January 30, 2024

1

capture one, lightroom, special effects

The Amazing Luminosity Masks in Lightroom and Capture One. Making the Magic Mask.

Luma masking is powerful but often complicated in RAW. I go to Lumist for deep edits. But Lightroom and Capture One have powerful masking tools and today we take control of those.

I included my preset of this in Natural HDR 4 and it works in Lightroom and Capture One. Download the latest version (login here) if you don’t have the preset “Xmod – HDR Magic Mask”.

I call this the Magic Mask because it gives you fluid control.

But like magic, it’s hard to do right. So today we’re going to simplify the mask tool that’s often difficult and for that reason not used like its Ai counterparts.

The cool thing about a mask done with luminosity-based settings in a RAW editor is it adapts as you make other edits. So if I change the exposure on the main edit, the masking effect changes based on how those tones move.

Combining masks that effect the luma ranges together you get a delicate mix but quickly using presets.

Putting Luma into speed masks.

The power here is putting the mix of highlight and shadow management into a speed mask that runs at one time. You can save all the settings and you don’t have to tinker around each time because the luma tools in Lightroom and Capture One take a lot of tinkering to get right. It’s not something you want to do manually in every photo.

I think that’s why most people don’t use the luma masking in Lightroom and A1. The Ai tools are fast and they are great. But luma-based tools give us a different route to what is selected.

I would go so far as to say that unless the Luma tools are in a preset I rarely use them because they are more tourable than just going into Photoshop and doing a deep edit with a tool like Lumist.

But as a combo Speed Mask preset. A concept I came up with from Elegance 4 and that anyone can create, you get all the masks on one click and then you simply adjust them a little as needed or turn them up and down.

With speed masking it’s not making every hyper HDR. It’s just the ability to balance the mix perfectly.

Capture One can Finally Save Masks.

There’s a lot of good and bad about capturing one but a huge beef has been the inability to save masks like LR has given us for years. The recent update allowed us to save the new Ai masks in styles that I have been implementing in my preste packs.

But just this week with the 24.3 update I realized we can finally save the other mask types including Luma masks so I was able to create this same Magic Mask preset for both apps and you can save your own as well.

I edited with Filmist and used an AI portrait mask. But the magic mask let me balance shadow and light.
 Read More

March 23, 2018

4

lightroom, special effects

The Black and White White Balance Trick!

Does this photo look green and ugly? Not in black and white it doesn’t. These two sliders change everything and in today’s video we’ll find out why.

This is another tip for raw processing and for (but not limited to) the new Silver 3 presets. We’re going to look at how you can take better control of your black and white process by using the white balance sliders to get the luminance and gradient mix you want in every image.

You’ve likely done this before, but I thought we would take the time to understand better how white balance effects black and white. Some of the presets in Silver 3 do this already behind the scenes, but you can tweak any black and white process to your heart’s content using this method.

The presets I’m using are Silver 3 for Lightroom. Get them here.

 Read More

July 12, 2017

0

actions

Luminosity Masking just got faster in Lumist 1.2

This is a big update for Lumist that not only deal with some of the quirks but makes it 50-80% faster run time. Building the tonal map is blazing fast and once that done the magic really happens. Here’s a quick video looking at what’s new.

This is a free update for existing users and you should have en email. If you don’t have Lumist you can get it here.

 Read More

June 16, 2017

0

actions, video

Using Lumist Simple Toolbox in Photoshop for Better Luminosity

 A lot of you asked for more videos that show all the crazy stuff you can do with Lumist. This is the first of that video and there’s a couple more to come.

In this video we take a deep look at the Basics of Lumist that are easy but go way beyond basics. This is tone control technique here that people spend a lifetime learning as we dig into the Simple Toolbox module in Lumist and learn how much it can actually do. It the next video we’ll dig deeper into the effects modules of Lumist. If you don’t have Lumist yet you can download it HERE.

Enjoy — Gav

 Read More