At our October meeting I talked about luminosity masking and Barbara worked on an image by Bill Alsmeyer-Johnson to illustrate post-processing with Lightroom. At the end of class I suggested combining the two and seeing what using luminosity masking might do with Bill's image. Below are the starting and finishing images. To get there I used three adjustments in photoshop with luminosity masks to make them stronger in lighter or darker areas respectively. First I cropped the image and then reduced the red in the foliage with a mask that applied most of the change to lighter areas. I then deepened shadows and contrast with another mask that applied proportionately more of the change to darker areas. I then used another adjustement to increase local contrast, again with more change going to the lighter areas. Finally I used a straight adjustment mask to darken the overly light edges and top of the image.
My sense is that luminosity masking in Photoshop does a lot of what the clarity adjustment does in Lightroom, but since the luminosity mask a general mask, it can be applied to all kinds of adjustments and not simply local contrast. I am sure that there are many ways to get this same effect, but this is a useful tool.
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