Lumenzia Support: Create Masks

This is an advanced feature that most users can ignore.

Lumenzia's default behaviors has been optimized to treat bright saturated values as "light" tones, where as channel based masks tend to be less selective. While this is a great approach for most situations, there are times when creating more separation between whites and color may be advantageous. This video not only shows you how to use this alternative masking approach, but also shows how Lumenzia minimizes the risks of "banding" that may occur in channel based masks such as D5 / L5. To use traditional masks, hold <ctrl / cmd> while clicking on the mask button.

Many Lumenzia buttons offer extra options by holding a modifier key (such as <alt/option>) while clicking the key. You can see what these options are by simply hovering over a button to see the “tooltips”, or by consulting the written materials included in te download ZIP file.

Additionally, there are many keyboard shortcuts for Photoshop that you may find handy while working with Lumenzia. Here’s a quick list of many helpful shortcuts:

Working with Masks:

<alt/option>-click a layer mask to view it. This is a helpful way to paint on a mask to refine it.<alt/option>
Drag-and-drop a mask to move it to another layer:
<alt/option>-drag-and-drop a mask to copy it to another layer
<shift>-click layer mask to disable/enable it. This is a great way to see hidden parts of the layer or a get a sense of what something would look like if you paint with more white on the mask.
To delete a layer mask (without deleting the layer), click the mask and then click the trashcan icon

Working with Selections:

To create a masked adjustment layer that isn’t part of Lumenzia (such as a Color Balance layer), just click the “Sel” button to load the mask as a selection, and then use Photoshops normal button to create a Color Balance layer. The selection will automatically be turned into a mask on the new layer. Alternatively, use the “remask” button to load a mask preview onto an existing layer.
<ctrl/cmd> <h> to hide/show marching ants
<ctrl/cmd> <d> to deselect (get rid of selection)
<ctrl/cmd>-click a mask or channel to load it as a new selection

Dodging and Burning on gray/transparent pixel layers:

<b> to enable the paintbrush. Paint with white to lighten, black to darken. You can also paint with color to enhance or shift colors (set the lightness value to 50% if you want to change color without lightening or darkening).
<d> to load the default black and white paint, <d> then <x> to switch which is the foreground color for painting
<e> to enable the eraser and removing dodging and burning.

Other common shortcuts:

<shift>-<alt/option>-<ctrl/cmd> <E> to “stamp visible” or create a new layer that is a merged copy of all the existing layers. (Lumenzia Basics includes a button for this).
<space> to temporarily use the hand tool to move around the image. This is very useful when working on a zoomed-in portion of the image.

If Lumenzia seems to run more slowly than your demo videos:

One additional step you can take to speed up Lumenzia is to close or hide the histogram and properties panels. Properties is what displays curves, BW mix, etc. If either of these are open, Photoshop will slow down as it tries to update this display while running Lumenzia’s scripts. I like to leave properties docked as an icon (that keeps it out of the way, but easily accessible).
Lumenzia’s speed is primarily determined by your computer hardware and Photoshop settings. Please see this article on optimizing Photoshop.