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    Luminosity Masks and Digital Blending Jimmy Mcintyre

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    Tibz
    Luminosity masks allow for natural-looking digital blending by proportionally darkening or lightening tones based on their brightness. The key advantage is a smooth, natural look when applying adjustments on a pixel level. Common workflows using luminosity masks include darkening highlights to bring out color, increasing midtone contrast for mood, and blending exposures by selecting areas like highlights or shadows from a middle exposure as the base. Restoring shadows can be problematic if it destroys texture, so masking out the darkest tones or customizing the mask is recommended.

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    Luminosity Masks and Digital Blending Jimmy Mcintyre

    Uploaded by

    Tibz
    76 views2 pages
    Luminosity masks allow for natural-looking digital blending by proportionally darkening or lightening tones based on their brightness. The key advantage is a smooth, natural look when applying adjustments on a pixel level. Common workflows using luminosity masks include darkening highlights to bring out color, increasing midtone contrast for mood, and blending exposures by selecting areas like highlights or shadows from a middle exposure as the base. Restoring shadows can be problematic if it destroys texture, so masking out the darkest tones or customizing the mask is recommended.

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    Luminosity masks allow for natural-looking digital blending by proportionally darkening or lightening tones based on their brightness. The key advantage is a smooth, natural look when applying adjustments on a pixel level. Common workflows using luminosity masks include darkening highlights to bring out color, increasing midtone contrast for mood, and blending exposures by selecting areas like highlights or shadows from a middle exposure as the base. Restoring shadows can be problematic if it destroys texture, so masking out the darkest tones or customizing the mask is recommended.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    76 views2 pages

    Luminosity Masks and Digital Blending Jimmy Mcintyre

    Uploaded by

    Tibz
    Luminosity masks allow for natural-looking digital blending by proportionally darkening or lightening tones based on their brightness. The key advantage is a smooth, natural look when applying adjustments on a pixel level. Common workflows using luminosity masks include darkening highlights to bring out color, increasing midtone contrast for mood, and blending exposures by selecting areas like highlights or shadows from a middle exposure as the base. Restoring shadows can be problematic if it destroys texture, so masking out the darkest tones or customizing the mask is recommended.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    LUMINOSITY MASKS AND DIGITAL BLENDING JIMMY MCINTYRE

    - THE KEY TO UNDERSTANDING THE LM


    o If I select mountain in the distance AND the sky, and darken both, they will be darkened
    equally. This will give an unnatural effect, because the mountain needs less darkening
    than the sky! If we use a basic luminosity mask, such as the red channel, then the
    darkening will be proportional to the tonality the sky will be lighter and therefore
    masked less and therefore darkened more, and the mountains being of a darker shade
    of grey will be darkened less because they are masker more (being darker) THIS IS THE
    KEY ADVANTAGE OF LM SMOOTHNESS ANA NATURAL LOOK!!! AND ALL THIS IS DONE
    ON PIXEL LEVEL AUTOMATICALLY!
    o The basic mask can be used just by selection r,g, or b channel depending on which one
    has more contrast.

    o THE BIGGEST STRENGTH OF LUMINOSITY MASKS IS NATURAL LOOKING HDR I.E.


    DIGITAL BLENDING.
    - Workflows
    o SUNRISE ON THE SEA
    DARKEN THE HIGHLIGHTS this will bring back more color to the overblown area
    INCREASE MIDTONE CONTRAST
    select midtones, and if needed subtract highlights and shadows from it
    to protect them better. You can confirm on the histogram it will show
    no highlights and shadows, just midtones.
    Now simply change the blending mode to soft light to increase the
    contrast, and adjust opacity if too strong. This GIVES GREAT MOOD TO
    THE IMAGE!
    Darken the shadows if needed, and mask out the change from the areas
    you do not want too dark.
    Run DETAIL ENHANCER and then select a luminosity mask that will apply
    this only to desired areas maybe not the sky and the smooth sea. Apply
    this mask to the detail enhancer layer.
    Suppose the sun area is too dark lacks brightness and you want to
    select the lights luminosity mask that has the sun but that mask is just
    grey rather than white meaning it will affect the area only partially.
    Well, the good thing is all LMs are adjustable just copy the one that is
    nearest to what you want, and then use levels to increase the contrast in
    taht mask. Also, you can paint out the effect from areas where you dont
    want it.
    o MILKY WAY
    You can select something like LIGHTS 3 = where the stars are selected and nothing
    else, then invert and apply NOISE REMOVAL WHILE PROTECTING THE STARS.
    o HDR DIGITAL BLENDING
    The big question is which of the exposures do we run the LMs on? Mostly, it will
    be the middle exposure, but it depends on what is to be achieved. But most of
    the times, it will be the middle exposure and we will use highlights and shadows
    to blend into it. YOU MIGHT NEED TO TRY ALL OF THEM BEFORE YOU FIND THE
    DESIRED SELECTION. Why do we use the middle exposure? Because using others
    will give too harsh transitions between the selected area and the rest. We need
    smoother transitions. So do not just jump to the dark exposure, select the
    highlights and blend them in that will be harsh.
    ONE KEY CONCEPT IS THAT YOU CANNOT BLEND ONE VERY DARK AND ONE VERY
    BRIGHT EXPOSURE. THIS WILL LOOK UNNATURAL, LIKE A NIGHT SKY OVER
    DAYLIGHT CITY. YOU NEED A MIDDLE EXPOSURE TO BRIDGE THE GAP.
    o BIGGEST PROBLEM OF LUMINOSITY BLENDING
    Restoring highlights is straightforward. But restoring the shadows is problematic.
    Why? Imagine a dark object. That object has black areas, and some areas of very
    dark shadows, and some brighter shadows. If we just select the blacks and the
    dark shadows and brighten them using luminosity masking we will bring those
    to the level of the brighter shadows on that object, thus destroying the contrast
    and texture of the object, with the result of greyish flatness.
    So what do we do? We need to select as before, e.g. darks 2, but the new need
    to subtract darker tones from the mask, so subtract darks 4,5,6. Now the darkest
    tones will stay protected.
    ANOTHER SOLUTION: customize the mask by alt clicking on it, and then use
    dodging/burning on highlights and shadows selectively to mask out the darks.

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