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Author Topic: Creating luminosity masks  (Read 7912 times)

araz

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Creating luminosity masks
« on: October 08, 2014, 01:51:28 pm »

Hi all,

I just posted a Youtube video showing how I create my luminosity masks. Maybe it will be useful to some of you.

http://youtu.be/BiafhMotT90

Take a look.

Araz
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Tim Lookingbill

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Re: Creating luminosity masks
« Reply #1 on: October 08, 2014, 04:20:18 pm »

Read your bio on your website.

Wow! The pharmaceutical industry really lost a very well educated and brilliant mind to photography.
 
I viewed your video and can appreciate your efforts you applied hound dogging the entire tonal scale of a B&W gradient to build luminosity masks from, but there are cameras now in existence that capture broad dynamic ranges "good enough" so most don't have to go to those lengths. I don't see in your gallery any improvements to HDR tone mapping as a result from the use of your luminosity mask technique compared to other methods. Maybe I'm not looking at the right gallery images.

Care to offer an A/B comparison of the advantages and improvements gained over other less complicated methods?

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araz

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Re: Creating luminosity masks
« Reply #2 on: October 08, 2014, 06:09:27 pm »

Ha ha, thanks Tim. The pharma industry lost many highly educated and highly specialized scientists between about 2007 to 2012. The whole industry changed... but that's another story and I would need a beer in my hand to get into that...  :)

You are absolutely right about not seeing any improvements over HDR tone mapping techniques in my gallery. That's because those photos are old and processed with Photomatix. I haven't done side-by-side comparisons between HDR tone mapping and blended luminosity masks that I can show.

The banner image on my home page, the one that announces the Photoshop Luminosity Actions, with the roots and the waterfall was created by manually blending 5 exposures with luminosity masks (exposures ranged from  1/200s for the waterfall to 1s for the foreground), so no HDR tone mapping. It's actually a pano, so there are 10 exposures total... I personally feel that the photo came out looking more natural than if I had used HDR tone mapping, but that's me...

I'm convinced that luminosity masks are the next step in post-processing for high resolution control over exposure, saturation, sharpening, blending, etc. I will be creating more videos to show the power of luminosity masks and channels. Also, you made me realize that if I'm to promote luminosity masking then I need to update my photo gallery with the new luminosity-blended technique, which I will do slowly...

Maybe I will be able to convince you... ;)

Take care,

Araz
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howardm

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Re: Creating luminosity masks
« Reply #3 on: October 08, 2014, 07:12:28 pm »

I appreciate the work and effort that has gone into the action and video but requesting email addresses and then confirmation and then 'allow us to send you stuff' before getting the action is a non-starter.  Sorry.

araz

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Re: Creating luminosity masks
« Reply #4 on: October 08, 2014, 07:58:15 pm »

I appreciate the work and effort that has gone into the action and video but requesting email addresses and then confirmation and then 'allow us to send you stuff' before getting the action is a non-starter.  Sorry.

Hi Howard,

Thank you for the appreciation of my work.

Allow me to explain...

1) I'm asking for your email address so I can send you the Ps action

2) The opt-in confirmation step is required by my email provider and is for your safety. It prevents others to use your email address to subscribe to other sites. It's a strict industry practice. Imagine you gave me your email address and I go ahead and subscribe you to multiple other websites. With *no* confirmation step required *from you*, you would automatically be subscribed. But, *with* confirmation step, you have the opportunity to not allow such subscriptions to go through. The confirmation step *from you* prevents such action from me (well, I wouldn't do that... but others would  ;)
 
3) "...give us permission to send you information..." are not my words and I don't much like it but there's nothing I can about it, it's not editable.

All that being said, if you still want the Ps action and do not wish to confirm the email subscription, then PM me your email address and I'll send you the action directly. No hard feeling.

Take care,

Araz

 
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bjanes

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Re: Creating luminosity masks
« Reply #5 on: October 08, 2014, 09:38:32 pm »

Hi all,

I just posted a Youtube video showing how I create my luminosity masks. Maybe it will be useful to some of you.

http://youtu.be/BiafhMotT90

Take a look.

Araz

Nice work, Araz. Tony Kuyper has a nice write-up on the use of luminosity masks. He sells a set of actions to create the masks in Photoshop, but explains how they can be created by the user.

Bill
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jrsforums

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Re: Creating luminosity masks
« Reply #6 on: October 08, 2014, 11:09:21 pm »

Nice work, Araz. Tony Kuyper has a nice write-up on the use of luminosity masks. He sells a set of actions to create the masks in Photoshop, but explains how they can be created by the user.

Bill

+1+2+3.....Tony's info, actions, and panels are great.  Sean Bagashaw's video tutorials pull it together.
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John

araz

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Re: Creating luminosity masks
« Reply #7 on: October 09, 2014, 04:22:40 pm »

Hi Bill and John,

Yes, I'm know of Tony's and Sean's work. I've studied them carefully and have learned a lot from them.

My luminosity actions are similar to Tony's but not created the same way and therefore represent a different way to create masks. I don't think mine are better or worse just a different way to select luminosity areas.

Btw, I just created a new video showing how I use luminosity masks to blend two exposures together...

Check it out :  http://youtu.be/lUVZAv9tuwQ

Araz
ps. let me know if you find these kinds of video helpful by leaving a comment in Youtube or a thumbs up  ;)
« Last Edit: November 06, 2014, 04:19:56 pm by araz »
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Tim Lookingbill

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Re: Creating luminosity masks
« Reply #8 on: October 10, 2014, 12:54:00 pm »


Btw, I just created a new video showing how I use luminosity masks to blend two exposures together...

Check it out : http://youtu.be/8R_RuDQ6r2w

Araz
ps. let me know if you find these kinds of video helpful by leaving a comment in Youtube or a thumbs up  ;)

Not sure about you're intent behind making these videos if, from what I gather from your last statement, appear to be requests for folks to only leave positive comments of praises for your efforts and whether the video is helpful.

Personally I really don't ever want to put that much work into a photograph in order to get the kind of "natural looking" results seen in your video. This applies to all online luminosity mask tuts, so don't take this personally, Araz.

I immediately had a problem with your use of Gaussian Blur that created the dark halos on the caps of the distant mountains, an artifact Adobe solved with their Clarity slider in PV2012. I also don't understand why you don't do most of the processing of the two exposures in Raw before finishing off in a gamma encoded pixel editor. The distant mountain now looks as if it has its own light source off angle to both sky light and the sun's rear position. That's not natural.

I also don't understand why your camera needed 1/8000 sec. shutter speed to still leave blowouts in the sky. When I shoot Raw single exposures of similar time of day (dusk/dawn) scenes with my 2006 6MP Pentax K100D DSLR I only need f/8, 1/400 sec., ISO 400 and get no blowouts in backlit clouds. Why didn't you underexpose even further to prevent that blowout?

And to get the kind of clarity, punch in color and local contrast seen in the greenery and rocks in the finished version, I use ACR/LR's Parametric Curve (incredibly quick and effective results), a bit of Shadow slider or Fill-(PV2010) and HSL adjusts. All the work is in real time with immediate preview feedback working this way. IOW there's no time for visual adaptation to screw up judgement in tonal relationships.

Working with all those layered masks I got lost on what, why and how the edit needed to be applied, so I didn't really learn anything useful and I've been digitally processing 1000's of images since 1997 as a hobby.



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MarkM

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Re: Creating luminosity masks
« Reply #9 on: October 10, 2014, 04:06:53 pm »

I also don't understand why your camera needed 1/8000 sec. shutter speed to still leave blowouts in the sky.

I thought the same thing  — really strange to shoot this landscape at ISO 640 and f/5. Why not stop down a bit and shoot at a lower ISO?

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araz

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Re: Creating luminosity masks
« Reply #10 on: October 10, 2014, 07:06:17 pm »

I thought the same thing  — really strange to shoot this landscape at ISO 640 and f/5. Why not stop down a bit and shoot at a lower ISO?

I went back to look at my files from that Banff trip back in 2009...

Just before hiking up to Lake Agnus, we had spotted a bear in the Lake Louise area and I had my camera set to ISO 640, f5 to get around 1/500 sec for the moving bear. Then I must of forgotten to change my ISO back down when we got to Lake Agnus for the landscape shots. Bracketing the exposure up to +2 is what gave me the 1/8000s. Actually, later set of exposures from Lake Agnus have the iso lowered down to 200.

This happened to me another time as well. I was shooting bald eagles on Lake Cresent at ONP when I saw a nice blanket of clouds covering the mountain ahead. I aimed and shot the landscape image at ISO1600, f4.5, 1/5000s... :) Then returned to the eagles. You can see that photo in my eBook on page 10 with the setting and a small note...

Take care,

Araz
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Redcrown

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Re: Creating luminosity masks
« Reply #11 on: October 10, 2014, 11:53:55 pm »


Allow me to explain...

1) I'm asking for your email address so I can send you the Ps action

2) The opt-in confirmation step is required by my email provider and is for your safety. It prevents others to use your email address to subscribe to other sites. It's a strict industry practice. Imagine you gave me your email address and I go ahead and subscribe you to multiple other websites. With *no* confirmation step required *from you*, you would automatically be subscribed. But, *with* confirmation step, you have the opportunity to not allow such subscriptions to go through. The confirmation step *from you* prevents such action from me (well, I wouldn't do that... but others would  ;)
 
3) "...give us permission to send you information..." are not my words and I don't much like it but there's nothing I can about it, it's not editable.


I believe your efforts are good and your choice of distribution via e-mail is innocent. However, sharing files via any of several free file sharing sites (like DropBox) is easy and common. Thousands do it with no problem. Anoymous and transparent.

On the other hand, the thousands of "free" offers that are shared via e-mail are nothing more than address harvesting robots. Thus, I don't suspect you to abuse my address, but I do expect your service to do so.
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Alan Goldhammer

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Re: Creating luminosity masks
« Reply #12 on: October 11, 2014, 11:04:40 am »

Ha ha, thanks Tim. The pharma industry lost many highly educated and highly specialized scientists between about 2007 to 2012. The whole industry changed... but that's another story and I would need a beer in my hand to get into that...  :)

How true this is.  I saw lots of my colleagues leaving in droves (some by choice and some not) and the industry is poorer for it.  I was just at retirement age when I left back in 2010.
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Tim Lookingbill

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Re: Creating luminosity masks
« Reply #13 on: October 11, 2014, 03:01:41 pm »

I'm puzzled there would be no demand for someone with a degree in Computational Chemistry along with 12 years of exposure to privy information as a research scientist within Big Pharma that I would think some of those real world acquired skills could be applied to all sorts of high end jobs such as the Financial industry.

But what do I know? I'm just a burned out/semi-retired graphic artist who couldn't hack learning to use a computer to make vectorized schlock art and knock offs of unlicensed sports team's logos for gimme caps, t-shirts & mugs for low end ad agencies and printers.
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NancyP

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Re: Creating luminosity masks
« Reply #14 on: October 21, 2014, 11:23:06 am »

Pharma jobs are on the pyramid system - one principal investigator, many temporary workers, per project. The temps, a mix of recent Ph.D.s doing "post-docs" and technical level people, are gypsy workers, and depending on the market, can get hired to other projects. The P.I.s, once cut, face a lot of competition from the crowd of people who have done multiple post-docs while waiting for their chance. Needless to say, industry has some motivation to hire the more junior people.
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Tim Lookingbill

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Re: Creating luminosity masks
« Reply #15 on: October 21, 2014, 12:39:02 pm »

Pharma jobs are on the pyramid system - one principal investigator, many temporary workers, per project. The temps, a mix of recent Ph.D.s doing "post-docs" and technical level people, are gypsy workers, and depending on the market, can get hired to other projects. The P.I.s, once cut, face a lot of competition from the crowd of people who have done multiple post-docs while waiting for their chance. Needless to say, industry has some motivation to hire the more junior people.

Are there any side effects from that convoluted Human Resource food pyramid?

I was thinkin' it might possibly explain all the lawsuits I see on TV over oddball named medication I've never heard before.
« Last Edit: October 21, 2014, 03:39:52 pm by Tim Lookingbill »
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tongelsing

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Re: Creating luminosity masks
« Reply #16 on: October 22, 2014, 07:56:09 am »

I use luminousitymask everyday for my print work.
Semigloss and lusters papers have a property called gloss difference. So if you have really whites in your images those places are less glossy. You can easily see it.

In order to surpress the pure whites from 255 to 249/8 I used a curve and a luminosity mask.
Works fine and all my clients are satisfied.

Here is an action for it.
Works only with a single background layer!

Ton
« Last Edit: October 22, 2014, 07:59:24 am by tongelsing »
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araz

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Re: Creating luminosity masks
« Reply #17 on: October 22, 2014, 04:50:17 pm »

I use luminousitymask everyday for my print work.
Semigloss and lusters papers have a property called gloss difference. So if you have really whites in your images those places are less glossy. You can easily see it.

In order to surpress the pure whites from 255 to 249/8 I used a curve and a luminosity mask.
Works fine and all my clients are satisfied.

Here is an action for it.
Works only with a single background layer!

Ton

Hi Ton,

I tried your action and the effect is so subtle... but I can see how it will reduce the gloss differential. Very cool use of LMs!
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