Hi, welcome back to the Photoshop Training Channel.com.
I'm Jesus Ramirez.
In this video, I'm going to show you a cool masking technique that I just came up with.
I was recently at CreativeLive's Photoshop week.
I was one of the instructors there.
And in one of my sessions, I got a really, really interesting question.
And I came up with an answer on the spot.
This video is going to be about expanding on that answer.
So, before we go any further, let me show you what that question was.
Bruce has been asking, "Is there a way to make a mask
based on detailed density?"
So, he says, "That mask exists in Lightroom
for the Sharpening tool."
Oh I see what he's saying, yeah.
Um, but he'd like to use it in Photoshop, but can't figure out if that exists.
Hmm, that's a really good question.
I've nev- I- so I'll show you what he means ...
Okay.
And then, I'll see if I could figure it out.
Okay.
Good que- that's a really good question.
So basically what that person was asking is how to use the Camera Raw or Lightroom Mask
in Photoshop, and if you don't know what that means, here let me show you.
In both Lightroom and Camera Raw, you have a masking slider in the details tab, so this
is Camera Raw and if you go into the details tab, you can see the sharpening ... I can
increase the sharpening by dragging on the slider.
But you really can't tell what we're sharpening, and sure, we can zoom in to 100% and we can
actually see the sharpening being applied, but you can control what the sharpening is
applied to by using this masking slider.
If I drag the slider to the right, you'll notice that the effect is applied to different
areas, but you really don't know what those areas are.
But if I hold alt ... option on the Mac ... and click on that slider and drag, you'll see
this masking overlay.
Black hides; white reveals.
So we're revealing the sharpening effect only on the white areas, and that is what the person
was referring to with the question.
How can we get this mask into Photoshop?
So now let me show you how I answered that question at CreativeLive:
To be frank with you, I don't know of a specific way of doing it, because I've never been asked
that question, so now I'm trying to figure how to do it.
Though the one way ... I don't- I don't know if this is a right answer, but this is the
answer that I'm coming up with right now on the spot.
So the way that I probably would do that would be by using maybe a filter.
I think um ... let me see what ... maybe the Find Edges filter?
Yeah.
Maybe something like the Find Edges filter, then press Ctrl Shift U to desaturate.
Press Ctrl Command I to invert, and then I can use the image adjustment levels to ...
[Nice.]
You know sort of find the right detail.
Once I'm happy with it ... remember what I said before?
Selections and masks are basically channels?
You know, like a channel?
So I'll just create a channel.
So, I'm gonna go into the channels panel, duplicate any one of the channels.
They're all the same 'cause I'm working with black and white.
Click and drag.
Duplicate it.
Now if I hold Ctrl, Command on the Mac, and click, I make a selection out of those edge
pixels, and now I have a layer mask where it's just targeting the edges and details
of the image.
So that's one way I thought of doing it just on the spot so I hope that works.
Now that I've had more time to think about it, I came up with a better way of doing it,
so this is what this tutorial's about, so let's get to it.
We're gonna work with this document.
It's simply a portrait.
And what I'm gonna do first is right click and convert it into a smart object to work
non-destructively, then I'm going to duplicate by pressing Ctrl J, Command J on the Mac,
so now we have an exact copy.
Then I'm gonna go into Image, Adjustment, Black and White to make it black and white.
Simply press OK.
Then, I'm going to go into Filter, and then Filter Gallery.
I'm not going to use Find Edges.
Instead, under the Stylize folder, I'm going to select Glowing Edges.
Glowing Edges allows you to find the edges of an image, and you have these sliders here
to control how bright or dark those edges are, so this is very similar to the result
that you would get
with the Masking Slider in the Sharpening Tool with Lightroom and Camera Raw.
Once you're happy, you can just press OK.
If you need to fine tune how dark or bright the edges are, you can go into Image, Adjustment,
Levels, and you can fine tune those edges by clicking and dragging on these sliders.
Press OK when you're done.
The advantage of working non-destructively with a Smart Object is that we have all those
filters and adjustments here under the Smart Object and you can edit them if you need to.
For example, I can double-click on Filter Gallery, press OK.
This is gonna bring up the filter once again.
And I can adjust the edges of my image.
Press OK when you're done.
And we can simply make this into a selection by pressing Ctrl Alt and the number two.
That's Command Option 2 on the Mac.
If you can not remember the keyboard shortcut, you can simply go into the channels panel,
and control click on any one of the channels.
They are all the same since we are working with a black and white image.
So, I'm just gonna control click, command click, on the blue channel thumbnail.
And that makes exactly that same selection.
Once again, the keyboard shortcut for that is Ctrl Alt and the number two, and that loads
the bright values of the image, so you're creating a luminosity mask.
Then you can simply disable this layer, then you can apply that selection to anything.
In this case, I'll apply it to a layer mask.
So, I'll simply create a curves adjustment layer, and you can see that that selection
was turned into a layer mask.
If I hold Alt, Option on the Mac, and click on the layer mask thumbnail, you can actually see it.
Alt, Option on the Mac again, and click on the layer mask thumbnail to hide it.
And if I make an adjustment, you will see that these adjustments only are applied to
the edges of the image, so this is a great way of creating a mask that is very similar
to the masking slider inside of Lightroom and CameraRaw, but all inside of Photoshop.
I'm not really sure how that person was gonna use this masking technique that I just showed
you, but I'm interested to know if you'll have a use for it, so let me know down in
the comments below if you intend on using this technique in your projects.
And by the way, if you want to learn more cool tricks with Masking, then I have two
great tutorials for you.
First how to mask hair from busy backgrounds in Photoshop, and also a quick 90 second tutorial
where I show you a fantastic technique for replacing skies in Photoshop.
I'll have a link to those two videos down below in the description.
And there you have it, let me know in the comments down below if you enjoy this technique.
Also if this is your first time at the Photoshop Training Channel,
don't forget to click on the Subscribe and Notification buttons.
Thanks so much for watching.
I will see you at the next tutorial.