Hi. Welcome back to the PhotoshopTrainingChannel.com I'm Jesus Ramirez. In this video, I'm going to teach you all
that you need to know about luminosity masks. Luminosity masks are masks that are created
based on the luminosity of the image and to help you target the shadows, mid tones, and
highlights when you're making adjustments. In this video, you're going to learn two techniques
for selecting the different tones of the image. We're going to start with a channel-based
selection, and I'm going to show you how to edit that selection so you can target all
the different tones. Then, I'm going to show you a second technique
that utilizes color range, and it will also help you select the different tones found
in the image. Again, these masks will allow you to make
targeted adjustments to the highlights, mid tones, and shadows of the image. Giving you great control over how you adjust
your images. Okay, let's get started. This is an image that we're going to use for
today's project. Now before we do anything else, I want to
show you what a layer mask is, then we'll move on to luminosity mask. So in Photoshop, you can have layers of course. And if you click on this icon here, you'll
create a layer mask. Notice that the layer mask by default is white. With layer mask, white reveals, black conceals,
and the different levels of gray give different levels of opacity. So by default, when you create a layer mask,
everything will show. The layer mask is 100% white. If I select the Brush tool and paint with
black, I can start hiding pixels. If I paint with white, I can bring those pixels
back and painting with gray will give me different levels of transparency. This gray gives me one level of transparency,
and this gray gives me a different level of transparency. So with layer mask, different levels of gray
give you different levels of transparency. White will give you 100% opacity, no transparency,
and black at 0% will completely hide everything, and the different levels of grey will give
you different levels of transparency. So white reveals, black conceals. So that's what a layer mask is. In this tutorial, we're going to look at how
to create a layer mask based on the luminosity of the image. So I'm going to just open up this document
here, and I'm going to click on the Gradient tool. I'm going to click and drag while holding
Shift to create a gradient that goes from black to white. In Photoshop, we have channels, the red, green
and blue channels and they make up the image, and we can see the RGB composite view here. If I hold Ctrl Command in the Mac and click
on the channel thumbnail on RGB, I will make a selection out of the bright pixels. Another way of doing that and the way that
I prefer doing it is by pressing Ctrl Alt and the number two, and I make a selection
around the bright pixels. If I create a solid fill layer and set it
to red, this will show you everything that is affected by my luminosity mask. Notice that basically everything in the image
has some sort of red tint applied to it, except for pure black. Everything else will have just some transparency
on that layer mask, and that's because we use the luminosity of the image to create
the mask. I'm going to now delete the layer mask, disable
the layer and go into the Channels panel. One important thing to note in the channels
or in any selection really is that when you create a selection, I'll do the luminosity selection again, Ctrl Alt 2,
Command Option 2 on the Mac. You will notice that even though I'm selecting
pixels that are past the center line, I don't see that with the marching ants. That's because in Photoshop if pixels are
less than 50% selected, the marching ants will not show. Let me show you what I mean by that. I'm going to press Ctrl D, Command D to deselect. Then I'm going to duplicate the red channel
by dragging it into the new channel icon. And I can go into image adjustment levels,
and I'm just going to make an adjustment, I'm just going to make every pixel darker
than 50% gray. Then if I press Ctrl, Command on the Mac,
and click on the red copy thumbnail, Photoshop will give me a warning. It's telling me that no pixels are more than
50% selected, so the selection edges will not be visible. You got to keep that in mind because when
working with luminosity mask, you might get this warning, but the selection is still here. If I click on RGB, then go back into the Layers
panel, enable my red layer and create a layer mask, you'll notice that I did, in fact, have
a selection active. So that's basically what a luminosity mask
is. It's looking at the
bright pixels and selecting them. What I'm going to do now is go back into our
working document, and I'm going to show you a couple steps that you can follow so that
you can create more powerful luminosity mask. But before I do that, I just want to let you
know that if you want to learn more about masking in Photoshop, then check out my playlist
on YouTube. I currently have 13 videos that are all about
masking. This video that you're watching now will be
in that playlist and check out all the other ones that I have there as well. I'll place the link right below in the description
so that you can check it out after watching this video. But anyway, what I'm going to do now is go
into the Channels panel, and from the Channels panel, I'm simply going to press Ctrl Alt
2, Command Option 2 on the Mac to create a selection based on the bright pixels of the
image. Then I'm going to click on this icon, the
one that looks like the Layer Mask icon, and this is the save selection as channel icon. I can click on that, and I'm just going to
call this channel highlights. So this channel is selecting the highlights
of my image. I'm going to press Ctrl D, Command D to deselect. Then, with the highlights channel selected,
I'm going to click and drag it into the new channel icon to duplicate that channel. I'm going to press CtrI, Command I on the
Mac to invert the pixels. So now the pixels that were black are now
white. This is most noticeable on her hair. You can see her hair used to be black, and
now it's white. That means that I'm now selecting the shadows
of this image, so I call this layer shadows. So I’m selecting the highlights in the shadows. So if I want to select the shadows, one thing
I can do is press Ctrl Alt and the number seven to load the shadows channel selection. Notice that all the channels have a number. So if you press Ctrl Alt Command Option on
the Mac, and then that number it will load the corresponding channel as a selection. I can go back into RGB. Click on layers, and I can create a solid
color adjustment layer. And you can see how this now only affects
the shadow. So an effect that I can do here is maybe select
the yellowish color like that one there, press OK and change the Blending Mode to Overlay
and then adjust the opacity and I'm just color grading the image. I'm going to delete this layer, I'm going
to drag it into the trash icon, and that gets rid of it. Remember, this is just one of many examples
of how you can use the luminosity mask. Next, I'm going to show you how to select
the mid tones of the image. But before I do that, I need to explain a
couple things, and we'll do it in this document. I need to be in the Layers panel, and I need
to disable this layer and make sure that my background is white. So I can press Ctrl Backspace, Command Backspace
in the Mac to fill with the background color, which is white, and I'll actually delete this
layer so that it's not distracting. And I'm going to select the Rectangular Marquee
tool, and I'm going to click and drag to make a selection. So I have a selection, right? And you can see the different options that
you have here to add, subtract or intersect a selection. If I hold Shift, you'll notice that this button
gets activated and the cursor shows a plus icon. So I can click and drag to add to the selection. The next one is the subtract from selection
icon. And if I hold Alt Option on the Mac, you'll
notice how it temporarily selects the subtract button, and it adds a minus icon on the cursor,
and I can click and drag to subtract from the selection, but forth on the list is the
intersect with selection. If I hold Alt and shift, Option Shift in the
Mac, you will notice that the intersect button will temporarily get selected and there will
be an X in the cursor, and I can click and drag, and you can see how that intersects
my selection. So everything outside of the second selection
that I made gets deselected and only the pixels that I selected remain as the selection. So we can use this to further enhance the
power of luminosity mask. If I go back into the working document and
go back into the Channels panel, you can see that I have the shadows in highlights, right? I can hold Ctrl, Command on the Mac and click
on the channel thumbnail to load the highlights as a selection or I could also use the keyboard
shortcut by using the numbers you see here. But once you have that selection active, I
can now go into the shadows and intersect that selection by holding Ctrl Alt Shift,
Command Option Shift on the Mac and clicking. Notice that Photoshop is now telling me that
no pixels are more than 50% selected and that's okay. I'll press the okay button and then create
a new channel based on that selection. So notice now how this channel is only selecting
the mid tones of the image. Look at her hair. It's black and also look at her teeth, they're
also black. And that's because we're not selecting the
darkest or brightest pixels of the image, just the mid tones, so I can just type in
mid tones. So now I have three channels that allow me
to select different portions of the image. And I can create even more channels that increase
the level of highlights or shadows that I'm selecting. Let me show you what I mean. I'm going to select the highlights, and I'm
going to press Ctrl, Command on the Mac and click on the channel thumbnail to load it
as a selection. Then, I can press Ctrl Alt Shift, Command
Option Shift in the Mac and on that same channel thumbnail, click, I will intersect that channel. And I create a new channel; you'll notice
that I created a channel that has more contrast. I'm still selecting the highlights, but only
the stronger highlights and I'm not selecting some of those darker highlights. And I can just call this channel highlights
2. And I can do that one more time; I can hold
Ctrl Alt Shift Command Option Shift in the Mac and click two, two intersect the selection. I'm going to create a new channel based on
the selection. Then I'm going to drag the channel up, and
I'll call it highlights number three. Of course, you can do the same thing with
the shadows. You can select the shadows, Hold Ctrl Command
on the Mac, and click on the shadows channel thumbnail and intersect it with itself Ctrl
Alt Shift and click. Click on this icon to create a new channel
based on that selection. And I'm going to repeat this step one more
time. I'll do it now just to speed up the process. So hold Ctrl Alt Shift on Windows; Command,
Option Shift and a Mac and click to intersect the selection. Then, click on the new channel icon to create
a third shadows channel. Call the layer shadows number two and the
shadows number three. And I can put the mid tones in between the
highlights and shadows just to keep them organized. Ctrl D, Command lead to select. So now I have all these different channels
that I can use as layer mask for my image. So one of the things I could do is,
for example, select the shadows of the image
I will select shadows number two. So I'll press Ctrl,
Command on the Mac and click on the channel thumbnail
to make a selection out of it. Then click on RGB and go back into the layers
panel and create a Curves Adjustment Layer. And we're going to apply a color gray. If I select the blue channel, I can drag down
to warm up the image on the shadows or drag up to cool it. So one thing I want to make clear is that
sometimes you may not necessarily want to affect the entire image. You may only want to affect for example the
subject of the image, so maybe we only want to apply this color tone to the subject
you have two options to do that you can just paint with black on the layer mask to hide
that effect from everything else in the layer. You can see how I'm affecting the background
here in the layer mask thumbnail. But I'm going to undo that because I want
to show you another way that you can do it, you can simply create a new group, you can
call it “adjustments.” And you can drag your adjustment layers in
there and with the group selected, I can just hold Alt, Option on the Mac and click on the
Layer Mask icon to make a black layer mask. See how everything is black. That means that things are being hidden in
that group, and I can reveal the contents of that group. In other words, I can reveal the adjustment
created by this Curves Adjustment Layer simply by painting with white anywhere that I like
so I can just target her skin tones for example. So I just warmed up her skin tone. See that? But anyway, the point is that you can use
these channels to select the highlights mid tones, shadows of your photo. Now, one thing to keep in mind is that this
is not the only way of selecting the different tones of your image; you can actually use
a different technique with color range. Let me show you how that works. I'm going to select the original layer with
my model. I'm going to disable this layer, and I'm going
to show you this alternate technique. It might seem a little bit easier, but I prefer
the control that we get with channels, but there is nothing wrong with using this alternate
technique. And what you want to do is go into Select
Color Range. And from this color range option, you can
select the highlights, mid tones, and shadows of an image. Just to point out, you can also select the
skin tones, and you can click on detect the faces so that Photoshop detects a face and
it focuses on those pixels to make a more accurate selection. But in this case, we can select the highlights. And I'm just going to move this over to the
right so that we can see better. For the selection preview, you can use black
matte, white. And this basically shows you in white what
you're not selecting, and everything else is the original pixel color. So I can select the highlights as you can
see here, these are the highlights of the image. So notice how her hair is not being selected,
her hair is black, and I can adjust the range so that Photoshop can understand
what a highlight is in the image. You can also select the mid tones and adjust
these two sliders. So from this point this shade of gray or darker, those will be considered shadows, and they will be invisible. From this point in this light shade of gray
and brighter, those will be considered the highlights and they will also not be selected. So you can adjust these accordingly to select
the mid tones of your image, and you have access to the shadows and notice how this
time I am selecting your hair and her skin tone. So I can adjust this accordingly to just select
the shadows of the image. So when you're done, you can press on Okay. You'll have an active selection, you can see
the marching ants, and from that point, you can just click on channels, and you can create
a new channel based on that selection. So here it is. See that's how it selected the bright pixels
of the image, I can press Ctrl D, Command D to deselect, and I can work with any other
channels that I created. Also, this whole time, I've been loading a
selection by holding Ctrl, Command in the Mac and clicking on the channel icon. But another way to load a selection is by
simply selecting the channel that you want to load and clicking on this icon here, the
first icon on the bottom left. Clicking on that will also load the channel
as a selection. Once you have the channel loaded as a selection,
just as we did before, you can just create any adjustment layer that you like. For example, I can select the Curves Adjustment
Layer again, and make the same adjustments I did before. But this time, I'm using the selection that
I made at using color range. So the way that you select the luminosity
of the image is not really that important, as long as you get the results that you want. I've often said that I'm not a fan of techniques. I'm a fan of results. So use the technique that gives you the results
that you want. For my preference, I like having more control. So I like using the channels method, but feel
free to use the color range method if you like. Let me know down in the comments below which
method you intend to use or which one you prefer and why. And one more thing, do me a favor and click
on that like button now if you enjoyed either of the techniques. Also, if this is your first time at the Photoshop
Training Channel, don't forget to click on that subscribe and notification button. Thank you so much for watching. I will talk to you again in the next tutorial.
