hi i'm robin whalley welcome to lenscraft today i'm looking at photoshop luminosity mask which
i'm sure you know is a huge subject but one topic that's frequently requested is working
with luminosity mask using tk action's rapid mask if you're not familiar with tk actions
it's a photoshop extension to make working with luminosity mask much easier one way of using the
mask is to separate or isolate elements of the scene so we can adjust that area
without affecting others this sea scene provides a good example where we can use luminosity masks
to improve our editing i've already applied a global levels adjustment layer to the image to
correct the contrast but now i want to lighten the sea if i do this by adding another
levels adjustment layer the adjustment is applied globally affecting areas where i don't want it to
let's now hide this effect by inverting the layer mask to turn it to black i can then
use the photoshop brush tool to paint on the mask with white where i want to reveal the adjustment
the problem is that it's easy to spill over into other areas of the image that i didn't want to
adjust the adjustment doesn't look convincing and when i try to lighten the wave against the sky
i can't do it without creating a mess this is where luminosity mass can help to improve the
results by separating the wave from the sky let's start with a simple example i'll then
gradually refine the demonstration to show some of the many tk action rapid mask features
in the masks section i can quickly create lights darks and mid-tone masks by clicking these buttons
if you aren't familiar with these terms the lights masks are used for selecting light areas of the
image when i click the lights one button the mask shows the light areas of the image in white and
the dark areas as black the nearer the mask is to white the brighter the image is in that area
the lights too mask is a more refined mask which targets even lighter areas of the image you can
see how more of the mask is now dark with only the brighter areas being white and this continues
until i select the light 6 mask which targets only the very brightest parts of the image the darks
range of masks is similar but they target the dark areas of the image rather than the light ones
this means that the darkest areas of the image now appear as white in the mask and the lightest areas
are black as before when we increase the number of the mask the mass becomes progressively more
refined with dark six targeting the very darkest areas we then have the mid-tone mask which as the
name suggests targets the mid-tones in the image if we look at the mids one the mid-tones are
light whilst the lightest and darkest areas of the image are now black there are three mid-tone masks
in tk action's rapid mask with the higher number selecting a wider range of mid-tones
let's select the mid-tones 2 mask for this example as it seems to separate the wave from the sky
having decided on the mask i want to use i need to select how i want to use it
because i've already created an adjustment layer with a black mask to paint on
i can turn the luminosity mask into a selection by clicking this button this loads the mask as
a selection and then hides the marching ants that you'd normally see around selected areas
to remind me that there's an active selection the tk actions panel shows a red dotted line
along the top now i can paint on the layer mask in the area that i want to adjust using white paint
and because i'm painting through a selection based on a luminosity mask i only apply white to the
layer in the areas that match the selection for speed in this video i'm painting with the brush
at 100 opacity when you do this for real you would use a lower opacity and take more care if i hold
down my option key or ok on a pc and click the layer mask i can see what the mask looks like
as you can see it looks like the midtones 2 mask but only in the areas where i painted this time
the sky isn't affected as much as before but i can still see some unwanted adjustments now let's look
at how to improve the results but first i just need to delete the layer mask and recreate it for
this example i'll start by repeating the midtone 2 luminosity mask in tk actions but this time i'm
going to adjust the mask before converting it to a selection using the modify section of the rapid
mask i can use this slider to adjust the mask and it works in the same way as a levels adjustment
if i move the left marker to the right it darkens the darker tones in the image turning them to
black the further i move the slider to the right the greater the area of the mask that's turned
to black i can also make the light gray areas of the mask lighter by moving the right hand slider
to the left the slider in the middle is used to make the mask lighter or darker overall using
this slider allows me to create more separation between the sea and other areas for better precision
now let's load the luminosity mask as a selection and use it to paint on the layer mask again
this time the result is better and could even be acceptable if i took some care but let's look at
another example which is better and shows off some more features of tk actions this time in
tk actions rather than creating a luminosity mask based on the image tones let's create one
based on colour because i want to protect the sky i can use the colour in the sky to create my mask
to do this i could pick colours in the warm zone using the drop down in the colour section
this selects the sky but it isn't as close a match as i'd hoped for so the sky
only appears gray if i use the modify slider i can improve this but there is a better option
instead of using a predefined colour range i can use the eyedropper tool to sample this
exact colour of the sky this gives me a much better starting mask which i can then refine
now the mask i wanted to create was the reverse of this so i can click this handy button to invert
the mask i can then refine the mask even further if i want to for better separation at this point i
won't use the mask because there's a big problem with it the dark rock is selected with white so
i'll end up adjusting the rock when i paint over the sea and i don't want that let me reset the
mask now and i'll show you a more advanced method of creating a luminosity mask that combines the
mid-tone masks with the colour mask i'll start by selecting the mid-tone 2 luminosity mask as before
i'm then going to combine it with the second mask using these buttons in the modify section of the
wrapping mask panel what i want to do is subtract the mask which selected the sky but not the sea
to do this i'll click the minus button after which i can create the mask i want to subtract
next i can use the picker tool to sample the color of the sky after that i'll modify the mask using
the sliders to make the sky selection more defined i can then click the equal button to subtract the
sky selection from the mid tone mask this produces a mask that selects the c but not the sky or the
rocks i can also still use the modify sliders to refine this before loading it as a selection
this time when i paint over the sea i don't see the adjustment affecting the sky only the waves
after painting the detailed areas i can clear the
selection and paint in the foreground see for a stronger effect in that area
in this example i've probably made the adjustment to the wave a little too strong so i'll switch to
painting with black i'll also set a lower opacity like 40 to paint over the edge of
the spray this reduces the adjustment in that area making it easier to see the spray
whilst this is only a simple example of using the tk actions rapid mask for luminosity
masking i hope i've given you some ideas and perhaps even shown you a new trick or two i'm
robin whalley you've been watching lenscraft i'll see you soon for another video you