Use of luminosity mask: advice please

[John Pilkington]

Hello, I would welcome some constructive criticism of the image, please. I have some experience of macro photography and post-processing using Lightroom Classic (LrC) but have only recently started taking landscape seriously. I've not used Photoshop (Ps) very much but have a basic understanding of layers and masks. I've been learning about luminosity masks, thanks partly to your recent thread on the topic.

So, I went off to a local well photographed landscape area to get a baseline photo to work with. This is the Seven Sisters cliffs on the Sussex coast, seen from Seaford Head. I was fortunate to get a nice exposure with the sunlight illuminating the distant cliff under a bank of low cloud. My intention is to use post processing to emphasize the dramatic nature of the lighting. It turns out that the sea had a very nice appearance too.

My first attempt (not shown here but I will post a picture on this thread if it would be useful) was made using LrC Highlights/Shadows/Whites/Blacks sliders with a (reversed) graduated filter. Today, with my new found understanding of luminance masks, I revisited the picture, starting from scratch. In LrC I used the exposure sliders but no local processing/filters. In Ps I explored the luminance masks generated by TK Lum-Mask (thank you TK) and darkened some shadow areas, brightened up the illuminated cliff, and adjusted the colour of the vegetation on the distant cliff top to make it more sunny. I tinkered about with the colour of the sea, too.

The result is certainly more dramatic than my original LrC only processing and I am quite pleased with it. My question for the forum is, does this image look over processed? Do you look at it an immediately feel "Yuk, that's a bit over the top"? I feel this is a danger with the luminosity mask approach, and find it difficult to judge my self so would be grateful for independent advice.

Thank you,

John


DSC_2025-Edit-1-1.jpg by John Pilkington, on Flickr

[John Pilkington]

Thanks, Manfred M. May I ask; what did I get wrong with the link to image? Apologies for putting you to the trouble of editing it.

John

[Manfred M]

Thanks, Manfred M. May I ask; what did I get wrong with the link to image? Apologies for putting you to the trouble of editing it.

John

Welcome to CiC, John. You tried to link the image from Flickr and the "correct" way to do it is to add the BBCode which is accessed from the bent arrow "share images" function. This happens a lot as people become familiar with both CiC posting and how Flickr works.

I do find your image effective, although the sky is a touch heavy for my personal tastes and has a bit more blue and cyan content than I normally like. Where I have a bit of an issue is those dark fields on the tops of the cliffs (move the Shadows slider all the way to the right in LR) and the distant cliff face has a noticeable hot spot.

I played around with your image a bit (easier to show than to try to put into words) and I will remove my edit if you wish.

[Geoff F]

Not really working for me, John, due to the issues which Manfred has already mentioned.

Also, I would be tempted to lose a bit of that rather drab left side and go for something like a 3 x 2 ratio image.

Some time ago I did try luminosity masking but quickly returned to more conventional layers and masks edited with normal brushes.

Now, when I don't shoot with bracketed exposures, I tend to edit my original Raw image in two or three different conversions then edit together with layers and brushed in/out masking. Using Photoshop with Bridge and Adobe Camera Raw. I have never made much sense of Lightroom.

Maybe, this winter, I may have another look at luminosity masking as an experiment.

[John Pilkington]

Thank you, Geoff and Manfred. I very much appreciate the trouble you took to reply to my thread, and in particular for your edit, Manfred. Please don't remove it! Effectively, I think you are both confirming my suspicion that it is easy to overdo the processing with luminosity masks; I think part of the learning process will be to discern when that is happening, but I will persist with the technique for the time being.

Geoff, thank you for sharing details of your workflow. That is very interesting. Also your insightful comment into the crop, I hadn't really seen that, although I have been coming to the opinion that there are two valid scenes here, and this image is a bad compromise. (1) I could actually extend the view to the left and down to include more beach - as I know the site well - which might balance out that uninteresting cliff top; or (2) the line of foreshortened cliffs in the middle of the image is an exposure in its own right, losing both the dull left side cliff top and Birling Gap (the low brown cliff to the right) and everything to the right of it. That would be a totally different image, requiring different light. Plus (3) on reflection, you are right and I could just chop out some of the left side!

[xpatUSA]

Thank you, Geoff and Manfred. I very much appreciate the trouble you took to reply to my thread, and in particular for your edit, Manfred. Please don't remove it! Effectively, I think you are both confirming my suspicion that it is easy to overdo the processing with luminosity masks; I think part of the learning process will be to discern when that is happening, but I will persist with the technique for the time being.

A bit late to this thread but I've been playing with the posted image for a few days.

I made two luminosity masks by converting the original to grayscale for the one mask and inverting the grayscale for the other. Applied each mask to a duplicated layer and adjusted each duplicated layer. Then merged them down along with the original and sharpened it up a "tad".

Ignore my botched attempt at fixing the bright spot!



Done in the GIMP but it should be similar in other apps ...

[John Pilkington]

Well, that's really interesting, Ted. Thank you! So, I think your treatment has definitely inproved the sea and sky, and I love your crop. I've been working towards something like that, but it really needs a separate exposure to fill the frame better. I'm not sure about the sharpening, though. But I can see that the original is perhaps lacking in that regard.

A huge thank you to all who have taken my image seriously, and spent time on it. It is really helpful to see what other folk make of it.

Cheers,

John

[xpatUSA]

I'm not sure about the sharpening, though.

My sharpening is always a bit over-the-top for posting here, John!

I don't do that at home ...

I can post the masks somewhere for your interest ...

[DanK]

Thank you, Geoff and Manfred. I very much appreciate the trouble you took to reply to my thread, and in particular for your edit, Manfred. Please don't remove it! Effectively, I think you are both confirming my suspicion that it is easy to overdo the processing with luminosity masks; I think part of the learning process will be to discern when that is happening, but I will persist with the technique for the time being.

Geoff, thank you for sharing details of your workflow. That is very interesting. Also your insightful comment into the crop, I hadn't really seen that, although I have been coming to the opinion that there are two valid scenes here, and this image is a bad compromise. (1) I could actually extend the view to the left and down to include more beach - as I know the site well - which might balance out that uninteresting cliff top; or (2) the line of foreshortened cliffs in the middle of the image is an exposure in its own right, losing both the dull left side cliff top and Birling Gap (the low brown cliff to the right) and everything to the right of it. That would be a totally different image, requiring different light. Plus (3) on reflection, you are right and I could just chop out some of the left side!

It might be helpful to see the image before you used the luminosity masks.

Luminosity masks are just masks. The key is what adjustments one links to the masks, so if you overdid it, I would look at the adjustments, not the masks attached to them. Perhaps that's what you meant. In fact, you can undo what you consider overdone using luminosity masks. I didn't do it carefully, but I took your original image and used curves attached to three luminosity masks to start replicating what Manfred did. I didn't take it very far, and it's quick and dirty, but I think it shows the point.

[Manfred M]

John, a mask is nothing more than a way to isolate a change or adjustment to specific areas of an image. A luminosity mask is nothing more than using brightness ranges as a way of identifying the areas where one wants to apply the mask.

I find luminosity masks can be a rather blunt tool as they can select a lot of areas that do not need the same level of adjustment. I generally find that I rarely use luminosity masks for that reason. I tend to do a lot of hand-tuning when I do use luminosity masks and often find that there are tools that work better for me than luminosity masks.