Creative techniques for working with photoshop alpha masks. How to Use Lightness Masks in Photoshop

Load the photo into Photoshop. On the layers panel, go to the “Channels” tab or select “Window | Channels". Hold down the "Ctrl" key and click on the channel called "RGB". Photoshop will select and select only all of the light areas of the image.

Now click on the "Save selection as channel" icon (this little icon is located at the bottom of the "Channels" palette). Double click on the new channel, which will be named "Alpha 1" by default, and rename it "Lights".

Click on the new "Lights" channel while holding down the "Shift+Ctrl+Alt" keys. So Photoshop will automatically distinguish between light and very light areas of the image when making a selection. Click the "Save selection as channel" icon again and name the new channel "Bright Lights".

Repeat this step with the "Bright Lights" channel and name the created channel "The Brightest Lights". When performing these steps, it is important not to deselect any of the three steps.

Hold down the "Ctrl" key and click on the "Lights" channel. Now in the "Select" menu, click on "Inverse". So instead of light areas, dark ones will be selected. Save this selection as a channel and name it "Shadows".

Adding additional shadow channels follows the scheme already described above: you need to hold the key combination "Shift + Ctrl + Alt" and click on the "Shadows" channel. Name the first channel "Dark Shadows" and the next one "The Darkest Shadows".

Now click on the cells next to all the channels created earlier to make them visible. If necessary, remove the eye icon from "RGB" and other color channels. Now press the "Ctrl + A" keys to select the entire image. In the "Select" menu, stop at the "Inverse" item.

At this point, Photoshop will report that too few pixels are selected. Click on OK. Click "Create new channel" and name this channel "Middle Tones". As a rule, depending on the background of the image, it displays only a black or white surface.

The reason is that after copying all the light and dark areas, there is practically nothing left to adjust.

To deselect, press Ctrl+D. Then click on the "RGB" channel, making sure that all three color channels below it are active. Now it's time to go to the "Layers" tab and do some basic image editing.

If you need the selected sections saved in the channels we just created, call them by finding the item “Load Selection” in the “Select” menu, and the desired channel in the list.8 8 Bring in soft light

The article is voluminous, so for convenience I will divide it into several parts. So, let's begin.

Introduction

Hue, or simply "saturation", determines the purity of a color. Pure is the color that is obtained from a relatively small beam of light waves. Obviously, there is an intensity of saturated colors because they are not muted or washed out by the presence of other colors.

A good way to gauge color saturation is with Photoshop's color picker. To activate it, click once on any of the Foreground/Background color squares in Photoshop's Toolbox (Figure 1).

After opening the window, click on the switch next to "S:", which means saturation. Now drag the handle on the colored vertical bar to the right of the big square up and down. When the knob is at the top, the color saturation is 100%; at the bottom - 0%. As you drag the marker, you can observe changes in color saturation inside the large square and numerically in the box next to "S:" (Figure 2).

The Color Picker shows that Photoshop already knows the degree of saturation for every color it can render. This is an important point. By default, the program displays this information graphically, the mask becomes available, which gives new possibilities for controlling the saturation of our photos.

Saturation makes a big difference in the perception of an image. Usually, we are attracted to more saturated colors. They are strong and make the image feel more intense. If we want to convey a sense of beauty, as in nature photography, increasing color saturation often helps in eliciting an emotional response.

Despite the ability to convey emotion and enhance an image, saturation is often overlooked in the workflow of bringing an image to its final form. This is not surprising. Photoshop's main tool for influencing color saturation is the Hue/Saturation tool, which is a relatively coarse tool. It affects the saturation of all colors in an image, or a specific color range, but does not take into account how saturated or unsaturated the colors were before the adjustment was applied. Small changes in saturation with the Hue/Saturation adjustment can have a significant effect on the colors of an image. Also, some of the colors in the image that need to be saturated are a mixture of so many different colors that it's almost impossible to pick out the right color without destroying the saturation in other parts of the image. Not surprisingly, saturation adjustment often looks unsatisfactory or not used at all. This is often the last resort when other adjustments have messed up the saturation and need to be brought back to normal. The standard Photoshop tools are too rough.

The saturation mask is a way to change this. This is a layer mask, actually two layer masks, that allow the user to focus saturation adjustments exactly where they are needed. This guide explains how to create and use these saturation masks to overcome the problems associated with adjusting Hue/Saturation. Because of this, masks provide much more control, allowing bolder use of saturation to creatively enhance an image. The steps are a bit convoluted, but they can easily be written into an action that can be launched from a panel in Photoshop. As in the first tutorial on , I use saturation masks in every image I process. By the end of this guide, I hope you too will see the potential of saturation masks and they will allow you to make your images stand out like never before.

As with the manual posted earlier on the site, I remind you that I work on a computer running Windows XP. I've upgraded to Photoshop CS3 so the screenshots will look a little different than the previous tutorial. I'll try to explain things as clearly as possible, but some beginners may need to refer to the Photoshop reference guide. There will be several steps that are best done with hotkeys.

And finally, since it was covered in some detail in the manual, in this tutorial I will not spend so much time explaining how masks work. If you need this information, you can refer to that manual.

Creating Saturation Masks

The abbreviation HSB/HSL stands for "hue, saturation, lightness/hue, saturation lightness" and in fact "HSB" and "HSL" are the same thing. The HSB/HSL models are another way to define color, just like the RGB model...just different. In the RGB model, each pixel is defined by the amount of red, green, and blue. In the HSB model, the color of a pixel is determined by its hue, saturation, and lightness values.
The best way to understand how it all works is to step through the steps to create a saturation mask using an HSB/HSL filter, and then take a look at the resulting mask.
The HSB/HSL filter must be applied to a pixel layer that is in RGB mode. This operation is not possible on adjustment layers. In addition, using a filter destroys the color on the layer to which it is applied, so it is necessary to make a duplicate of the layer before running the filter, which can be deleted after receiving the saturation mask. Thus, the first step is to create a new layer and fill it with a copy of the original image.

1. Make active the top layer in the layers palette.
2. By pressing Shift-Alt-Ctrl + N create a new layer at the top of the layer stack.
3. Then press Shift-Alt-Ctrl + E to copy the current state of the image to the preset layer.

After these three steps, the layers palette should have a top layer containing the duplicate image (Figure 3).

Now it's time to run the filter. Standing on the active duplicate layer, go to the Filter (Filter> Other> HSB / HSL).

A dialog box will open as shown in Figure 5. For "Input Mode:" select "RGB", for "Output Mode:" select "HSB". Click OK.

It should now be quite obvious why this layer should be single use. The image has changed so much that it is essentially worthless (Figure 6). But don't worry. This is just a duplicate layer. All layers below it are not affected by the filter. If we remove this top layer, the original appearance of the image will be restored.

I don't claim to understand Photoshop's calculation math, but I'm pretty sure the HSB/HSL filter transforms the image so that the pixels are now defined by the HSB model instead of the RGB model. But take a look at the channels palette (Figure 7). It still functions in RGB mode. It appears that when converting RGB pixels to HSB values, the filter simply pushes those HSB values ​​into RGB channels instead of creating new HSB channels. And since the HSB channel values ​​are so different from the RGB channel values, they make absolutely no sense in determining the color of an image in RGB mode. That's why the colors of the resulting image look so strange.

But all this rubbish has a wonderful secret. Even though the channels are still in RGB mode and combining them produces a ridiculous image, the values ​​in them, and therefore the RGB channel thumbnails, are indeed in HSB mode. The red channel thumbnail is actually a Hue representation thumbnail, the green channel thumbnail is a Saturation representation thumbnail, and the blue channel thumbnail is a Luma representation thumbnail.

The green channel will be most helpful in creating the saturation mask. After the HSB/HSL filter, the green channel and its thumbnail determine the saturation of the image. This channel is essentially a black and white representation of the saturation levels of each pixel in the image. Saturated colors are light, desaturated colors are dark, and all levels of saturation in between are represented by their respective shades of gray. In other words, the green channel is the saturation mask.
However, it must be converted to an alpha channel to be useful. To do this, you need:

1. Ctrl + click anywhere on the green channel (but not in the eyeball area on the left of the channel) to load the channel as a selection (Figure 8).
2. Click the Save Selection As Channel button to create an alpha channel from the selection. A channel with the name “Alpha 1” will appear on the channels palette (Figure 8).
3. Double click on the name "Alpha 1" and enter the name "Saturation Mask" (Figure 9).

HURRAH! Finally we got the saturation mask.

Once the mask is saved in the Channels Palette, you can safely delete the layer to which the HSB/HSL filter has been applied. The saturation mask will remain in the channels palette and the original image will be restored. To quickly create a saturation mask while working on an image, I recommend recording a Photoshop action.

The second part of the translated article will be published by me in the coming days. And for everyone who wants to expand their knowledge on this topic, I suggest that you read the article in LiveJournal, which discusses several more methods for creating saturation masks. And for today I have everything.

The purpose of landscape photography is to convey the beauty of the world around us. And it is desirable to do it the way the photographer perceived everything at the time of shooting. But here the difficulty is that the human eye and brain are much more perfect than the most perfect camera. For example - we see sharply both near and far objects (of course, if everything is in order with our eyesight), even on a bright sunny day we see details both in the clouds and in the shadows, and at night, after a little adaptation, we can still consider the details.

And in order to convey the landscape as it was perceived by the photographer's vision, one has to go to some tricks. And, perhaps, the main one is the expansion of the dynamic range - a technique that allows you to transfer to photos and details in the highlights and shadows.

The main meaning of this technique boils down to the following - the photographer takes two pictures (the simplest option) - one with an exposure for the highlights, and the second with an exposure for the shadows. After that, in a graphic editor, two images are combined and we get a frame with details in highlights and shadows.

There are quite a few methods for processing such images - in the simplest case, you can limit yourself to restoring information from one rav file, sometimes you can get by with gradients in the editor or gradient filters. We will consider a more complex (and at the same time, more universal) method - luminance masks.

Luminosity masks

The easiest way to combine dark and light images in Adobe Photoshop is to overlay them on top of each other in the form of layers and hide part of one image using a mask (you can read about working with masks in the article -). But sometimes the composition is so complex that drawing a mask by hand is too long and difficult. The simplest example is a tree against a bright sky. In order to see the details on the tree trunk and in the sky, it will be necessary to draw all the branches of the tree.

But there is one secret. In landscape photography, it is often necessary to mask overexposed areas in order to even out the illumination, which means we will need a mechanism that automatically allows you to select areas based on their brightness. This is what is called luminance masks.

Let's deal with them step by step with an example.

For simplicity and clarity, we will combine two frames, although in real life there can be 3 or 5 frames, it all depends on the tonal transitions in the scene being shot and on the capabilities of the camera matrix.

Light shot. The foreground is well developed, but the details in the sun area are lost

Dark shot, details in the foreground are not visible, but the area around the sun is well developed

The main task is to select bright areas around the sun on a light frame and replace them with areas from a dark one.

We place both images on separate layers in Photoshop and combine using Edit / Editing -> Auto Align Layers / Automatically align layers ...

The auto leveling item can be skipped when shooting with a tripod.

If necessary, after aligning the frames relative to each other, you can “cut the edges”.

There are no tools and commands in Photoshop for creating brightness masks, but you can save all the actions described below as an Action / Operation and apply automatically to other images - the algorithm does not depend on what is shown in the photo, it focuses only on the brightness of those or other pixels.

For clarity of work, turn off the visibility of the upper dark layer and click on the lower light one. It is he who will be used to search for light areas.

After that go to the Channels panel and Command+click on the composite RGB channel. This will create a selection around the bright areas of the image.

The resulting selection can already be used, but it would be more correct to create masks for areas of different brightness.

Click the Save Selection as Channel icon at the bottom of the Channels panel. This will create a new channel, automatically named Alpha. Let's rename it to Highlights.

In order to highlight the brighter areas of the image, you need to make the intersection of this selection with itself. Hold down Command+Alt+Shift and click on the thumbnail of the Highlights channel. This will highlight the lighter areas of the previous selection. The new selection is again saved as a channel named Highlights 1.

This operation with the intersection of the brightness channels with themselves can be done several more times, obtaining accurate selections of areas of different brightness. The more we intersect the original selection with each other, the brighter areas are highlighted.

We got it like this:

Thus, we got a selection with five levels of brightness.

To process the photo from our example, we need to select only bright areas, but for clarity and generality, let's look at how to create similar selections for dark areas of the image.

Load the Highlights selection again by Ctrl+clicking on the channel of the same name. Then select Select / Selection > Inverse / Invert (Shift + Ctrl + I) - this command will reverse the selection. This means that shadows are now included in the selection instead of highlights. Save the selection as a new channel named Shadows.

In order to create channels on which more dense shadows are selected, use a similar self-intersection technique with pressing Command + Alt + Shift keys and clicking on the Shadows channel. After five iterations, we will get five channels with masks for areas of different darkness

Now it's time to use these channels to create a mask on the dark layer. We need to make sure that the selected channel is added as a layer mask.

We need to make a mask in such a way that only the areas around the sun remain on the dark version of the image. In this case, the channel called Highlights 1 is most suitable, it is there that the brightest areas are highlighted (they are white).

Load it as a selection by clicking on the channel with the Command key pressed

After that, make the RGB composite channel active (you need to click on it), switch to the Layers panel / Layers, activate and turn on the visibility of the dark layer and add a mask to it by clicking on the add mask icon at the bottom of the layers panel.

Our selection will immediately become a mask for this layer and the photo will be transformed.

The dark parts of the mask make areas of the layer opaque, while the white parts show up. It turns out that the areas around the sun on the underexposed layer will overlap the overexposed ones, but the foreground will remain from the lighter shot.

Together with overexposure in the sky, we got a plot with good color detail. And for this we did not have to manually draw masks and trace the contours of the ship.

If necessary, the masks can be modified using the Levels or Curves tool, or simply with a brush.

Source Luma Mask

After finishing with a brush

In a similar way, but using the Shadows channels, in which we selected the shadows, you can slightly lighten the stones in the foreground without affecting the sky.

Choosing the right channel

And apply it as a mask to the curves adjustment layer:

After we got a brightly-aligned picture without dips in shadows and highlights, we can already work with color and contrast, use Dodge & Burn to place accents, add sun glare and other effects.

To refine the colors and lighting in the picture, use the Nik Color Efex plugin:

After a little color correction with the help of curves, we get the following result:

Brightness masks can be used for more than just combining multiple exposures in one shot. They are great for replacing the sky in an overexposed shot. Overexposure is a very bright area, which means it will be very easy to select it with the help of brightness masks and then insert the sky from some other frame into this place.

In the article, we talked about manually creating luminance masks - this is good to understand the meaning of the process, but with daily processing of a photo, it can be somewhat long and unproductive.

There are several ways to automate the process:

1. Using a special set of Actions. All subscribers of the photo school can download such a set for free. These actions will automatically create channels with highlights and shadows, as well as sets of curves and levels with luminosity masks applied to them. After launching the action, you just need to leave the desired layer with curves or levels visible (whichever is more convenient) and adjust the settings. You can download here -
2. ArcPanel panel. A more cumbersome, but also more versatile solution than using separate actions. Allows you to visually create selections based on brightness using the buttons on the panel.

In 2002, an experiment was conducted at the Max Planck University to investigate the relationship between a person's ability to remember visual information and the ways in which this information is presented. The participants of the experiment were shown various photographs of landscapes, after which they were asked to recall as many details as possible from those depicted in the pictures. Regardless of age, ability to distinguish colors, people remembered much more easily what was depicted in color photographs than in black and white.

Color photographs give us the opportunity to convey an idea both through the distribution of brightness and through color. We can create a harmonious mood in a photo with calm colors that are close in tone, add tension with complementary colors, or draw attention to certain areas of a motif with a difference in color saturation. About ways to change color saturation in image processing and how to use it for specific purposes and will be discussed in this article.

1. Saturation value for the photographer

The saturation or intensity of a color hue is called the purity of a color, that is, its difference from an equally bright gray color. Changing the color saturation can have a big impact on how a photo is perceived. Bright, saturated colors create a joyful mood, such pictures encourage action rather than contemplation. At the same time, calm, muted colors make the viewer want to take a closer look at the motif, delve into the image depicted in the picture.

The influence of colors on photographs also depends on where the viewer lives. Residents of southern countries love bright colors, a combination of complementary colors, while people in northern latitudes prefer calm colors, combinations of shades that lie close on the color wheel. However, when it comes to holidays, northerners also associate rich colors with southern countries. Therefore, the photographer must decide what he wants to say with his picture, what is his target group, what emotions he wants to evoke in the viewer - the desire to buy what is depicted in the picture as soon as possible, to visit where this picture was taken, or to look at the photo more carefully, immerse yourself in it. .

It is known that an even distribution of color saturation creates a harmonious image, no matter how strong the color saturation in the photo is. At the same time, enhancing the color for a certain object or part of a motif creates tension in the picture, forcing the viewer to concentrate on this subject or part of the photo.

In many cases, selective saturation can be useful to follow these rules. Let's take a look at how this method works in Photoshop, in what cases changing saturation can help the photographer improve the image, and what role selective saturation plays in this. The saturation changes in the examples are slightly exaggerated to make the effect of all manipulations more pronounced.

2. Selective saturation

2.1. Creating a Saturation Mask

Consider the process of creating a saturation mask using this image as an example.

Calling up a dialog Image->Adjustment->Selective Color, mark the option Absolute and in all colors from red to magenta, set the black value to -100.

For the last three options - white, gray and black - set the black value to +100.

The resulting image quite accurately reproduces the distribution of saturation in the image.

Now let's go to the channel list and select the saturation mask by clicking the Load Channel As Selection button or by clicking on the top RGB layer while holding down the Ctrl key. The selected area can be saved for further use via Select->Save Selection… or immediately create a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and set the saturation value to the maximum. The selected saturated areas will automatically turn into an adjustment layer mask. As you can see, in the image, only those colors that were more saturated than the rest increased in saturation.

Now you can experiment with different saturation values ​​in the adjustment layer, increase or decrease the effect of this layer by selecting a mask and changing the brightness of the midtones with curves or levels. For a less pronounced saturation effect, you can try changing the adjustment layer's Overlay Mode to Saturation.

In this example, the contrast of the mask has been increased by levels, and the increase in saturation is more pronounced.

At the same time that bright colors are saturated, desaturated colors can be muted. To do this, make a copy of the adjustment layer, remove the saturation in it and invert the layer mask (Ctrl + I). After that, we darken the mask with levels or curves, changing the position of the middle section of the curve.

2.2. Using Selective Saturation

Example 1

Everyone who has visited the Canary Islands or Andalusia knows that even bright saturated colors cannot always convey the beauty of those places. A simple increase in saturation in this case also enhances the pinkish color of the pavement, which we do not need at all. If I create a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer and change the Overlay Mode to Saturation, this effect is slightly reduced. This is not enough in our case. If we use the selective color saturation method, we can enhance only the colors on the wall of the house and the flowers at the top of the photo, without affecting the rest of the image.

Example 2

In this case, the plumage of the Nicobar pigeon was colorful enough on its own, but the uninteresting yellow wall draws attention away from the bird. As we know from color theory, blues must either be brighter or take up more space in the image so that they can attract as much attention as yellows and greens.

In this case, reducing the saturation of the entire image, except for the pigeon, would lead to the fact that some areas in the background would become simply gray. Therefore, the optimal solution was to selectively reduce the saturation of only the bright parts of the wall and the grass in the background. After creating a mask and a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer with a negative saturation value, I painted over the pigeon with a black brush so as not to change the bright blue color of its feathers.

Example 3

No less interesting is the saturation mask for restoring oversaturated, so-called knockout areas. I think that many people have taken photos of bright red flowers or clothes, which in the picture turned into a solid scarlet spot, devoid of structure.

It can be seen from the brightness histogram that not all information fit into the dynamic range, and when checking the channel histograms, you can find that it was the red colors that were overexposed.

If the oversaturation of the color is not very large, then you can even fix it in a JPG file. To do this, create a Hue / Saturation adjustment layer with a saturation mask and reduce the saturation of the knocked out areas, returning them to the structure.

In cases where the oversaturation is too great, these areas can be restored only if the shooting was done in RAW format. To do this, we will create two 16-bit TIFF files from RAW. One with regular settings, the other with a reduced saturation value so that the missing structure shows up. Now a saturation mask is created from the normal image, the second image, with reduced saturation, is copied as a layer on the first one, and this mask is added to it. Now you can change the brightness of the mask or the transparency of the top layer as needed. Thus, we preserve both the colors of the image and the structure.

In addition to the above areas of application of the saturation mask, it can be used to change the brightness and contrast of saturated areas with curves or levels, give them a certain color tint with a Photo Filter or Hue / Saturation adjustment layer with the Colorize option checked.

2.3. Alternative Ways to Create a Saturation Mask

2.3.1. Layer Overlay Mode

The second method uses layer overlap modes.

1. Create a new layer and fill it with any color. The chosen color does not have to be saturated, the main thing is that it has at least a slight color tint.

2. Create a copy of the image with Saturation Overlay Mode and place it above the layer we created earlier.

3. Merge the two upper layers (Ctrl + E) into one.

4. Make a copy of this layer and change the overlay mode to Difference.

5. We remove the saturation of the upper layer through Desaturate or Hue / Saturation.

6. Merge the two upper layers into one and remove its saturation.

The resulting mask has low contrast and is suitable for small increases in saturation. If you want to enhance the effect, you need to increase the contrast of the mask with levels or curves.

2.3.2. Image conversion to HSL/HSB

Some Photoshop plugins allow you to convert images from RGB or Lab to HSL or HSB modes. In this case, the saturation distribution of interest to us is stored in the green channel, the brightness distribution is stored in the blue channel, and information about the color hue is stored in the red channel.

One of these plugins is not installed by default, but it can be found on the Photoshop CS installation disk in the folder Photoshop CS/Goodies/Optional Plug-Ins/Photoshop Only/HSL&HSB Filter. After it has been copied to the plugins folder, it can be called via Filter->Other->HSL&HSB.

Another plugin that allows you to convert from one color space to another is Color Converter.

4. One interesting way to manipulate saturation

This way of working with color may be of interest to lovers of surreal, vibrant images. It allows you to enhance the saturation of certain colors, make them darker or lighter, creating colorful photographs that are more reminiscent of pictures in children's books. For this method, it is better to take bright pictures with a lot of different colors.

1. Create a copy of the layer and use Select->Color Range Let's choose a color. Parameter Fuzziness it is better not to make it very large so as not to affect many neighboring shades.

2. Let's create a layer mask that will immediately hide all parts of the photo that have not been selected.

3. Change the overlay mode to Overlay or Soft Light.

4. Now you can try to increase the contrast of this layer with curves, make it lighter or darker.

Proceed in this way with the rest of the colors in the image. Perhaps you can’t call such a photo realistic, but it may well come in handy as a package for sweets.

Afterword

In the experiment that was mentioned at the beginning of the article, the memorability of color images was much higher than black and white ones. But this was true only as long as the displayed photographs showed natural colors. In cases where the colors in the photograph were distorted, where the grass was blue and the people were green, the memorability of the photographs fell to the level of black and white. Photographers who process their images in graphic editors should probably remember this fact whenever they take on the creation of another creation.

Appendix

For some ways to create a saturation mask, I wrote a set of scripts that can be . These scripts create a new Hue/Saturation adjustment layer with the saturation mask already applied. To enhance the effect, you need to select the mask and lighten it with levels or curves. The set includes:

saturation_mask_sc- creating a mask according to the main method, through Selective Color;

saturation_mask_l1- creating a mask according to the method from part 2.3.1.;

saturation_mask_l2- creating a mask according to the method from part 2.3.4. Although this method is incorrect, it can be useful for experiments.

Also in the set there are several ways to increase saturation. After creating a new, saturated layer, its transparency must be reduced and / or the overlay mode changed to Saturation.

more_saturation_cm- increase in saturation according to the method from part 3.2.;

more_saturation_overlay- increasing saturation according to the method from part 3.3 with the creation of two layers and the Saturation overlay mode;

more_saturation_sc- increase in saturation according to the method from part 3.4.

That's all. Good luck!

What You'll Be Creating

Creating quality, seamless selections in Adobe Photoshop can be painfully slow and complicated. However, the program has its own sets of tools that allow you to solve this problem better, faster and easier.

In this Quick Tip, we'll look at one of the simplest yet most convenient ways to make selections based on the brightness values ​​of the pixels in an image. It allows precise control of highlights, shadows and midtones.

These selections then allow for other highly professional retouching techniques that would otherwise be very difficult to apply. Also, our method makes the selection borders absolutely smooth (seamless). All this without using any selection tools!

1. Making a Selection

The selection technique we have chosen is applicable to any image, but in order to go through all the retouching steps, you will need to download this image.

Step 1

The first selection is the selection of light areas of the image. Making this selection is fundamental to this technique, as other selections will be based on it.

But no matter how important it is, you will not find a single menu item or tool to create it. It's like a secret Photoshop spell. And the key combination to call it can bring the hand - Alt+Ctrl+2. Before CS5 it was Alt+Ctrl+~(this is the tilde sign). But the easiest way to make a selection is to go to the panel Channels And Ctrl+click on composite RGB channel. This will create a selection around the bright areas of the image.

Step 2

Click the icon Save Selection as Channel (Save the selected area in the new channel) at the bottom of the panel Channels. This will create a new channel automatically named Alpha 1. Rename it to highlights.

Step 3

Then, you need to intersect this selection with itself. Holding down Ctrl+Alt+Shift, click on the channel thumbnail Highlights. This will highlight the lighter areas of the previous selection. Save the new selection as a channel named Bright Highlights.

Step 4

Make an intersection Bright Highlights with itself (again holding down Ctrl+Alt+Shift click on the channel thumbnail) and save the resulting selection as Brightest Highlights.

Thus, we got a selection with three levels of brightness. You can continue to intersect the selection with yourself, but I've never needed more than three brightness levels. It's time to turn our attention to the shadows.

Step 5

Make a selection again highlights, Ctrl+click to the channel of the same name. Then select Select> Inverse (Selection> Invert) (Shift + Ctrl + I)- this command will reverse the selection. This means that shadows are now included in the selection instead of highlights. Save the selection as a new channel named Shadows.

Step 6

Use a similar self-intersection technique to create two other channels with increasing selection darkness, let's call these channels Darker Shadows And Darkest Shadows, respectively.

Step 7

So we have three channels of highlights and three channels of shadows, now what? Midtones, of course! Start by selecting the entire image Select> All (Select> All) (Ctrl + A), then subtract the highlights from it by holding Ctrl+Alt, click on the channel Highlights. After that, subtract the shadows in the same way (Shadows) from the resulting selection.

At this point, Photoshop may issue a warning message that the selection edge is not visible because there are no pixels more than 50% selected in the selection. This means that the resulting selection will not have "marching ants" on its border.

Save the new selection as Midtones. It is no longer necessary to intersect this channel with itself, since this procedure in this case will generate an empty selection.

Always return to composite RGB channel before proceeding with the panel Layers (Layers). This sequence of steps is applicable to any image. Record if possible Action to generate channel data at the click of a button, especially if you tend to edit photos in bulk.

2. Using Selections

The highlights are now securely stored in the Channels panel. Well, what's the point of them? Why did we create them at all? Because they allow you to make certain adjustments that would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, with any other selection.

Step 1

Holding ctrl, click the channel Highlights to create a selection. Then back to the panel Layers (Layers), add a new adjustment layer Curves (Layer> New Adjustment Layer> Curves; Layer> New Adjustment Layer> Curves). Photoshop automatically uses the current selection as an adjustment layer mask. Therefore, by pulling the middle point of the curve up, we will increase the brightness of only the highlights, leaving the shadows and midtones intact.

Step 2

Load selection Shadows by clicking ctrl on the channel of the same name, and add a new adjustment layer Curves. Now drag the middle point of the curve down a bit to deepen the shadows.

Step 3

Highlights with midtones can be used to create beautiful and subtle lighting effects without worrying about highlights and shadows being affected. Load selection Midtones and add an adjustment layer Hue / Saturation (Hue / Saturation). Turn on the option Colorize (Toning) and set the color tint sliders of your choice. I used the following values:

• Hue (Color tone): 33
• Saturation (Saturation): 46
• Lightness (Brightness): +8

For demonstration purposes only, try Shift+click by mask thumbnail to temporarily disable the mask. See how strong the toning effect is without using a mask. Horror! Imagine trying to draw all those bright and shadow areas freehand. This example clearly shows how useful our technique is. Again Shift+click mask thumbnail to turn it back on.

Step 4

Add New layer (Ctrl+Shift+N) to the top of the layer list and name it Highlights Dodge. Then select menu items Edit > Fill (Edit > Fill..) and install 50% Gray (50% gray). Set for this layer Blend mode in Overlay (Overlap) to make all grays invisible. Use DodgeTool (Dodge tool) with installed Range for mid tones And By exhibiting equal to 9%. Softly begin to draw light areas to highlight them.

Step 5

Create a selection Highlights and use it like Layer Mask to limit the highlight to only the highlights. Then in the panel Properties (Properties) reduce the density of the mask to 60% to ease the restriction.

Step 6

Use a similar technique to create a layer that darkens the shadows. Only this time, use the tool Burn (Dimmer) to deepen shadows and highlights Shadow for the layer mask.

Step 7

Create a merged layer at the top of the layer stack by holding alt, select Layer> Merge Visible (Layers> Merge Visible). Then go to Filter> Sharpen> Smart Sharpen (Filter> Sharpening> "Smart" sharpness) and adjust the settings to sharpen it a bit. Below are the settings I used for our image.

• Amount (Effect): 207%
• Radius (Radius): 0.9 pixels.
• Reduce Noise: 7%

Step 8

Load selection Bright Highlights and use it like layer mask on the top merged layer where we sharpened. This will limit the sharpening effect and only apply it to bright pixels. Decrease the degree of restriction by moving the slider Density before 81% .

End!

Look at the final result. We created controlled contrast in the highlights and shadows, applied a toning effect without spoiling the photo, added a stylistic dodge & burn effect, and applied the sharpening effect only in the areas we wanted. All without using any selection tool. All this is the amazing power of brightness-based masks!

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