I use Paint Shop Pro (v.10) for post-processing, and while most Photoshop PP techniques are translatable, the details of Tony Kuyper's luminosity- mask tutorials have been a bit of a challenge for the past several months. (PSP does not have a neat ctrl + alt + ~ shortcut, so getting a grayscale image with the brighter 50% of pixels inside a selection marquee isn't an option. And I don't know enough to translate PS Actions into PSP Scripts.) So... here are two images, a 'before' and 'after,' that show what I did to affect the lightest lightness values (those with L=192 and higher) in an image.
I probably adjusted the highlights too much.
The midtones are affected more than I wanted.
But am I on the right track? (I have some follow-up questions, but I think I need an answer to this general one before I can ask them.) I'll appreciate help with this very, very much. I've been working on luminosity masks since January!
I use PSP also so I screen captured your comparison image and took a stab at it using my most common approach. I am now using ver. 12, but the method I used to do this will work just fine in ver. 10. The numbers will probably change a little when working on the full size image but here's what I did and it only took a few minutes:
1) using the magic wand selection tool set at 'brightness', 25% tolerance & contiguous I held the shift key and clicked on the brightest highlights. It only took a half dozen clicks to get everything I figured I needed, selected.
2) I feathered the selection with a setting of 5 pixels (it would be quite a bit more if working with the full size file).
3) Leaving the selection active, I added a Brightness/Contrast layer and adjusted the settings until the highlights looked about right (ended up being -27 brightness & -7 contrast). When you add the new layer, notice that only the selection area is white so the layer only affects the selected area. It's a very fast and easy way of creating a mask.
4) That did the trick for the highlights but the the whole of the mushrooms were still a little too bright so I went back to the background layer and repeated steps 1 & 2 only selecting the deep shadows this time instead of the highlights.
5) I then inversed the selection so that everything except the shadows was selected.
6) Finally I added a second Brightness/Contrast Layer with settings of -10 brightness & 10 contrast.
The whole thing actually took less than 5 minutes and if you save it as a pspimage you can always go back and adjust the layer settings anytime you want. Give it a try and let me know what you think.
Thanks, Gary, that's a pretty neat--and quick!-- 'mask.' I used it on this photo, to tone down the leaf edges and (unlike the mushrooms) to lighten the shadows a little. It works so well that I don't have any questions (for once). I have to use this technique some more and get accustomed to it. Looks like PSP can do luminosity masks, too.
I'm glad this worked for you, Rosemarie! I've found it quite handy for a number of different operations. I didn't mention it in my previous post but most of the time you might want to use the "magic wand" selection tool with the "contiguous" box un-checked. I only checked it for your photo because I wanted to be very selective of the areas to affect. For quickly selecting ALL highlights or shadows, un-checked will be a lot faster because it will get everything in the image that is within the tolerance criteria.
The same process, of course, works for the other selection options, such as color, RGB, etc.
One more hint; after making the selection in the background layer you might want to use the option in the selection menu, "hide Marquee" before you apply the adjustment layer. That way you can see the results without the confusion of the flashing dotted lines. It makes it much easier to gauge the proper amount of adjustment.
Discussion
3 repliesThe images are here.
I probably adjusted the highlights too much.
The midtones are affected more than I wanted.
But am I on the right track? (I have some follow-up questions, but I think I need an answer to this general one before I can ask them.) I'll appreciate help with this very, very much. I've been working on luminosity masks since January!
I use PSP also so I screen captured your comparison image and took a stab at it using my most common approach. I am now using ver. 12, but the method I used to do this will work just fine in ver. 10. The numbers will probably change a little when working on the full size image but here's what I did and it only took a few minutes:
1) using the magic wand selection tool set at 'brightness', 25% tolerance & contiguous I held the shift key and clicked on the brightest highlights. It only took a half dozen clicks to get everything I figured I needed, selected.
2) I feathered the selection with a setting of 5 pixels (it would be quite a bit more if working with the full size file).
3) Leaving the selection active, I added a Brightness/Contrast layer and adjusted the settings until the highlights looked about right (ended up being -27 brightness & -7 contrast). When you add the new layer, notice that only the selection area is white so the layer only affects the selected area. It's a very fast and easy way of creating a mask.
4) That did the trick for the highlights but the the whole of the mushrooms were still a little too bright so I went back to the background layer and repeated steps 1 & 2 only selecting the deep shadows this time instead of the highlights.
5) I then inversed the selection so that everything except the shadows was selected.
6) Finally I added a second Brightness/Contrast Layer with settings of -10 brightness & 10 contrast.
The whole thing actually took less than 5 minutes and if you save it as a pspimage you can always go back and adjust the layer settings anytime you want. Give it a try and let me know what you think.
Here is the result.
Gary
Thanks again!
The same process, of course, works for the other selection options, such as color, RGB, etc.
One more hint; after making the selection in the background layer you might want to use the option in the selection menu, "hide Marquee" before you apply the adjustment layer. That way you can see the results without the confusion of the flashing dotted lines. It makes it much easier to gauge the proper amount of adjustment.
Have fun with the new tool!
Gary