Lesson Info
7. Luminance Range
Lessons
Lesson Info
Luminance Range
Now let's take a look at how we can isolate an area based on brightness that's known as a luminous range and we can also combine it with the other features. We have to make more complex mass. So let's dive in and see how it's done. Here's a simplified image. Just to practice on and I'll go to my mask icon and there you're going to find the choice of luminous range. If I click on that now, it's wanting me to click on my picture to tell it what brightness I'd like to isolate and I can either click once or click and drag to get a range of brightness is. I'll click and drag to say I would like to isolate this brightness range. Now before I let go look on the right side of my screen and notice there's an area that says luminous range and some little slider bars, Those are going to update the moment I let go. So let me let go do you see this little middle box that represents the brightness range that I dragged across and I can extend it by grabbing these little ends and this would go further...
towards white. And so as I bring this out, you'll see it selecting further towards white or the opposite side would go closer to black. But that's the overall brightness range. If black was all the way on this side and white was all the way on this side, then you're gonna find these little sliders over here that's the fade out. So instead of just isolating this range and having a hard immediate stop to it, it's going to slowly fade out until it gets down to here and therefore we'll have a soft edge. If you don't want such a soft edge, just grab these sliders and pull them in. So watch on the image and look at how much this green slowly fades out gradually until it gets to about here, and it's hard to tell really exactly where it stops. Whereas if I brought the slider in closer to that little box that you see, we're going to get a more abrupt transition and if I get it to touch the box, it'll be almost a completely abrupt transition. I'll do the same on the opposite side, bringing this in until it touches the box. Now you can see that we've isolated that very precise range, but it's going to be obvious when we make an adjustment because it's going to immediately end right there. If I want this to have a slightly soft transition, I go back to those little triangles there, pull it out a little bit to say, gradually fade into the surrounding colors or brightness ranges on each side and I can have one go really soft and the other would be more abrupt if I'd like, then there's a choice here that says show luminous map and if I turn that on, you're gonna see in general the same look. But on a normal color picture, this will look a little more radical. So, well, let's switch to a normal image. I'm going to go to my library module and just switch to the next picture in this image. What I'd like to do is select the waves that are down here on the beach. I think they're a little bit too bright. My eyes being drawn to them and I don't want them to be. But if I select only aluminum's range and I get that range isolated. I'm thinking the bright parts of the building up here will likely get isolated and also some parts of these clouds. So we're going to have to end up combining features together. Let's go to our mask icon. Let's tell it we want aluminum's range and I'm going to move my mouse onto those waves. I'm going to click and drag just so I can see how much that it varies and I'll let go. I noticed that it's selecting too wide of a range because I wanted just the waves and I didn't want the beach. So I come up here then it looks like it thinks it's the brightest portion of the image. So I only have one side where these little handles are available and I'm gonna bring it in until I've isolated the majority of those waves and gotten rid of the majority of the beach. Now I don't seem to be able to completely get rid of the beach. So I'm just gonna get the waves to look just about right. And I notice over here there are areas, you see my clouds, There are areas. So I'm going to combine tools. I could use subtract subtract, I could paint over these clouds, paints over the building but I'd have a lot of painting to do because there's a whole bunch of areas that would need to be removed or I can choose that choice called intersect to do. So I come over here and I can either hold down the option key on a Mac Alton windows or if I don't like keyboard shortcuts, I go to these three little dots and choose it there and I'm gonna tell it to use a brush and now I'm only gonna end up with the area where I paint that overlaps what's already green. The moment I click though, the green is going to go away and start to only show up where I paint. So now I'm going to paint just where the water is like that and now I've isolated that area. I thought it was a little too bright. So I'll take this slider called highlights and I'll bring it down and I can now slightly darken the waves and I'm not affecting the clouds or that building And now I think I got it as dark as I would like. You're not limited in which of these tools you can combine together. Therefore you can select a luminous range and say intersect that with a color range and therefore you only get the dark parts of a red object. And you could also say, do that only within the subject. You can use that choice called intersect more than one time. I can say, let's first grab reds, then let's intersect it with dark stuff and then let's intersect that with the subject and it's further and further isolating more and more. The more you experiment with these features, the more powerful they become.
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Ratings and Reviews
Steve61861
I have taken almost every course Ben has done for CL and he is an amazing teacher, Ben always starts easy and moves to more advanced concepts - usually ramping things up over one or even several courses. In this course he takes you from easy to advanced concepts very quickly. I loved this course because I can use it to become a much better photographer ultimately reaching (or trying to reach) the advanced levels Ben presents by the end of the course. It is a terrific course from a real master of the photographic editing skill.
Gary Hook
Once again Ben has hit it out of the park. I truly enjoy his instructional technique. By that I mean he explains the point and then demonstrates it talking about what he did. The visual combined with the instruction is highly effective at enhancing the learning. Short, sharp and to the point on this amazing update to LR. Highly recommend this workshop
Christine Stockwell
Adobe’s new masking engine is a real game-changer and Ben does a fantastic job of showing what can be done and how. Thank you Ben! Now I want to go back through my image archive and reprocess many of them.