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05/26/2012 10:15:44 AM · #26 |
Originally posted by bspurgeon:
Richard, what do you mean by "the use of highlight, midtone, or shadow masks"? Does this imply, for example, using a 50% grey mask in various blend modes? |
You want to make a selection of ONLY the midtones, the shadows, or the highlights, and then (this is how I do it) make a new layer of that election and adjust the layer mode; so, for example, a highlight mask in multiply mode will darken the highlights. You can select any of those 3 ranges with Select>color range>midtones (or highlights, or shadows). You can also use the shortcuts cntrl+alt+2 (or 3 or 4 or 5) to select highlights at different ranges of intensity.
R.
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05/26/2012 10:21:41 AM · #27 |
Originally posted by Bear_Music:
Originally posted by bspurgeon:
Richard, what do you mean by "the use of highlight, midtone, or shadow masks"? Does this imply, for example, using a 50% grey mask in various blend modes? |
You want to make a selection of ONLY the midtones, the shadows, or the highlights, and then (this is how I do it) make a new layer of that election and adjust the layer mode; so, for example, a highlight mask in multiply mode will darken the highlights. You can select any of those 3 ranges with Select>color range>midtones (or highlights, or shadows). You can also use the shortcuts cntrl+alt+2 (or 3 or 4 or 5) to select highlights at different ranges of intensity.
R. |
Interesting -- I've done cntrl alt 2, but then usually just do curves. Having played with blending modes.
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05/26/2012 03:56:31 PM · #28 |
Originally posted by bspurgeon:
Richard, what do you mean by "the use of highlight, midtone, or shadow masks"? Does this imply, for example, using a 50% grey mask in various blend modes? |
No. Similar to what Bear said, I first create three masks, one for highlights, one for shadows and one that is an intersection of the two, which I use as my midtone mask. Now once I have the selections, if I want to brighten the highlights I load my highlights mask and apply it to an adjustment layer. Often I'll then make a second mask to fine tune it further by moving the adjustment layer into a folder and applying a second mask to the folder. This is useful when you want to start tweaking the tonal range within just the highlights, for example. Needless to say you can end up with a lot of masks on top of masks.
Anyway, in case anyone is interested here is how I typically make my baseline selections to start out with.
First create the shadow mask:
1. In this case I did Shift-Ctrl-Alt-3 five times. The number of times you do this will vary depending on the image. I just eyeball it until I see that the only thing not being selected are very dark pixels.
2. Invert the selection and save selection. This is my shadow mask.
Highlight Mask:
3. Deselect current selection and do another Shift-Ctrl-Alt-3 one time. Again this will depend on the image so you may choose a different number or do this multiple times. It really depends on how dynamic the tonal range is from the start. Once done I save this as my highlight selection.
Midtone Mask:
4. With my highlight selection still active I go ahead and load my shadow mask and choose "interesect" in the pop up.
5. Once I do this it gives me a warning saying the selection won't be visible. This is because the selection is very fine. Now when you use this type of selection on an adjustment layer no matter how extreme you go with the adjustment it'll be very difficult to create a wild effect since so few pixels are being manipulated. I often create these types of masks that give me this warning for highlights and shadows as well since this works great as a fine tune instrument.
6. As you can see in the screenshot below the midtone selection as it displays in channels is hard to see. Now what you could do here is tweak the mask further by applying adjustments and such. The sky is the limit as well as what you do with them afterwards.
Message edited by author 2012-05-26 15:59:45.
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05/26/2012 04:08:03 PM · #29 |
For portrait work I'll sometimes create several "baseline" masks for each type of highlight (i.e. very bright & mildly-bright), midtone (bright & dark) and shadows (mildy-dark & very dark). This works well when you can't control the light and you're wanting to radically change the lighting (ex. convert harsh direct sunlight to studio light.)
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05/26/2012 04:35:37 PM · #30 |
| This has been really useful - bookmarking for future reference. Thank you. |
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05/26/2012 05:14:46 PM · #31 |
Originally posted by SaraR:
This has been really useful - bookmarking for future reference. Thank you. |
Richard -- I suggest you send a ticket to Langdon linking to your detailed post so that he can consider adding it to the tutorials section ... |
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05/26/2012 06:56:56 PM · #32 |
Originally posted by GeneralE:
Originally posted by SaraR:
This has been really useful - bookmarking for future reference. Thank you. |
Richard -- I suggest you send a ticket to Langdon linking to your detailed post so that he can consider adding it to the tutorials section ... |
+1
That way I can find it again. |
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05/26/2012 08:22:18 PM · #33 |
This is one of the many reasons that DPC is a valuable site... aside from the bickering in the forums ;)
The people here really spend time to share the knowledge that they've acquired from experience which helps the newbies like me SO MUCH.
As christophe  gyaban said in another thread: on other sites and in general PP is extremely important so it's always great to learn such useful techniques. Thanks. |
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05/29/2012 09:43:07 PM · #34 |
Originally posted by GeneralE:
Originally posted by SaraR:
This has been really useful - bookmarking for future reference. Thank you. |
Richard -- I suggest you send a ticket to Langdon linking to your detailed post so that he can consider adding it to the tutorials section ... |
Which radio button do I hit on the contact page?
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05/30/2012 12:03:50 AM · #35 |
Originally posted by yanko:
Which radio button do I hit on the contact page? |
The first one: DPChallenge - Administrative Inquiry
Those tickets go straight to Langdon -- SC never sees them AFAIK ... |
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