to it, except
for pure black.
Everything else will have just some transparency on that layer mask, and that's because we
use the luminosity of the image to create the mask.
I'm going to now delete the layer mask, disable the layer and go into the Channels panel.
One important thing to note in the channels or in any selection really
is that when you create a selection,
I'll do the luminosity selection again,
Ctrl Alt 2, Command Option 2 on the Mac.
You will notice that even though I'm selecting pixels that are past the center line, I don't
see that with the marching ants.
That's because in Photoshop if pixels are less than 50% selected, the marching ants
will not show.
Let me show you what I mean by that.
I'm going to press Ctrl D, Command D to deselect.
Then I'm going to duplicate the red channel by dragging it into the new channel icon.
And I can go into image adjustment levels, and I'm just going to make an adjustment,
I'm just going to make every pixel darker than 50% gray.
Then if I press Ctrl, Command on the Mac, and click on the red copy thumbnail, Photoshop
will give me a warning.
It's telling me that no pixels are more than 50% selected, so the selection edges will
not be visible.
You got to keep that in mind because when working with luminosity mask, you might get
this warning, but the selection is still here.
If I click on RGB, then go back into the Layers panel, enable my red layer and create a layer
mask, you'll notice that I did, in fact, have a selection active.
So that's basically what a luminosity mask is.
It's looking at the bright pixels and selecting them.
What I'm going to do now is go back into our working document, and I'm going to show you
a couple steps that you can follow so that you can create more powerful luminosity mask.
But before I do that, I just want to let you know that if you want to learn more about
masking in Photoshop, then check out my playlist on YouTube.
I currently have 13 videos that are all about masking.
This video that you're watching now will be in that playlist and check out all the other
ones that I have there as well.
I'll place the link right below in the description so that you can check it out after watching
this video.
But anyway, what I'm going to do now is go into the Channels panel, and from the Channels
panel, I'm simply going to press Ctrl Alt 2, Command Option 2 on the Mac to create a
selection based on the bright pixels of the image.
Then I'm going to click on this icon, the one that looks like the Layer Mask icon, and
this is the save selection as channel icon.
I can click on that, and I'm just going to call this channel highlights.
So this channel is selecting the highlights of my image.
I'm going to press Ctrl D, Command D to deselect.
Then, with the highlights channel selected, I'm going to click and drag it into the new
channel icon to duplicate that channel.
I'm going to press CtrI, Command I on the Mac to invert the pixels.
So now the pixels that were black are now white.
This is most noticeable on her hair.
You can see her hair used to be black, and now it's white.
That means that I'm now selecting the shadows of this image, so I call this layer shadows.
So I’m selecting the highlights in the shadows.
So if I want to select the shadows, one thing I can do is press Ctrl Alt and the number
seven to load the shadows channel selection.
Notice that all the channels have a number.
So if you press Ctrl Alt Command Option on the Mac, and then that number it will load
the corresponding channel as a selection.
I can go back into RGB.
Click on layers, and I can create a solid color adjustment layer.
And you can see how this now only affects the shadow.
So an effect that I can do here is maybe select the yellowish color like that one there, press
OK and change the Blending Mode to Overlay and then adjust the opacity and I'm just color
grading the image.
I'm going to delete this layer, I'm going to drag it into the trash icon, and that gets
rid of it.
Remember, this is just one of many examples of how you can use the luminosity mask.
Next, I'm going to show you how to select the mid tones of the image.
But before I do that, I need to explain a couple things, and we'll do it in this document.
I need to be in the Layers panel, and I need to disable this layer and make sure that my
background is white.
So I can press Ctrl Backspace, Command Backspace in the Mac to fill with the background color,
which is white, and I'll actually delete this layer so that it's not distracting.
And I'm going to select the Rectangular Marquee tool, and I'm going to click and drag to make
a selection.
So I have a selection, right?
And you can see the different options that you have here to add, subtract or intersect
a selection.
If I hold Shift, you'll notice that this button gets activated and the cursor shows a plus icon.
So I can click and drag to add to the selection.
The next one is the subtract from selection icon.
And if I hold Alt Option on the Mac, you'll notice how it temporarily selects the subtract
button, and it adds a minus icon on the cursor, and I can click and drag to subtract from
the selection, but forth on the list is the intersect with selection.
If I hold Alt and shift, Option Shift in the Mac, you will notice that the intersect button
will temporarily get selected and there will be an X in the cursor, and I can click and
drag, and you can see how that intersects my selection.
So everything outside of the second selection that I made gets deselected and only the pixels
that I selected remain as the selection.
So we can use this to further enhance the power of luminosity mask.
If I go back into the working document and go back into the Channels panel, you can see
that I have the shadows in highlights, right?
I can hold Ctrl, Command on the Mac and click on the channel thumbnail to load the highlights
as a selection or I could also use the keyboard shortcut by using the numbers you see here.
But once you have that selection active, I can now go into the shadows and intersect
that selection by holding Ctrl Alt Shift, Command Option Shift on the Mac and clicking.
Notice that Photoshop is now telling me that no pixels are more than 50% selected and that's okay.
I'll press the okay button and then create a new channel based on that selection.
So notice now how this channel is only selecting the mid tones of the image.
Look at her hair.
It's black and also look at her teeth, they're also black.
And that's because we're not selecting the darkest or brightest pixels of the image,
just the mid tones, so I can just type in mid tones.
So now I have three channels that allow me to select different portions of the image.
And I can create even more channels that increase the level of highlights or shadows that I'm selecting.
Let me show you what I mean.
I'm going to select the highlights, and I'm going to press Ctrl, Command on the Mac and
click on the channel thumbnail to load it as a selection.
Then, I can press Ctrl Alt Shift, Command Option Shift in the Mac and on that same channel
thumbnail, click, I will intersect that channel.
And I create a new channel; you'll notice that I created a channel that has more contrast.
I'm still selecting the highlights, but only the stronger highlights and I'm not selecting
some of those darker highlights.
And I can just call this channel highlights 2.
And I can do that one more time; I can hold Ctrl Alt Shift Command Option Shift in the
Mac and click two, two intersect the selection.
I'm going to create a new channel based on the selection.
Then I'm going to drag the channel up, and I'll call it highlights number three.
Of course, you can do the same thing with the shadows.
You can select the shadows, Hold Ctrl Command on the Mac, and click on the shadows channel
thumbnail and intersect it with itself Ctrl Alt Shift and click.
Click on this icon to create a new channel based on that selection.
And I'm going to repeat this step one more time.
I'll do it now just to speed up the process.
So hold Ctrl Alt Shift on Windows; Command, Option Shift and a Mac and click to intersect
the selection.
Then, click on the new channel icon to create a third shadows channel.
Call the layer shadows number two and the shadows number three.
And I can put the mid tones in between the highlights and shadows just to keep them organized.
Ctrl D, Command lead to select.
So now I have all these different channels that I can use as layer mask for my image.
So one of the things I could do is, for example, select the
shadows of the image I will select shadows number two.
So I'll press Ctrl, Command on the Mac
and click on the channel thumbnail to make a selection out of it.
Then click on RGB and go back into the layers panel and create a Curves Adjustment Layer.
And we're going to apply a color gray.
If I select the blue channel, I can drag down to warm up the image on the shadows or drag
up to cool it.
So one thing I want to make clear is that sometimes you may not necessarily want to
affect the entire image.
You may only want to affect for example the subject of the image, so maybe we only want
to apply this color tone to the subject you have two options to do that you can just
paint with black on the layer mask to hide that effect from everything else in the layer.
You can see how I'm affecting the background here in the layer mask thumbnail.
But I'm going to undo that because I want to show you another way that you can do it,
you can simply create a new group, you can call it “adjustments.”
And you can drag your adjustment layers in there and with the group selected, I can just
hold Alt, Option on the Mac and click on the Layer Mask icon to make a black layer mask.
See how everything is black.
That means that things are being hidden in that group, and I can reveal the contents
of that group.
In other words, I can reveal the adjustment created by this Curves Adjustment Layer simply
by painting with white anywhere that I like so I can just target her skin tones for example.
So I just warmed up her skin tone.
See that?
But anyway, the point is that you can use these channels to select the highlights mid
tones, shadows of your photo.
Now, one thing to keep in mind is that this is not the only way of selecting the different
tones of your image; you can actually use a different technique with color range.
Let me show you how that works.
I'm going to select the original layer with my model.
I'm going to disable this layer, and I'm going to show you this alternate technique.
It might seem a little bit easier, but I prefer the control that we get with channels, but
there is nothing wrong with using this alternate technique.
And what you want to do is go into Select Color Range.
And from this color range option, you can select the highlights, mid tones, and shadows
of an image.
Just to point out, you can also select the skin tones, and you can click on detect the
faces so that Photoshop detects a face and it focuses on those pixels to make a more
accurate selection.
But in this case, we can select the highlights.
And I'm just going to move this over to the right so that we can see better.
For the selection preview, you can use black matte, white.
And this basically shows you in white what you're not selecting, and everything else
is the original pixel color.
So I can select the highlights as you can see here, these are the highlights of the image.
So notice how her hair is not being selected, her hair is black, and I can adjust the range
so that Photoshop can understand what a highlight is in the image.
You can also select the mid tones
and adjust these two sliders.
So from this point this shade of gray or darker,
those will be considered shadows, and they will be invisible.
From this point in this light shade of gray and brighter, those will be considered the
highlights and they will also not be selected.
So you can adjust these accordingly to select the mid tones of your image, and you have
access to the shadows and notice how this time I am selecting your hair and her skin tone.
So I can adjust this accordingly to just select the shadows of the image.
So when you're done, you can press on Okay.
You'll have an active selection, you can see the marching ants, and from that point, you
can just click on channels, and you can create a new channel based on that selection.
So here it is.
See that's how it selected the bright pixels of the image, I can press Ctrl D, Command
D to deselect, and I can work with any other channels that I created.
Also, this whole time, I've been loading a selection by holding Ctrl, Command in the
Mac and clicking on the channel icon.
But another way to load a selection is by simply selecting the channel that you want
to load and clicking on this icon here, the first icon on the bottom left.
Clicking on that will also load the channel as a selection.
Once you have the channel loaded as a selection, just as we did before, you can just create
any adjustment layer that you like.
For example, I can select the Curves Adjustment Layer again, and make the same adjustments
I did before.
But this time, I'm using the selection that I made at using color range.
So the way that you select the luminosity of the image is not really that important,
as long as you get the results that you want.
I've often said that I'm not a fan of techniques.
I'm a fan of results.
So use the technique that gives you the results that you want.
For my preference, I like having more control.
So I like using the channels method, but feel free to use the color range method if you
like.
Let me know down in the comments below which method you intend to use or which one you
prefer and why.
And one more thing, do me a favor and click on that like button now if you enjoyed either
of the techniques.
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that subscribe and notification button.
Thank you so much for watching.
I will talk to you again in the next tutorial.