Creating high-quality contrast masks

[Xenedis]

Greetings, Photoshoppers.

This one's the for landscape/seascape photographers out there like myself who like to blend multiple exposures of a scene into one composite image (for dynamic range), and who have found that traditional selection tools are inadequate for tricky, detailed images.

Seascape photographer Brent Pearson (http://www.flickr.com/photos/brentbat/) has produced a series of three videos which shows you how to create and refine a high-quality mask using contrast rather than the usual selection tools.

Here are the entries on Brent's blog, from which the videos can be reached:


Part 1 - Creating the mask (http://brentbat.wordpress.com/2009/08/29/a-cool-shit-tutorial-for-advanced-landscapers-part-1-of-3/)
Part 2 - Tuning the mask (http://brentbat.wordpress.com/2009/08/30/cool-shit-masking-tutorial-part-2-of-3-tuning-your-mask/)
Part 3 - Playing with the sky (http://brentbat.wordpress.com/2009/09/05/cool-shit-masking-tutorial-part-3-of-3-playing-with-the-sky/)


This is a technique I haven't yet used, but I'm going to give it a go on one of my images this afternoon. I'll post the results (assuming I succeed).

[dbax]

thanks for the links, I've been "shaped" to dial up speed:( so I'll come back and check them out when its all working at peak again:th3:

[dsaini]

Thanks mate. Good stuff.

[clm738]

Thanks so much for this link. It is exactly what I have been looking for.

[Michael]

Fantastic Tut, as well as the mask selection I learnt a few other tricks. Great.

[Xenedis]

Good to hear that Brent's tutorial has been useful to the denizens here.

I did try it on one of my images, but it's not fool-proof, and the scene in question contains elements which aren't the easiest to mask well.

Here's the result:


Bare Island Blues

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2743/4430728083_83f09c75f8_b.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/xenedis/4430728083/)

I spent quite a while on this image, and had to do some things manually. Simply dropping in a darker sky doesn't work.

I need more practice with this technique.

[kaiser]

Can somebody tell me why my levels adjustment dialog box is not as detailed as his. When I try this technique, as soon as I pull up a levels adjustment layer on the blue channel copy, it automatically goes into quick mask mode and it will not let me selectively apply it to the blue channel copy. The drop down menu only has, R, G or B.

[Xenedis]

kaiser, could you post a screen capture of what you're seeing?

[KLi]

Great videos very useful and it's not as hard to follow as he claim it was at the start of the video.

[gozbil]

awesome stuff, thanks