Lesson Info
4. Use Channel Masks to Highlight Skin Tones
Lessons
Class Introduction
03:54 2Use Channel Masks to Create a Black & White Image
09:35 3Use Channel Masks to Clean Up Backgrounds
10:27 4Use Channel Masks to Highlight Skin Tones
04:54 5Use Luminance Masks to Alter Shadows & Highlights
13:25 6Use Luminance Masks to Color Grade
08:38 7Target Tonal Ranges with Blend If
13:25Lesson Info
Use Channel Masks to Highlight Skin Tones
All right. Now I'm gonna show you one more technique. While you might want to use this in a way that you can manipulate it on the image. So this was Let's cut something out or let's just straightened utilize it as a way to make black and white. Here's how you might use it as a fun photo shop trick now, a trick that I learned years and years ago. That I think is a really cool way to give your image a little bit of a punch is to use a black and white layer set to soft light What this does. It kind of gives you a little bit of a punchy effect to the image, and you don't really want to use it 100% but you don't kind of crank it down to, you know, 2030%. It just gives it a nice little nice little punch, and I always liked this trick, but unfortunately it tends to clobber the shadows. It's heavy handed on the shadows. It really just compresses all that information. If you have shadow information, it kind of just goes and smashes it altogether. But it looks great on highlights and skin, so it...
looks great here, not great on the shadows. So what I can do is I can use a channel mask that's going toe load in the Red Channel so that it selects more of the skin, but not the shadows. And so what you can do here is you. Can you know, some people. I like to turn it off so that it's not affecting the image ahead of time. You can go to image, and you can go to apply image, and you can apply the Red Channel. And what it's now going to Dio is apply that effect primarily to the highlights of the skin, but not so much to the shadows. And you can actually uses effect a lot more aggressively. So here it was, without without the mask. Here it is with the mask with the mask. Looks like I'm option clicking to reveal the mask is this. It's applying it more on the skin. It's not really applying it everywhere else, and it becomes a very useful way to make an adjustment like this. It also works when you want to target skin tones as well, and you want to make an adjustment to those skin tones. Eye. I like this. I like this. Ah, use of a channel mask a lot. Now is gonna delete this one more time In that action set that I have available, there are a fumes, a few different actions. Let's so you just double click on the action and it will install it for you. You can also just go to the little options dropped down and you can goto load actions, but you can just double click on it and that'll pop it in for you as well. And so inside this I have a red, green and blue channel mask, and all you have to do is select that mask, select red and press play, and it will loaded and for you, and it's nice and handy. Now, the cool thing about these masks, The cool thing about these actions are that it uses the apply image, and although you can go into it and loaded in manually and pasted and manually, the nice thing about using apply image is apply. Image allows you to tack on a blending mode to the application of that of that mask, and so what I'm using is multiplying. And the reason I like to use multiplies because the more times I play it, it'll actually refined the mask the more I press on to it. So, for example, this is what it looks like right now if I press red again, it's gonna multiply a read on a red, and it's gonna make the mask look more contrast and it's gonna apply even less of the man. And that's super super useful. And so you're gonna see We're gonna use this a little bit more in the luminous masks, um, but basically just kind of keep playing it, and it'll keep refining that mask out over and over again, which makes it nice and easy to use. There's also one for green, and there's one for blue, although I will say that I use the red by far the most now, just as a reminder. Uh, contrast to control your selection levels is my preferred technique. Just hit that command. I'll bring it up, and it will work really well for you. These techniques to control contrast your universal. You're gonna see us to use them in luminous masks as well, and the blend if the red channels great for targeting skin tones and can also help you cut subjects out a clean background. Remember, we used dodge highlights and burn shadows, too. Do so.
Ratings and Reviews
Rob Giersch
I think this is a great example of a class that would benefit from a star versus a thumbs up or down rating. Chris is obviously a master at these concepts but not necessarily the best at walking students through exactly what he does. There are many moments when he moves through 3-4 steps so fast that the Creative Live team can't keep up with the steps on screen, so you have to go back and somewhat de-construct the words and visuals to piece together what actually happened in photoshop. Bottom line, fantastic resource and process for learning the finer art of masking, but not the easiest instructor to follow,
Joseph Parry
Chris is a superbly accomplished photographer. If you're not familiar with masking, this is a great class to add some excellent options to your toolkit for everything from grading to cleaning. For $19, a total gem.
Mike Hardie
Covers all the important areas with enough detail for you to figure out how to apply the techniques to your own work. Some useful tips thrown in for good measure. Decent class. Worth the price.