Fantastic way to use a Luminance Mask for photos

 

Looking over various workshops at the Aperture Academy I saw this post about using a Luminance Mask and tried it on an image that seemed a bit flat. This is the result.

 

BTW the instructions list Mac commands, on a PC it is:

“CTRL + ALT + 2″ to create the Luminance selection

“CTRL + J” to load the selection as a layer

Some assembly required

 

These three diptychs were made from the source images found in The Proper Tool for the Job. This collection of images was taken over several month with both a DSLR and Android phone. They were different sizes, resolutions and most had a shallow depth of field; everything that makes them decent individual images but something that makes composites especially difficult. I used ten of the thirty images from last weeks post to make the three composites shown here.

 

My dinner with Ansel Adams

The assignment this week was to make a menu for dinner with someone who is no longer living that you are interested in sitting down and having a meal together. Certainly people quickly came to mind like De Vinci, Franklin, Tesla, Edison or Einstein. Boy wouldn’t it be fun to have Tesla and Edison at the same table, but I digress. After careful consideration the list, it seemed all wrong. Right off the bat, I don’t know Italian, so De Vinci is out. For Franklin, Tesla and Edison, I felt like I would be explaining current science to them more than them imparting wisdom on me.  While Einstein might be amazed at the progress, he is still way over my head. So this whole list is out. So then I thought to myself, maybe I would enjoy a campfire dinner with Ansel Adams the night before he shot El Capitan from Taft Point in 1936? Every thing fell into place in my mind.  This is our menu.

Assets include: Pictures I took of a 1954 Yosemite AAA map and of the Yosemite valley floor. Texture from the book Retro Style Graphics of the side of a leather suitcase and leather book cover and an image of Ansel from Wikipedia.