Luminosity masking is a powerful technique for selective tonal adjustments. It's often favoured by landscape photographers because it offers a fine degree of control over the brightness of different tonal ranges. Essentially, Luminosity masking allows us to create selections of different areas of brightness. In our coastal scene here, it means we can target the bright areas of sky around the sun, or the dark groynes in the foreground, then enhance those areas with adjustments.
There are several plugins that make luminosity masks, but to understand how they work, it helps to know how to create your own. We can do so by using simple selection shortcuts in combination with Channels in Photoshop. Our Channels panel lets us isolate luminosity by loading selections of different channel information. From here, we can target the brighter and darker ranges so that we have several 'levels' of brightness and darkness. Once our channels are set up, you can select a section of the tonal range, then use an Adjustment Layer to tweak the area.
1 Channels panel
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Spice up autumn
Bold autumnal colours lend themselves to bold editing techniques, says James Abbott
Breathe new life into forgotten photos with Enhance
James Paterson tries out Photoshop's AI image-enhancing tools to see if they can rescue an old, noisy, heavily-cropped raw file
Scanning ahead...
Paris 2024 was memorable not only for sport, says Jon Devo, but also innovative video tech
Shot of the month
Photojournalist Aaron Gekoski has produced a documentary about animal exploitation
10 AMAZING AUTUMN PROJECTS TO SHOOT
With summer behind us and winter approaching, autumn is an exciting creative stopgap. James Abbott explores some of its possibilities
Hotshots
Our showcase of the winning entries from the World Sports Photography Awards 2024
The art of seeing
Benedict Brain examines the tourist gaze and explores why we take 'travel' photographs
Historic streets
Andrew Bransby reveals the secrets of successfully shooting popular tourist hotspots at night
Don't get stuck in a rut
Brian Wakeling explains how get a winning shot from herds of deer
How to capture canals and docks
Wendy Evans investigates the watery arteries of the Industrial Revolution