How To Apply Luminosity Masks: The Kickstarter’s Guide

Essentially we are talking about the brightness of pixels.

A pixel is the building block of an image. Thousands and millions of pixels of different color make up an image.

Every pixel has a luminosity value (0-100%). This determines how bright or dark it is.

The different level of brightness in each pixel determines if it’s being selected or not. The area of the image selected is based on the type of luminosity masks you choose (more explanation on that later).

Unlike other selection tools in Photoshop, luminosity masks allow you to create highly targeted selection with seamless feathering.

Why is this so important? Let me ask you this:

Have you tried creating a selection of the sky but just can't get what you want selected properly? There will always be parts that get left out or unwanted parts included in the selection.

Using luminosity masks, you can achieve that desired result more efficiently.

This might sound like a surprise, but...

You can literally use it to apply any kind of adjustment you want. The possibility is only limited by your imagination!

In fact, I encourage you to experiment with this technique and try to think outside the box. In fact, this was exactly how I created this image below.

Although this technique is more commonly used in landscape photography, you can apply it in any kind of images. I have personally used it in architectural, cityscape and portrait images.

As the name implies, it involves merging images of the same frame but taken at different exposure.

In photography, the process of merging images can also be called blending.

Images are often blended together to create a high dynamic range (HDR) image. You can learn more about HDR in the HDR Photography resource page under Articles in the top menu.

"But, aren’t there HDR software to do that already?"

You’re absolutely right, there are plenty! But some photographers don’t like the so-called “HDR look” created by HDR software. These images are typically oversaturated and unnatural looking.

The main advantage of blending over HDR software is that you can decide where and how much you want to blend the images.

With luminosity masks, you have more control and flexibility over this process.

The blended image is often thought to be cleaner and more natural, especially among nature photographers.

The image above shows what local adjustment is. With luminosity masks, I applied a Curves adjustment to reduce the highlights in the sky without affecting other parts of the image. The Curve adjustment to the highlights is targeted and localized to the sky only.

Global adjustments throughout post-processing is a thing in the past now. Yes, we still do that but sparingly. What makes more sense now is targeted local adjustments.

Let's take the above image for example again. To select the sky, you'll have to use a selection tool. This process can be time consuming depending on the complexity of the image and you probably have to refine the selection a few times. Still, the result may not look as natural as you like it to be.

It’s frustrating, unproductive and increases unnecessary time spent in post-processing.

With luminosity masks, you can get the selection quick, precise and with seamless feathering that allows any adjustments to blend in naturally.

A set of luminosity masks targets all three main zones of an image: the highlights, the shadows and the midtones.

These are often called brights, darks and midtones masks.

Similar to a layer mask, white reveals, black conceals and grey partially reveals or conceals depending on the luminosity value.

Creating a set of luminosity masks manually is extremely time consuming. You will need about 5 minutes to create the masks for every image.

The solution?

Automation! It’s all about working smart, not hard!

Here are a few ways to automate the process of creating the masks.

Just so you know how luminosity masks are created, we'll go through the process step-by-step.

You’re going to use the channels panel, rather than the layers panel that you normally work in.

I use a Mac, so bear in mind that Cmd = Ctrl in a PC and Opt = Alt. Remember to save it as Photoshop Actions so you don’t have to repeat this painful process again.

Created by photographers for photographers, these are designed to enhance your experience in using luminosity masks.

Besides creating the basic masks, each luminosity masks panel offers different features and tools for post-processing.

Below is a list of free luminosity masks panel. Each of them also has a premium version which has more advanced features.

The principles of luminosity masks are exactly the same as layer masks:

Let’s say a set of luminosity masks has 18 masks (six brights, six darks and six midtones):

Luminosity masks is a way of creating layer masks. The advantage of it over other selection tools is its ability to produce highly targeted and customizable selection with seamless feathering.

Once you have the selection you need, you can then apply any adjustments to it - different kinds of tonal, color adjustments, sharpening, etc.

Now that you've learned the basics of luminosity masks, I feel it's time to dive into some action!

We'll go through the two main applications of luminosity masks:

Exposure blending is a post-processing technique to blend images of different exposures together. Its aim is to create a high dynamic range (HDR) image without the need to use an HDR software.

The post-processing time is longer than an HDR software but the image is often more tonally balanced and natural.

What’s more?

Exposure blending stimulates your creativity, gives you total control of your image and forces you to learn how to post-process images yourself instead of relying on presets or filters.

To give you an example, I’m going to use the image of the Pantheon taken in Rome.

In the first image, I’ve exposed for the foreground (the buildings), which left the background (the sky) overexposed.

This is because the dynamic range of the scene had exceeded what my camera could capture. Exposure bracketing was necessary to ensure the full dynamic range was captured.

Even though the shadows between the pillars seem dark, I know from the histogram that there’s no shadows clipping and I could recover the details in post-processing.

In the second image below, I’ve taken it to expose for the background (the sky), which left the foreground (the buildings) underexposed.

The aim here is to blend the foreground in the first image with the background in the second image using luminosity masks.

I opened both images in Photoshop. I used the first image as the base image to create a full set of luminosity masks.

My aim was to replace the overexposed sky with the sky in the second image. Because the area I wanted to replace was bright, I needed to use a bright mask that targets only the sky.

With a single click, I used Photoshop Actions to create all 18 luminosity masks without having cramps in my fingers.

These were the 6 bright masks in the channels panel. I wanted to pick one that has only (or most) of the sky selected (in white).

I also wanted to exclude the buildings from my selection, so the buildings should be in black (or darker shades of grey).

Looking through the bright masks, I thought Bright 2 or 3 were the most suitable ones. I picked Bright 2 in this case.

Experiment is often the key to success in blending and post-processing in general.

I encourage you to experiment with different masks (maybe start with the adjacent ones) to see which gives the best result.

For exposure blending, here's what I did:

There are certainly other ways to blend images and this is just one way to do it. It's a relatively straightforward example of how to blend images with luminosity masks. 

There are other advanced blending techniques with luminosity mask. I have provided some useful links at the end of this tutorial if you like to learn more.

You can probably see a routine here...

Everything starts with “create luminosity mask” for the image.

These are the layers I’ve applied to the image. Let’s go through it together!

Here’s the before and after.

The adjustments are subtle but it does make the image look more contrasty.

That’s the advantage of post-processing with luminosity masks. You apply subtle changes to parts of the image but everything adds up to the overall effect.

There's one more thing:

If you look at the top right-hand corner (the deep blue sky), the tone and color have not changed because it was protected by luminosity mask.

This wouldn’t be possible if we’ve applied the adjustments globally. Even with layer masking, the transition wouldn’t be as smooth.

Luminosity masks are great tool but not a perfect tool. It does have some limitations.

In this section, I'm going through some common ones you may encounter in your workflow and show you how to overcome these pitfalls!

What could I have done differently?

Take bracketed exposures at a closer interval to ease the transition from the darkest to the brightest.

In this case, 5 or even 7 bracketed images with 1EV apart (or even smaller) may have helped to reduce or even avoided the halos.

It may seem intuitive to brighten the shadows with a darks mask when you want to see more details in the shadows. It works for highlights so it should work the same for shadows, right?

Unfortunately not.

Why is that?

If you see the luminance mask on the far left below (Darks 2), the whitest part falls on the darkest area of the rock.

This means the darkest shadows are all selected.

And the problem:

If you brighten that up, all the shadows, including the darkest shadow will be brightened. This causes the image to lose overall contrast and becomes flat.

You want to brighten the shadows and maintain the contrast at the same time.

If you think about it:

Contrast is when there is a difference in the darks and the brights. This means preserving the darkest shadows (maybe you can brighten it up a little) while brightening the less (or least) dark shadows.

To do that, select a dark mask and subtract the darkest darks to preserve the darkest shadows. (luminosity masks shown below)

Dark or bright edges sometimes occur when you try to blend images with high contrast together (it’s always high contrast causing problem!).

It often appears on the outlines such as tree branch (in this case), rocks or mountains. It’s actually not easy to spot them without zooming into the image.

If you can’t see it, why fix it?

You're right. But if you happen to print your image large, it will show up and ruin your print. On the other hand, fixing it only takes a few minutes and there’s no reason not to do it.

In this example, you can see the edges of the blue sky painted over the tree branch on the right.

On the left, it did the opposite, leaving a white edge between the blue sky and the tree branch.

The way to fix it is to reverse select and paint over it. I’ll explain.

To fix the white line on the left, select the magic wand tool in Photoshop.

Set the tolerance to 15 (in this case) and make a selection of the tree branch.

Now, modify the selection by going to Select > Modify > Contract, and retract the edge of the selection by 1 pixel to exclude the white line from the selection (2 or 3 pixels if you have a thicker white line). Inverse the selection so that the sky and the white line are now selected instead.

The next step is easy.

Select the brush tool, change the foreground color to the color of the sky by opt/alt + click on the sky and paint it over the white line.

For the over-painted area on the right, do the same except select the sky first and inverse the selection after.

The inverse selection method can be used in any situations where edging is present.

There will be times when you find none of the luminosity masks have the selections you need.

The mask can either over-select (including areas that you don’t want) or under-select (not including areas that you want).

What can we do about it?

Here are a few tips to help you refine a mask or create a custom mask for your selection.

It’s a head scratcher in exposure blending.

In an HDR software, you can use de-ghost to fix the problem. In exposure blending, there are ways to deal with it.

So how does ghosting look like?

If ghosting is not obvious and only affecting a small part of the image, you can reduce the opacity of the layer or use the clone stamp tool or healing brush to fix it.

But that’s not an option in this case.

The solution here is double processing.

No, I don’t mean editing the image in both Photoshop and Lightroom. It’s a post-processing technique where you take a single Raw image and make a duplicate copy.

You brighten up the shadows in one and darkening the highlights in the other, and you blend both together. In this case, with luminosity masks.

I know what you’re thinking:

Why can’t you brighten up the shadows and darken the highlights in the Raw image?

Remember the greatest strength of luminosity masks is also its weakness. The tonal adjustments will bleed over into the shadows and the highlights.

If you do it separately in two images, you don’t have to worry about that because you’re going to blend it. 

Shadows that are brightened up in the highlights priority image will be recovered by the shadows priority image and vice versa.

Now, because only a single image is used, you wouldn’t have a problem with ghosting!

If all these make complete sense to you and you are excited about the potential of what luminosity masks can add to your creativity in image editing, I do have something for you.

Practical Luminosity Masks is a video course created out of passion and the feel for the need to bring all the technical tips and tricks of this technique into a single resource. You can find the course in from the top menu.

One thing Practical Luminosity Masks is different from other courses is that it doesn't teach you workflow that relies on a specific luminosity masks panel.

In fact, it teaches you the what, why and how of luminosity masks. You'll be equipped with a solid foundational knowledge that you can apply to ANY panels you wish to purchase in the future.