![]() ![]() To keep things straight in my head, I’ll find an even more original and interesting name to rename this layer, like Darks. First I’ll duplicate the Lights layer, then invert the colors on that layer: We can produce another mask that will only affect the darker parts of our image by simply inverting the Lights layer. This will now paste your Lights layer as a layer mask, and you should now see this:īasically, we can now change whatever we want on the red layer, and it will only affect the lighter parts of that layer. This will give you a Floating Selection (Pasted Layer) on your layer window, and you can just Right-Click the Floating Selection layer, and choosing Anchor Layer. Now just paste this into the layer mask on the red layer by activating ( Left-Clicking) the red layer mask, then doing: Then I will want to copy my Lights layer by activating it ( Left-Click on the layer), and then choosing: I’ll usually just initialize the mask to White (full opacity), because I’ll be changing it shortly anyway. So now my image looks like this:Īt this point I will add a layer mask to my red layer by Right-Clicking on the red layer, and choosing Add Layer Mask…. I’m going to create a new layer in my image filled with red, and I am going to turn the visibility off on the other layers. That’s actually all there is to it! Let’s see it in action, though, to find out how this helps us. I’ll normally rename this layer to something original and creative, like Lights. So, create a copy of your base layer, and run:Īfter doing this, my gradient image will look exactly the same. This is usually the simplest mask to create, and just involves making a desaturated copy of your base image (based on Luminosity). Now, across this gradient we may want to make modifications, but restrict them to the lighter values. To illustrate what we want, I am going to create a simple image with a gradient that goes from full white to full black: Don’t worry if this sounds strange, it will become clear before long… The nice thing about using our image as the base for the mask is that the tonal ranges in the image will provide a smooth transition between the different layer masks.Įven though you may want to modify some aspect of the lighter portions of your image, it will be hard to tell where that effect is applied as it fades to a gray or black. This way, we can make adjustments to the image on a layer, and to use the masks to only apply those changes to certain areas (based on luminosity or value). What we’d like to accomplish is to produce masks for our image that target a specific tonal range (lights, mids, or darks). If you are new to layer masks (or need to brush up), I recommend you head to Getting Around in GIMP - Layer Masks to brush up first, then come back. Similarly you can adjust just the mid tones, or light tones without affecting the other regions as well. If I wanted to control the colors in the shadows of my image without modifying the mid tones or light tones, then this is the method you want. The basic premise of luminosity masks is to allow you to modify elements of a layer masked to a specific region of luminosity (or value). The original tutorial by Tony is here: Tony Kuyper’s Luminosity Masks Tutorial There is an older and interesting discussion about Luminosity Masks by Tony Kuyper that was referenced in that thread, and this is a translation of sorts for GIMP users that want to accomplish the same thing. I figured I would chime in a bit here with how I generate and use them in my own workflow. There was a recent thread on the GIMP users forum at Flickr on how to generate luminosity masks (and use them I suppose). 10 min read Getting Around in GIMP - Luminosity Masks ![]()
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