Using Luminosity Masks to Apply Effects

Luminosity masks are a go-to tool of mine when shooting sunsets, or trying to make a subject and a sky stand out. Join me in this complete, start-to-finish ON1 Workflow edit using luminosity masks to accurately post-process and apply filters to specific parts of this image. You can download the practice file and full video in this post.

Targeting specific parts of this image from Death Valley National Park we will make the entire foreground, mountains, and sky stand out with some very quick and easy steps. Luminosity masks give us a lot more control of how our filters are applied to our tones. Using luminosity masks, and copying it to other filters, is a way we can make contrast, dynamic range, and color enhancements affect only the tones we want. There are some tricks and tips for using curves and luminosity masks together also. Put in the practice with this technique and you will find your own tricks that work best for your images.
I’ve included the raw file for you to follow along with me in this edit. You can download it, and the video, from here.