Tones masking
A very common situation in editing is when you want to limit your editing to either shadows, midtones or highlights. For example you may want to bring out more contrast and detail in the bride's gown without blocking the bridesgroom's dark suit. Or you want to increase saturation in the midtones without highlights clipping.
The practical question is how to use the layers adjustments masks in Elements, and the layers masks provided by third parties.
The black parts of the mask hide, the white parts show and different shades of grey mask proportionnally. Is it possible, instead of painting into the mask, to 'paste' a mask prepared on a separate layer? The answer is yes. Simple example: a luminosity mask. In order to decrease contrast, you want the lighter parts of the image to be masked and the dark ones left unchanged. The mask will be a negative of the present image. This technique was used in the darkroom; by sandwiching a positive over the negative. You know how to create a negative, the shortcut is Ctrl I. Now let's suppose your mask is ready in its own layer (or in another file opened at the same time). You copy it (Ctrl C), and you want to paste it into the mask. Very important: to be able to do so, you must have the visibility of the mask turned on, by Alt clicking into the mask icon, not the layer itself. You should see a blank screen, confirming that you can paste: Ctrl V to paste. Please note that whatever your prepared mask, pasting will create a grayscale mask. So, for a simple luminosity mask, it is enough to copy any layer (Ctrl C), Alt click in the mask icon and paste (Ctrl V), then Ctrl I to invert.
You can tweak the mask afterwards, changing contrast or luminosity, levels, apply adjustment filters like threshold.
Back to our initial purpose: selecting tones. My suggestion is to use gradient maps adjustment layers to select tones. (You could use curves with add-ons like smartcurves instead). If you are not (yet) familiar with editing gradients, I'll provide you with 2 ways to use preset gradients. The first one is a gradient (grd) file to copy into the right preset folder depending on your Elements version and your platform. You can then load those gradients from the gradient editor menu. The second one is universal for any version of Elements or Photoshop. It is a small blank PSD file with a set of gradients which you can drag from this file to your working file.
1- Add the gradient map adjustment layer to your image.
2 – Edit the gradient if necessary
3 – Stamp visible (Ctrl Alt shift E) to put the mask in a new layer
4 – Select the new layer, Ctrl A + Ctrl V to copy
5 – Alt click on the destination mask icon (blank screen) then paste (Ctrl V)
6 – Erase the adjustment layer and layer created in steps 1 – 3 (or toggle visibility off if you want to use it for another layer mask)
Here is my gradients grd file:
http://mbret.club.fr/bretchermichel/TonesGradients.grd
and a blank PSD file with gradients adjustment layers to drag onto your file:
http://mbret.club.fr/bretchermichel/BWgradients.psd
A very common situation in editing is when you want to limit your editing to either shadows, midtones or highlights. For example you may want to bring out more contrast and detail in the bride's gown without blocking the bridesgroom's dark suit. Or you want to increase saturation in the midtones without highlights clipping.
The practical question is how to use the layers adjustments masks in Elements, and the layers masks provided by third parties.
The black parts of the mask hide, the white parts show and different shades of grey mask proportionnally. Is it possible, instead of painting into the mask, to 'paste' a mask prepared on a separate layer? The answer is yes. Simple example: a luminosity mask. In order to decrease contrast, you want the lighter parts of the image to be masked and the dark ones left unchanged. The mask will be a negative of the present image. This technique was used in the darkroom; by sandwiching a positive over the negative. You know how to create a negative, the shortcut is Ctrl I. Now let's suppose your mask is ready in its own layer (or in another file opened at the same time). You copy it (Ctrl C), and you want to paste it into the mask. Very important: to be able to do so, you must have the visibility of the mask turned on, by Alt clicking into the mask icon, not the layer itself. You should see a blank screen, confirming that you can paste: Ctrl V to paste. Please note that whatever your prepared mask, pasting will create a grayscale mask. So, for a simple luminosity mask, it is enough to copy any layer (Ctrl C), Alt click in the mask icon and paste (Ctrl V), then Ctrl I to invert.
You can tweak the mask afterwards, changing contrast or luminosity, levels, apply adjustment filters like threshold.
Back to our initial purpose: selecting tones. My suggestion is to use gradient maps adjustment layers to select tones. (You could use curves with add-ons like smartcurves instead). If you are not (yet) familiar with editing gradients, I'll provide you with 2 ways to use preset gradients. The first one is a gradient (grd) file to copy into the right preset folder depending on your Elements version and your platform. You can then load those gradients from the gradient editor menu. The second one is universal for any version of Elements or Photoshop. It is a small blank PSD file with a set of gradients which you can drag from this file to your working file.
1- Add the gradient map adjustment layer to your image.
2 – Edit the gradient if necessary
3 – Stamp visible (Ctrl Alt shift E) to put the mask in a new layer
4 – Select the new layer, Ctrl A + Ctrl V to copy
5 – Alt click on the destination mask icon (blank screen) then paste (Ctrl V)
6 – Erase the adjustment layer and layer created in steps 1 – 3 (or toggle visibility off if you want to use it for another layer mask)
Here is my gradients grd file:
http://mbret.club.fr/bretchermichel/TonesGradients.grd
and a blank PSD file with gradients adjustment layers to drag onto your file:
http://mbret.club.fr/bretchermichel/BWgradients.psd