The purpose of landscape photography is to convey the beauty of the world around us. And it is advisable to do it the way the photographer perceived everything at the time of shooting. But the difficulty here is that human eye and the brain is much more perfect than the most perfect camera. For example, we see objects both near and far sharply (of course, if everything is fine with our vision), even on a bright sunny day we see details in the clouds and in the shadows, and at night, after a little adaptation, we can still consider the details.
And in order to convey the landscape the way the photographer’s vision perceived it, one has to resort to some tricks. And, perhaps, the main one is the expansion of the dynamic range - a technique that allows you to convey details in highlights and shadows in photographs.
The main meaning of this technique comes down to the following - the photographer takes two photographs (the simplest option) - one with exposure for the highlights, and the second with exposure for the shadows. After this, in a graphics editor, the two images are combined and we get a frame with details in the highlights and shadows.
There are quite a few methods for processing such images - in the simplest case, you can limit yourself to restoring information from one rav file; sometimes you can get by with gradients in the editor or gradient filters. We will consider a more complex (and at the same time, more universal) method - brightness masks.
Luminosity masks
The easiest way to combine Adobe Photoshop dark and light images - put them on top of each other in the form of layers and use a mask to hide part of one image (you can read about working with masks in the article -). But sometimes the composition is so complex that drawing a mask by hand is too time-consuming and difficult. The simplest example is a tree in the background bright sky. In order to see the details on the tree trunk and in the sky, you will need to draw all the branches of the tree.
But there is one secret. In landscape photography, most often we need to cover overexposed areas with a mask to even out the illumination, which means we will need a mechanism that automatically allows us to select areas based on their brightness. This is what is called luminance masks.
Let's understand them step by step using an example.
For simplicity and clarity, we will combine two frames, although in real life There can be 3 or 5 frames, it all depends on the tonal transitions in the scene being filmed and on the capabilities of the camera matrix.
Bright shot. The foreground is well developed, but the details in the sun area are lost |
 Dark shot, details in the foreground are not visible, but the area around the sun is well detailed |
The main task is to highlight the bright areas around the sun in a light frame and replace them with areas from a dark one.
Place both images on separate layers in Photoshop and combine them using Edit -> Auto Align Layers...
You can skip the automatic leveling item if you were shooting on a tripod.
If necessary, after aligning the frames relative to each other, you can “trim the edges.”
Photoshop does not have any tools or commands for creating brightness masks, but you can save all the actions described below as an Action/Operation and apply it automatically to other images - the algorithm of work does not depend on what is shown in the photograph, it focuses only on the brightness of those or other pixels.
To make the work clearer, turn off the visibility of the top dark layer and click on the bottom light one. It will be used to search for light areas.
After that, go to the Channels panel and Command+click on the composite RGB channel. This will create a highlight around the bright areas of the image.
The resulting selection can already be used, but it would be more correct to create masks for areas of different brightness.
Click the Save Selection as Channel icon at the bottom of the Channels panel. This will create a new channel, automatically named Alpha. Let's rename it Highlights.
In order to select brighter areas of the image, you need to intersect this selection with itself. Hold down Command+Alt+Shift and click on the Highlights channel thumbnail. This way the lighter areas of the previous selection are highlighted. Save the new selection again as a channel named Highlights 1.
This operation with the intersection of brightness channels with themselves can be done several more times, obtaining neat selections of areas of different brightness. The more we intersect the original selection with each other, the brighter the areas stand out.
We got it like this:
Thus, we got selections with five brightness levels.
To process the photograph from our example, you will need to select only the bright areas, but for clarity and generality, we will consider how to create similar selections for the dark areas of the image.
Load the Highlights selection again by Ctrl+clicking on the channel of the same name. Then select Select > Inverse (Shift+Ctrl+I) - this command will change the selection to the opposite. This means that instead of highlights, the selection now contains shadows. Save the selection as a new channel named Shadows.
In order to create channels on which denser shadows are selected, use a similar self-intersection technique by pressing Command+Alt+Shift and clicking on the Shadows channel. After five iterations, we will get five channels with masks for areas of different darkness
Now it's time to use these channels to create a mask on the dark layer. We need to make sure that the selected channel is added as a layer mask.
We need to make a mask in such a way that only the areas around the sun remain in the dark version of the image. In this case, the most suitable channel is called Highlights 1, where the brightest areas are highlighted (they are white).
Load it as a selection by clicking on the channel while holding down the Command key
After this, make the composite RGB channel active (you need to click on it), switch to the Layers panel, activate and turn on the visibility of the dark layer and add a mask to it by clicking on the add mask icon at the bottom of the layers panel.
Our selection will immediately become a mask of this layer and the photo will be transformed.
The dark parts of the mask make areas of the layer opaque, while the white parts appear on the contrary. It turns out that the areas around the sun on the underexposed layer will overlap the overexposed ones, but the foreground will remain from the lighter photo.
Together with overexposure in the sky, we got an area with good color detail. And for this we did not have to manually draw masks and outline the contours of the ship.
If necessary, masks can be modified using instrument Levels or Curves, as well as just a brush.
 Original luminance mask
|
 After finishing with a brush
|
In a similar way, but using the Shadows channels in which we selected the shadows, you can lighten the stones in the foreground a little without affecting the sky.
Selecting the appropriate channel
And apply it as a mask to the curves adjustment layer:
After we have received a brightness-leveled image without gaps in shadows and highlights, we can already work with color and contrast, using Dodge & Burn to place accents, add sun glare and other effects.
To refine the colors and lighting in the image, we’ll use the Nik Color Efex plugin:
After a little color correction using curves, we get this result:
Luminance masks can be used for more than just combining multiple exposures in one shot. They are perfect for replacing the sky in a overexposed photo. Overexposure is a very bright area, which means it will be very easy to select it using brightness masks and then insert the sky from some other frame into this place.
In the article we talked about manually creating brightness masks - this is good for understanding the meaning of the process, but with daily photo processing it can be somewhat lengthy and unproductive.
There are several ways to automate the process:
- Using a special set of Actions. This set can be downloaded for free by all photo school subscribers. These actions will help you automatically create channels with highlights and shadows, as well as sets of curves and levels with brightness masks applied to them. After launching the action, you just need to leave the desired layer with curves or levels (whichever is more convenient) visible and adjust the settings. You can download it here -
- ArcPanel panel. A more cumbersome, but also more universal solution than using individual actions. Allows you to visually create highlights based on brightness using buttons on the panel.
And then experienced readers remembered with horror the hellish surreal pictures generated by a program known in narrow circles Photomatix Pro and others like her. I note that with proper understanding of the settings of such software, a decent HDR image can be obtained with their help. For some interiors I do this, but if we talk about the landscape, then this is really not the best best solution. In my blog, literally a year and a half ago, there were still such experiments, but now my choice is brightness masks ( luminance masks). If you allow, at this stage I will stop delving into theory and, finally, move on to practice. Sorry, but I won't describe what it is masks in the context of image processing in graphic editors, how they work, and so on. Otherwise, my post will simply “inflate” to incredible proportions. Moreover, in the method described below, most of the operations are automated and to begin with, you can simply adhere to this algorithm without understanding how it works. I'm sure that in any case your photos will be a little better.
02
. So we have two images. In the first one, the “ground” is well-developed, but the “sky” is too light and there is almost nothing left of the sunset flashes. The second one has a very dramatic textured sky, but the “ground” is too dark to see the details. I’ll make a reservation for seasoned pros. Yes, these frames are not that problematic and, most likely, the sky could be “pulled out” from the first frame. And someone, perhaps, undertook to “pull” shadows from the second. Doesn't matter. In addition, this pair of frames is not so good in composition, but - most importantly - it is optimal for clear example. In the case when there are no trees, bushes, houses, etc. on the horizon, a brightness mask for the sky can be created using selection tools or even a simple brush. Here we have, let's say, quite difficult case. But we will still try to deal with this. 
03
. Load these two photos into Photoshop. Copy the dark frame and paste it as the top layer to the light one. If you shot handheld or are not sure of the reliability of your tripod, hold down the Ctrl, select both layers. Next Edit - Auto-Align Layers. Photoshop will try to align the pictures relative to each other. Important! After this step, immediately crop the image, removing the “visible shift” at the edges after the alignment operation. If you were shooting on a good tripod, this step can be neglected. 
04
. Let's move on to creating brightness masks. More precisely, downloading the action that creates them. Before this, I had only come across paid versions of similar actions, but no one to thank Jimmy McIntyre, who wrote an excellent algorithm and only asks for a download link to subscribe to his mailing list with video tutorials on Photoshop. We go to his website, where in the required window we enter your work email, to which, a little later, you will receive a link to download a whole package of useful actions of the authorship Jimmy. Sorry, I won’t tell you how to install them in Photoshop either (a search engine will help), but in the end in the panel Actions you should have an item Generate Luminance Masks. Having selected the bottom (light) layer and turned off the image of the top one (icon with an eye), we launch our magic action with the button Play selection.
05
. After the action has finished running, go to the panel Channels, below traditional channels Red, Green And Blue, you will see 18 new ones who created the action. These are brightness masks. Moreover, for all occasions. As you can see, they are divided into blocks Brights, Darks And Midtones. Switching between them, you will understand why they are called that. 
06
. Clicking through the channels, I settled on Brights 2. The ground here is almost completely hidden by a mask (painted black), and the sky, or rather the problematic overexposed right top corner, on the contrary, is open (shaded conditionally white). Select a channel and then do Cntrl+click by its icon. After which the so-called “ants” will run in the image, indicating the boundaries of the future mask. Notice how neatly the tree is “outlined” on the right side of the frame. 
07
. Switch to the layers panel ( Layers), select the top layer and add a mask to it. To do this, click on the gray rectangle icon with a white circle in the center at the very bottom of the layers panel. And then we see that the sky, which had been “knocked out” until this moment, turned pink. This is how the mask works. We took the missing parts on the bottom layer from the second picture. For greater realism, you can reduce the opacity of the top layer to taste. For greater beauty, take a large black brush with soft edges and paint it in a mask bottom part, correcting it. In the channel Brights 2, which we chose for the mask, some light details on the ground also got into the selection, and with a black brush we can easily and quickly get rid of them. In some cases, the action generates masks that don't need to be adjusted at all. I will add that in cases where you were shooting handheld or there was wind that was shaking the trees, the resulting mask can be slightly blurred by Gaussian ( Filter - Blur - Gaussian Blur).
08
. The lesson could have ended here, but I wanted the sky to be pinker. We do almost the same thing we just did. Let's go to the panel Channells and we do Cntrl+click, but already through the channel Brights 5. It suits my purposes best. Add a curves adjustment layer ( Curves), in which we turn up the red channel. Naturally, thanks to a precise luminance mask, only the upper right corner of the image, where the sunset light was, turns pink. 
09
. After that, I completely got the hang of it and additionally worked some magic on individual photo fragments. And for each of them there was a suitable mask. I have circled them in the screenshot below. In addition, I locally processed individual bushes, moss, stones, and so on. To do this, of course, the masks had to be drawn by hand. But that, of course, is another story. 
10
. I almost forgot. After completing all the manipulations, merge all layers into one ( Ctrl+Shift+E) and find it in Jimmy's action pack Delete Luminance Masks and run it. It will remove all unnecessary channels that we no longer need. 
11
. Well, the final result.
From the link you can download the original two files, combine them and post your result in the comments. 
That's all. I hope the lesson will be useful.
UPDATE: Judging by the reviews, not everyone appreciated the beauty of brightness masks.
Ok, here are more visual examples: 
As you can see, there are also a lot of handmade masks here, but the main ones are still made using Jimmy's action.
I remind copy-pastors that when reprinting photographs and text active reference to the source is required. Without noindex And nofollow.
Paper and electronic media must first
Introduction
Luminosity masks are the cornerstone of image tone-based adjustments. These masks provide convenient way highlighting specific tones in an image, which can then be changed by the user. They are able to overcome deficiencies in tonal values that were captured by camera or film and correct tones that have been shifted during image correction. In addition to simplifying these standard settings, luma masks also help individual approach to the interpretation of light. Luma Masks make captured light incredibly flexible and provide the photographer with a unique ability to use Photoshop to express their personal vision through a photograph.
I use luminosity masks in every photo I take, usually multiple times. Over the years I have created several different versions of the mask that have made them more useful. Although luminosity masks are created in Photoshop, they are not accessible from the drop-down menu and cannot be created using the tools in the Photoshop Tools palette. This tutorial will describe how to create masks with using Photoshop, and the main way to use them. The two basic masks "Lights" and "Darks" are relatively easy to create. But then it becomes more and more complicated. The tutorial will explain all the steps. First, it's important to understand the basics of creating a luma mask and extracting tones from it. To effectively use masks in your Photoshop workflow, it's best to create a set of Photoshop actions to do everything with a keystroke. Actions greatly simplify the process of creating masks, a couple of clicks and you're done.
Above is an image of sandstone processed using the methods described in this lesson. Also used to create this image were Luminosity painting (a more advanced way of using luminance masks, discussed in another tutorial on this site) and saturation masking.
Main mask - "Lights"
Luminance masks are nothing more than a selection based on the brightness value of an image. The basic brightness mask, called "Lights", selects pixels proportional to their brightness in the image. There are three different ways creating this basic brightness mask (Figure 1). I'll list all three options, but you only need to do one of them to create a selection.
1. Alt-Ctrl + ~. While holding down the Ctrl and Alt keys, press the tilde key, which is located to the left of the number "1" on a US keyboard. If you don't have such a keyboard, use alternative methods 2. or 3. When using CS4, this option is now Alt-Ctr + 2.
2. Ctrl + click the RGB channel. Hold down the Ctrl key and click on the RGB channel thumbnail image.
3. Drag the RGB channel to the Load Selection button at the bottom of the Channels palette.
A trail of running ants appears in the image, showing the selection (Figure 2). Since this selection is based on the brightness of the image, running ants only appear around pixels whose brightness is equivalent to 50% gray or brighter. We will discuss this issue in more detail later. For now, it should be obvious that the running ants are enclosing the light areas of the image.
Once you've created a selection of the highlight area of the image, it's a good idea to save it. To do this:
1. Click the Save Selection button at the bottom of the Channels palette. A channel called “Alpha 1” will appear in the channel palette (Fig. 3).
2. Double-click on the name "Alpha 1" and rename it to "Lights" and then press ENTER for the changes to take effect (Figure 4).
3. Click the RGB channel to make it active and restore the color of the image (Fig. 4).
4. Press Ctrl + D to deselect.
Alpha masks provide fantastic opportunities for experimenting with image brightness, textures, and filters to change the boundaries of a saved selection. The alpha channel is a grayscale copy of the main image, so you can use all the painting tools to add textures and warps.
Working with Image Brightness
Each color image consists of three or four channels, which can be taken advantage of when creating masks to change the properties of light.
Loading image brightness by clicking an icon Load channel as selection(Loads the channel content as a selection) (rice.
5L7) allows you to convert the tonal values of an image or channel into an active selection based on luminance values greater than 128. You can also use the keyboard shortcut to do this
1. Analyze color channels
and choose the one that has the smoothest tonal transitions. In most cases this is the green channel. To activate it, just click on the word Green(Green) in the palette Channels(Channels). Click on the channel icon while holding down the key
Rice. 5.47.
Clicking the Load channel as selection icon allows you to create a selection based on the brightness of the image
Rice. 5.48.
Save a selection based on the brightness of the green channel as an alpha channel
2. Click on the icon Save selection as channel(Saves the selected area in a new channel), then select the command Select Deselect selection) or press a key combination
3. Click on the created alpha channel
and use the command Curves(Curves) to increase channel contrast
(rice. 5L9). Now you can add
more expressive lighting to the image.
Rice. 5.49.
Increasing the contrast of the alpha channel gives the image a more expressive look.
4. Select the object to apply changes to.
In most cases, a palette is used for this Layers(Layers). Activate the alpha channel (
and add an adjustment layer Curves(Curves); this will automatically create a layer mask.
5. Increase the contrast by applying an S-curve. As a result, bright colors will look more expressive (Fig. 5.50).
Rice. 5.50.
The luminosity mask has the greatest impact on the light areas of the image
Rice. 5.51.
Experimenting with blend modes can produce some very interesting creative results.
6. Changing the blending mode to Soft Light(Soft light) (Fig. 5.51), I turned a pleasant day into a hot summer day
with hard lighting.
7. Continue experimenting with the layer mask. On rice. 552
I inverted the layer mask Curves(Curves) (
To use brightness masks to change appearance no restrictions are imposed on the images. After spending a lot of time using this technique, I was able to create many interesting backgrounds for composite images. On rice. 553 shows the results of creating a copy of the layer with a blend mode Difference(Difference) and blur the mask using a filter Gaussian Blur(Gaussian Blur) with Radius value 10.
Rice. 5.52.
Experiment with blend modes and curves to create interesting new backgrounds
Rice. 5.53.
Copying and blurring a luminance mask allows you to create diffuse lighting
In 2002, an experiment was conducted at Max Planck University to study the connection between a person's ability to remember visual information and the ways in which this information is presented. Participants in the experiment were shown various photos landscapes, after which they were asked to remember as many details as possible from those depicted in the photographs. Regardless of age or ability to distinguish colors, people remembered things in color photographs much more easily than in black and white ones.
Color photographs give us the opportunity to convey an idea both through the distribution of brightness and through color. We can create a harmonious mood in a photograph with calm colors that are close in tone, add tension with the help of complementary colors, or draw attention to certain areas of the motif with differences. color saturation. About ways to change color saturation in image processing and how to use it for certain purposes and we'll talk in this article.
1. The meaning of saturation for a photographer
Saturation or intensity of a color shade refers to the purity of a color, that is, its difference from an equal brightness gray. Changing the color saturation can have a big impact on how a photo is perceived. Bright, saturated colors create a joyful mood; such photographs encourage action rather than contemplation. At the same time, calm, muted colors make the viewer want to examine the motif more closely, to delve deeper into what is depicted in the photograph.
The effect of colors in photographs also depends on where the viewer lives. Residents of southern countries love bright colors, a combination of complementary colors, while people in northern latitudes prefer calm colors, combinations of shades that lie close on the color wheel. However, if we're talking about about vacation, with southern countries northerners also associate rich colors. Therefore, the photographer must decide what he wants to say with his photo, what his target group is, what emotions he wants to evoke in the viewer - the desire to quickly buy what is depicted in the photo, to visit where this photo was taken, or to look at the photo more carefully and immerse yourself in it .
It is known that an even distribution of color saturation creates a harmonious image, no matter how strong the color saturation in the photo. At the same time, intensifying the color for a particular object or part of a motif creates tension in the photo, forcing the viewer to concentrate on that object or area of the photograph.
In many cases, selective saturation can be useful to follow these rules. Let's look at how this method works in Photoshop, in which cases changing saturation can help a photographer improve a photo, and what role selectively increasing saturation plays in this. The saturation changes in the examples are slightly exaggerated to make the effect of all the manipulations more obvious.
2. Selective saturation
2.1. Creating a Saturation Mask
Let's look at the process of creating a saturation mask using this image as an example.
Calling up the dialogue Image->Adjustment->Selective Color, check the option Absolute and in all colors from red to purple, set the black value to –100.
For the last three options - white, gray and black - we will set the black value to +100.
The resulting image fairly accurately reproduces the saturation distribution in the image.
Now let's go to the list of channels and select the saturation mask by clicking the Load Channel As Selection button or clicking on the top RGB layer while holding the Ctrl key. The selected area can be saved for future use via Select->Save Selection... or immediately create a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and set the saturation value to maximum. The selected saturated areas will automatically turn into an adjustment layer mask. As you can see, in the image the saturation of only those colors that were more saturated than others increased.
Now you can experiment with different meanings saturation in an adjustment layer, increase or decrease the effect of this layer by selecting a mask and changing the brightness of the midtones with curves or levels. For a less pronounced effect of increasing saturation, you can try changing the adjustment layer's overlay mode to Saturation.
In this example, the contrast of the mask was enhanced by levels and the increase in saturation became more pronounced.
At the same time as you increase the saturation of bright colors, you can mute unsaturated colors. To do this, make a copy of the adjustment layer, remove the saturation in it and invert the layer mask (Ctrl+I). After this, darken the mask with levels or curves, changing the position of the middle section of the curve.
2.2. Using selective saturation
Example 1
Anyone who has visited the Canary Islands or Andalusia knows that even bright, saturated colors cannot always convey the beauty of those places. A simple increase in saturation in this case also enhances pinkish color sidewalk, which we don’t need at all. If you create a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and change the Overlay mode to Saturation, this effect will be reduced a little. This is not enough in our case. If we use the selective color saturation method, we can enhance only the colors on the wall of the house and the flowers at the top of the photo, without affecting the rest of the photo.
Example 2
In this case, the plumage of the Nicobar pigeon was colorful enough on its own, but the yellow wall, which is of no interest, distracts attention from the bird. As we know from color theory, blue hues must either be brighter or take up more space in an image in order for them to attract as much attention as yellows and greens.
In this case, reducing the saturation of the entire image, except for the dove, would result in some areas in the background becoming simply gray. That's why optimal solution there was selective desaturation of only the bright areas of the wall and grass in the background. After creating a mask and a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer with negative value saturation, I painted over the pigeon with a black brush so as not to change the bright blue color of its feathers.
Example 3
No less interesting is the saturation mask for restoring oversaturated, so-called knocked-out areas. I think that many people have taken photographs of bright red flowers or clothing, which in the picture turned into a solid scarlet spot, devoid of structure.
From the brightness histogram it is clear that not all information fits into dynamic range, and when checking the channel histograms, you can find that it is the red colors that have been overexposed.
If the color oversaturation is not very high, then you can correct it even in a JPG file. To do this, create a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer with a saturation mask and reduce the saturation of the knocked-out areas, returning their structure.
In cases where the oversaturation is too great, these areas can only be restored if the shooting was carried out in RAW format. To do this, we will create two 16-bit TIFF files from RAW. One with normal parameters, the second with a reduced saturation value, so that the missing structure appears. Now a saturation mask is created from a regular image, a second image, with reduced saturation, is copied as a layer onto the first one, and this mask is added to it. Now you can change the brightness of the mask or the transparency of the top layer as needed. This way we preserve both the image colors and structure.
In addition to the above-mentioned areas of application of the saturation mask, you can use it to change the brightness and contrast of saturated areas with curves or levels, and give them a certain color tone using a Photo Filter or Hue/Saturation adjustment layer with the Colorize option checked.
2.3. Alternative ways to create a saturation mask
2.3.1. Layer Overlay Mode
The second method uses layer overlapping modes.
1. Create a new layer and fill it with any color. The chosen color does not have to be saturated, the main thing is that it has at least a slight color tint.
2. Create a copy of the image with the Saturation overlay mode and place it above the previously created layer.
3. Combine the top two layers (Ctrl+E) into one.
4. Make a copy of this layer and change the overlay mode to Difference.
5. Remove the saturation of the top layer using Desaturate or Hue/Saturation.
6. We combine the two top layers into one and remove its saturation.
The resulting mask is low-contrast and suitable for small increases in saturation. If you want to enhance the effect, you need to increase the contrast of the mask with levels or curves.
2.3.2. Converting an image to HSL/HSB
Some Photoshop plugins allow you to convert images from RGB or Lab to HSL or HSB modes. At the same time, the saturation distribution of interest to us is stored in the green channel, the brightness distribution is stored in the blue channel, and information about the color hue is stored in the red channel.
One of these plugins is not installed by default, but it can be found on the Photoshop CS installation disk in the folder Photoshop CS/Goodies/Optional Plug-Ins/Photoshop Only/HSL&HSB Filter. Once it has been copied to the plugins folder, it can be called via Filter->Other->HSL&HSB.
Another plugin that allows you to convert from one color space to another is Color Converter.
4. One interesting way to manipulate saturation
This way of working with color may be of interest to lovers of surreal, vibrant images. It makes it possible to enhance saturation certain colors, make them darker or lighter, creating colorful photographs that are more reminiscent of pictures in children's books. For this method, it is better to take bright pictures from a large number various colors.
1. Let's create a copy of the layer and use Select->Color Range Let's choose some color. Parameter Fuzziness It’s better not to make it very large so as not to affect many neighboring shades.
2. Let's create a layer mask that will immediately hide all parts of the photo that were not selected.
3. Change the overlay mode to Overlay or Soft Light.
4. Now you can try to enhance the contrast of this layer with curves, make it lighter or darker.
Do the same with the rest of the colors in the image. Such a photograph probably cannot be called realistic, but it may well be useful as a package of sweets.
Afterword
In the experiment mentioned at the beginning of the article, the memorability of color images was much higher than black and white ones. But this was only true as long as the photos shown had natural colors. In cases where the colors in the photograph were distorted, where the grass was blue and the people were green, the memorability of the photographs dropped to the level of black and white. Photographers who process their images in graphic editors should probably remember this fact whenever they take on the creation of their next creation.
Application
For some ways to create a saturation mask, I wrote a set of scripts that can be used. These scripts create a new Hue/Saturation adjustment layer with a saturation mask already applied. To enhance the effect, you need to select a mask and lighten it with levels or curves. The set includes:
saturation_mask_sc- creating a mask using the main method, through Selective Color;
saturation_mask_l1- creating a mask according to the method from part 2.3.1.;
saturation_mask_l2- creating a mask using the method from part 2.3.4. Although this method is incorrect, it can be useful for experiments.
The set also includes several ways to increase saturation. After creating a new, saturated layer, you need to reduce its transparency and/or change the overlay mode to Saturation.
more_saturation_cm- increasing saturation according to the method from part 3.2.;
more_saturation_overlay- increasing saturation according to the method from part 3.3 with the creation of two layers and the Saturation overlay mode;
more_saturation_sc- increasing saturation according to the method from part 3.4.
That's it. Good luck!
