So you wanna see luminosity masking in operation, huh? Here’s a link to a roll-over image of mine demonstrating before and after masking, roll your mouse on to and off the image:  “Waterfall Luminosity Masking Demo “

The second image has been cropped slightly so it jumps a bit on the rollover. This is an example of Tony Kuyper’s triple play applied with both light  and dark masking and then some subtle dodging and burning done on separate layers. The effect seems to have added a bit of snap to the water and it was done by adding apparent sharpness to an element that was intentionally blurred during exposure. The shadows to the left of the falling water on the wall have been nicely opened up. The rather busy details of the image have been seemingly sharpened throughout, though it isn’t really sharpening at all and occurs paradoxically by blurring during part of the luminosity masking. Honestly, read Tony’s explanation of this part of the process for a much more lucid description of what is going on here.

Here’s another: “Waterfall_2 Luminosity Masking Demo”

A bit heavy-handed on the Light Lights perhaps, but I rather like the results.

Interestingly, Piet Van Den Eynde, makes reference to Tony’s methods in his new ebook “Pushing Light” wherein Piet reveals some truly novel ways of applying luminosity modifications of his own to photos in need of a little help (more on that later in another post).

Oh, and by the way, I also lifted the nifty idea of linking to a rollover image from a blog post from Tony as well. Thanks Tony! Again.

PP