Action for Variable Luminosity Masks

[Stevod]

Hi,

There have been some posts on how to create Luminosity masks, such as http://www.pl32.com/forum31/viewtopic.p ... ask#p27174.

Building on these, I thought it would be a good idea if I could create a tool which uses a slider to provide continuously variable masks instead of create more than a dozen individual luminosity masks, where each individual one masks a different level of luminosity.

Attached are the actions to do this.

There are three:
1. Lights mask
2. Darks mask
3. Mid Tone masks

The first two are the easiest to use. Simply select an image or adjustment layer to be masked, (which needs to be on the top of the stack in PL), then start the action, then move the resulting layer in the stack as required. Taking "Lights Mask" as an example, it will create nested layers including a layer mask and a gamma layer which masks the top, selected layer. Simply move the Gamma slider to change the amount of masking in the following ways:
1. Lights Masks Gamma changes the amount of masking from the top of the histogram downwards
2. Darks Masks Gamma changes the amount of masking from the bottom of the histogram upwards
3. Mid tones has two Gammas, one which increases masking upwards from the centre of the histogram, while the other changes from the centre downwards.
The two attachments below should illustrate. The first shows a low gamma setting, where most of the sky is transparent, whereas the second is high gamma where only the lightest part is transparent (near the horizon). For this exmaple I have simply used a copy of the background image as the masked image. I can post this PLD file if that would be helpful.

LightsLoGamma.png

LightsHiGamma.png

[Stevod]

These images seem to have disappeared from the original post, so copied again here.

I would appreciate some feedback as to whether people find this action useful.

Stevod

LightsLoGamma.png

LightsHiGamma.png

[Christopher]

Hello,

the attached action "LuminanceMask.actions" is not available any more

[Alan9940]

I see from Gerhard that there is an issue with the board software stripping attachments. I sure hope he can get this fixed...would love to play with this action set.

Best regards,
Alan

[Stevod]

Actions attached again

LuminanceMask.actions

[MikeFromMesa]

Actions attached again

LuminanceMask.actions

The download no longer works. Would it be possible for you to place the actions in dropbox and post the link here? I would like to get the actions.

[Gerhard Huber]

Perhaps the actions are the problem of the board software. Please try to append the action ZIP compressed.

[Stevod]

Here's my last attempt to add a (zipped) attachment. If this fails I will try putting on Dropbox, but the web is littered with broken links, so I am reluctant to add to that in case my Dropbox account changes in the future.

LuminanceMask.zip

Stevod

[Alan9940]

Hello Stevod,

The zip attachment worked fine for me this morning. I spent a little time playing around with all combinations and they work great! I'm sure as I begin to use them more and become more familiar with proper gamma setting(s) for the tonal range I wish to affect, they will certainly speed up my workflow. I can already see one scenario where I want to lift deep shadows that the Lights luminosity mask will make this quick and painless!

Thank you, again, for your work here and for posted these actions.

Best regards,
Alan

[Stevod]

Alan, you are welcome, and thanks for the feedback.

It's nice to think that there is something that we can do in PL that has not been done yet in Photoshop, as far as I am aware.

Kind regards,
Stevod

[MikeFromMesa]

Here's my last attempt to add a (zipped) attachment. If this fails I will try putting on Dropbox, but the web is littered with broken links, so I am reluctant to add to that in case my Dropbox account changes in the future.

LuminanceMask.zip

Stevod

Thank you for posting the zip. I was finally able to download it.