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Luminosity masking

Take full control over editing and blending the tone and color in your photos.
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Matt – I have just completed watching your Luminosity Course, and my initial reaction is WOW! I have used other “Luminosity plugins” but never felt like I understood how and why they worked. Your course has answered many of my questions. Thanks for the incredible amount of time you must have spent to create this course. Your teaching style coincides perfectly with how I learn.

Frank

Take Control Over Your Photo Editing

Find out a little more about the course by watching a quick video clip about the 3 key areas in the course.

Why luminosity Masks?

Here’s my quick reasons and thoughts why I think Luminosity Masking is an important tool to add to your photo editing.

ACTIONS TO THE RESCUE!

Much of the work we do with Luminosity Masks can be repetitive. The included actions will help save a lot time.

GETTING BETTER CONTROL OVER COLOR

While Luminosity Masking is primarily about the “luminance” in the photo, it always ties in with adjusting the color as well.

What About Workflow and Lightroom?

The workflow if you’re a Lightroom user stays exactly the same. You start in Lightroom and jump to Photoshop for your Luminosity Masking and back to Lightroom

What is a luminosity mask?

My guess is that many of you reading this page have heard of Luminosity Masks but may not fully understand what they are.

A luminosity mask, at it’s core, is simple. It’s just another way of creating a layer mask (which most of you have probably done before). That’s it! The advantage of using them to edit your photos is that they do produce a highly targeted, and very adjustable way to selection with almost seamless feathering of the selection. This all leads to more blended adjustments with less fringing, halos, artifacts, and harsh transitions that usually are the (bad) signs of photo editing.

Unfortunately, Luminosity Masking is one of those terms that gets thrown around the editing community quite a bit. You’ll sometimes hear it in almost an “elitist” way. Kind of like… “Well… I have a complicated luminosity masking technique I use for MY photos which is superior to all others” 🙂 (said in a very snooty way!)

My goal with this course is to take the snobbiness away, take the “techie”-ness away (well, as much as I can since it’s a techie topic), and really show you just how easy these can be to use in your photos and incorporate in your bag of editing tricks.

Course Contents

Course Duration: Over 2.5 Hours of Video

Lessons: There are 15 lessons that start with the basics and extend from there. Each one is between 5-15 minutes long so they’re easy to watch, and you’ll learn a key concept in each one of them. 

PDF Cheat Sheet: 185 page PDF that outlines each lesson

Start to Finish Walkthroughs: There are 3 full start to finish walkthroughs  that show you the entire workflow (an additional 60 minutes of video on top of the 2.5 hours above)

After
Before

Beach Sunset

Learn how Luminosity Masks were used to tame the sky and open up the specific foreground areas that were too dark.
After
Before

Contour and sculpting

Learn how Luminosity Masks were used to contour and sculpt the clouds in this photo to give them a new feeling of depth and drama.
After
Before

masks without halos and fringes

Watch how Luminosity Masks were used to target the bright areas of sky, without halos or fringes giving it away. You’ll also see how to target flat midtones and add some life to them.
After
Before

Exposure blending

Need to blend more than one exposure together. Watch how Luminosity Masks were used to take the best parts of 3 photos and blend them together seamlessly.
COURSE OUTLINE

Here’s what you’ll learn

Lesson 1: What is a Luminosity Mask? Why and When To Use Them (11 minutes)
Learn the basics of what a luminosity mask is but most importantly why and when to use them on your photos.
Lesson 2: Creating a Basic Luminosity Mask (11 minutes)
In this lesson we’ll create a basic luminosity mask and you’ll learn how to quickly apply adjustments to those areas of the photos.
Lesson 3: Extending and Refining the Basic Luminosity Mask (13 minutes)
So far, we’ve just scratched the surface of creating luminosity masks. In this lesson you’ll learn how you can extend and refine those luminosity masks to more targeted areas of your photos.
Lesson 4: Warning! What Does it Mean When Photoshop Says "No Pixels Were Selected" (4 min)
There’s a weird selection warning you’ll often get when working with these masks. We’ll dive in to what causes it and what it really means.
Lesson 5: Luminosity Masks vs. HDR and Which One to Use? (10 minutes)
Learning how to spot what techniques to use in photos is one of the key elements of editing. In this lesson we’ll talk about HDR and where it’s strengths and weaknesses are compared to Luminosity Masking and when to use each.
Lesson 6: Using Just 1 Exposure or Blending Multiple Photos Together (8 minutes)
Luminosity masks are useful whether you just have one photo of a scene, or you have several bracketed (Exposure Bracketing) photos that you want to blend together. In this video we’ll look at what makes a good candidate to work on just one photo and when it’s beneficial to have more than one.
Lesson 7: Creating Midtone Masks (9 minutes)
Luminosity masks usually go hand in hand with selecting the luminance (brights) or the reverse (darks). But we can also create midtone masks that can help target other areas in the photo.
Lesson 8: Exposure Blending with Luminosity Masks Part 1 - The Setup (5 minutes)
In this first video on Exposure Blending (blending more than one photo together), we’ll look at the photos, reasons why they make a good candidate for exposure blending, and how to get them all open in Photoshop and in the same document.
Lesson 9: Exposure Blending with Luminosity Masks Part 2 - The Blend (15 minutes)
In this lesson we’ll walk through the process of exposure blending 3 different photos to grab the best parts of each one with luminosity masks.
Lesson 10: Refining a Luminosity Mask Even Further (15 minutes)
Building on the last lesson, Luminosity Masks by themselves will often still need some work done to them. In this lesson, we’ll look at how to refine and work on the luminosity mask to help blend your photos together even better.
Lesson 11: Luminosity Masks and Blend Modes (4 minutes)
Blend modes can be a big help when we’re working with luminosity masks. Especially when we have a really colorful area of the photo that doesn’t quite fit with the rest, you’ll find a blend mode can help things look much smother.
Lesson 12: Working with Color and Luminosity Masks (14 minutes)
Aside from Tone, Color is the other main area we’ll want to work with. Even though Luminosity masks start by targeting the various tones in the photo, they can be a HUGE help when it comes to manipulating color in the photo too.
Lesson 13: Finishing Touches and Cleaning Up (6 minutes)
From a “workflow” perspective, we’ve already done our masking and blending of the photos. That doesn’t mean that’s all there is to do though. In this lesson we’ll clean up some spots, and even show you how to get rid of the luminosity masks so they don’t cause your file sizes to get too large.
Lesson 14: Luminosity Masks with Select > Color Range (13 minutes)
The Select > Color Range feature in Photoshop can also be used for Luminosity Masks. In this video, we’ll talk about the benefits of each method and where the Color Range dialog fits in to help us with our masking.
Lesson 15: Luminosity Masking in Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw (7 minutes)
The traditional ways of luminosity masks are done in Photoshop. And honestly, Photoshop is where we have the most power. However, Lightroom (and Adobe Camera Raw) also have a feature that gives you a similar result to Luminosity Masking. In this lesson we’ll take a look at how it works and when to use it.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

ABOUT THE COURSE…

Hi Matt, just wanted to say that i have  just done day 2 of the course and really praise your teaching method…. this is the first time, after many attempts, that i am actually making sense of the masking technique and have practiced on a couple of my pictures and can really see the difference…… Thank you for doing the course!

Carol

Hands down the best explanation of Luminosity Masks I’ve ever heard. Thank you! Ellen

I’m loving the new Luminosity Mask course Matt. This might be your best yet! 

Steve

I’ve been through the Luminosity Masking course twice and find the way you teach very helpful. I had purchased other training but it never left me with a good grasp of the subject. Matt, your teaching style is slower, with frequent repetition of important concepts, so that I now have a much better idea of what luminosity masking is all about. Thank you, I’m glad I bought it.

Janice

I am an amateur, and take a lot of photos of our large extended family. I love your course, and especially that you have short segments in each chapter, and each is well labeled as to content, so I can easily come back for a refresher when I need a particular tool or skill.

Pam

Simply the very best explanation of Luminosity Masking that I’ve ever heard. Great job Matt on a well thought out, and executed course. 

Scott

Not Just Video… Read and Follow Along Too!

PDF Cheat Sheets

High Quality and Printable, plus they’re easy to read.

For those of you who like to read and follow along, the Premium Package includes a beautifully designed PDF “Cheat Sheet” for every project. That way you have something to follow along with or refer back to without watching the entire video again.

Step by Step Recaps

Screen Captures Too!

And Keyboard Shortcuts

The Inner Workings of an Exposure Blend with Luminosity Masking

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Original Light Version

Content Here

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Cloud Highlights

Taken from the DARK layer with the Super Bright Luminosity Mask loaded.

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Saturated Blues

The blues are nicely saturated (but not overdone) with the help of a Saturation mask (Hue/Sat Layer) built from a Luminosity selection.

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Warm Tint

The water has a nice warm tint to it (Photo Filter layer) which has a mask that was built from a Midtone Luminosity Mask.

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Foreground

The foreground was revealed by using a Dark Luminosity mask (a blended selection of the darks) and blending the layer containing the MEDIUM version of the photo.

Watch a 2 Minute sample

Here’s a quick sample from one of the videos so you can get a feel for the course.

FULL Start to finish Walkthroughs (over 60 additional minutes)

Lake with Sky Replacement

This walkthrough took a solid 30 minutes and it’s broken up in to 2 parts. I first go over how I chose whether or not to Exposure Blend this photo since I had multiple exposures. And then I dove in to the luminosity masking, saturation masks, as well as using the Luminosity Masks to help blend my sky replacement.

Backlit Trees

This was a super fun edit because the “before” photo was one that I just couldn’t get the way I liked in Lightroom or ACR.

And it was amazing to see how a few masks perfectly selected the areas I needed to make this one blend together seamlessly.

Contouring and Sculpting with Luminosity Masks

I included this walkthrough because I felt that it was very “real world”. Meaning, Luminosity Masks are NOT always what I turn to, and this photo shows how we can selectively use them for just certain areas in the photo, without investing a ton of time.

Luminosity Masking Course

with Photoshop
$129.99
  • What you get if you order before October 9th…
  • All Videos
  • All Follow Along Photos to Practice With
  • 185 Page PDF Cheat Sheet (Learn More…)
  • Matt’s Personal Luminosity Mask Actions (Learn More…)
  • PDF 5-Day Quick Start Plan
  • 3 Full Start to Finish Walkthroughs (over 60 minutes of training)
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What about Luminosity Masking Panels?

How does this course differ from various Luminosity Masking panels out there?
And does this course contain a panel or Photoshop extension?
FAQs

Frequently asked questions

IS THIS A SUBSCRIPTION?
Nope. It’s a one time purchase. You will download these videos to your computer and you can keep them and watch them whenever you’d like.
WHAT SKILL LEVEL IS THIS COURSE FOR?
On a scale of 1 – 10 (with 10 being advanced), I’d say this course is about a 4. This course is meant for a late beginner to early intermediate user. Some one who at least knows the basics of using Photoshop and layers, as well as what a layer mask is. After that, you’re covered and I’ll walk you through the entire process in a very easy going way.
WHAT SOFTWARE AND VERSION DO I NEED?
This course is done in Photoshop CC 2018. However, Luminosity Masking and the tools I use will work back to Photoshop CS6. (NOTE: In one of the 15 videos, I do use a tool inside of Lightroom (or ACR) that’s only part of the recent CC version).
WILL THIS COURSE WORK FOR ON1 - OR - ARE YOU DOING A COURSE LIKE THIS FOR ON1?
No, this course will not work for ON1. While ON1 does indeed have a Luminosity Mask option, it doesn’t work the same as Photoshop’s does. If you’re an ON1 user check out the “Masking” section in my ON1 Photo System as that does have two 15-minutes lessons on Luminosity Masking in ON1, and goes over how you can use it. If you don’t own my ON1 Photo System, I found several good articles on Luminosity Masking on the ON1 website search, as well as in ON1 Plus.
WHAT ARE THE PDF CHEAT SHEETS?
The PDF Cheat Sheets are a written outline of the steps for each video (not the bonus start-to-finish videos). They’re not meant to be an eBook that you’d read (without the videos), but rather a written reference that go along with the videos so you can refer back to them quickly if you ever need.
CAN I WATCH THIS ON MY IPAD OR TABLET?
Yes. The videos are compatible with your tablets. However, you’ll first need to download them to your computer and then transfer the videos to your tablet.
HOW MANY COMPUTERS CAN I WATCH THIS ON?
You can download this course for us on up to 5 computers.
IS THIS THE SAME COURSE I PURCHASED FROM YOU SOMEWHERE ELSE?
No. I have never done this course before on my website or for any other training websites.
WHAT ARE THE Q&A "EXTRA CREDIT" WEBINAR SESSIONS?
It’s VERY important to me that you get your questions answered. So I’m doing something a little different with this course. I’ve got a suggested plan of attack included (it’s the 5 Day Quick Start Guide PDF). Along the way, I’ll be hosting 2 Webinars and 2 rounds of online questions. The 2 “Extra Credit” webinars are sessions where I’m going to dive deeper in to 1) Channels and Masks and 2) Actions. Even if you can’t attend, it’ll be recorded. And, you’ll have a dedicated place to submit questions 2 times during the next 6 weeks. I’ll go through and personally answer each one of them as long as they relate to the course material. (For example, this wouldn’t be a place where you would go and ask a question about Lightroom Catalogs 😉
I CAN'T MAKE ONE OF THE WEBINARS. WILL YOU REDO THEM OR CAN I GET A DISCOUNT?
No and No 🙂
DO I HAVE TO START THIS COURSE ON A CERTAIN DAY OR FOLLOW A SCHEDULE?
No, but read on for my thoughts on this. The course is yours to download and watch whenever and however often you’d like. But, I do want to try to keep you accountable and moving forward with this. I don’t want this to be a course you purchase and never watch. So I’ve created a 5 Day Quick Start Guide PDF. If you follow it, you’ll be up and running in 5 days assuming about an hour a day of education / practice time. So… when you purchase the course you’ll download it and the videos are yours to keep. At that point you can watch them at any time on your own schedule, or use my quick start guide.
this week only (ends Tuesday OCTOBER  9th at midnight ET)

Save 40% and Get 3 FREE BONUSES

I always include free extras (and a big discount) during the launch week. The bonuses are:
1) 3 Full Start to Finish Walkthrough Videos (over 60 extra minutes)

2) 2 Bonus “Extra Credit” Webinars (Channel and Mask Basics / Extending Luminosity Masks with Actions)

3) 2 Bonus Q&A Weeks where you can send in your questions

These bonuses are not available after Tuesday on October 9th and the price WILL go up.

(Webinars WILL BE recorded. Dates and times are October 22nd and November 13th at 12pm Eastern Time)

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Free Bonus videos

Here are a couple of free bonus videos I did leading up to the course launch. They’re free to watch and you can download them directly to your computer to keep.
Download Bonus Videos

Got Any questions?

FAQ's
Contact
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Who Is Matt Kloskowski?
If I could sum myself up in to one sentence I’d say that I’m a guy who really loves to teach. When I think about what I enjoy most in this industry, it’s helping people learn about photography and photo editing. I don’t shoot professionally, I don’t have any trade secrets, and I hold ABSOLUTELY NOTHING back. Do I love the occasional compliment on my photography? Sure… who doesn’t? But what really keeps me going is when I hear success stories from people who have taken my courses. So hop on board, and I hope to hear from you soon 🙂

“I’m a guy that really loves to teach!”

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