124 — Luminosity Masks — Interview with Tony Kuyper

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #124 fea­tures an inter­view with Ari­zona fine art pho­tog­ra­pher Tony Kuyper. After years of exper­i­men­ta­tion Tony has devel­oped an inter­me­di­ate post pro­cess­ing tech­nique NOT based on the pix­els that make up the image but rather the bright­ness lev­els or tones that make up the image. One of the game chang­ing rea­sons to work in this way is the tonal con­trol and level of pre­ci­sion you can achieve with your selec­tions and the fact that these selec­tions are nat­u­rally per­fectly feath­ered.  This is accom­plished by cre­at­ing a lumi­nos­ity mask (in Gimp, Pho­to­shop Ele­ments or Pho­to­shop) and Tony describes how and why to do this in the podcast.

Although this is an inter­me­di­ate level pod­cast, newer pho­tog­ra­phers might want to lis­ten to get ideas for future study and post-processing play. Tony explains the con­cepts clearly!

Thanks to The Cam­era Store (The largest cam­era store in Cal­gary, Alberta, Canada)  for spon­sor­ing the Photography.ca podcast.

Here are some of Tony’s images processed with and with­out lumi­nos­ity masks. You can see that the images processed with the masks ‘sing’ louder.

Brine Stones by Tony Kuyper - processed without luminosity masks

Brine Stones by Tony Kuyper — processed with­out lumi­nos­ity masks

 

Brine Stones by Tony Kuyper - processed with luminosity masks

Brine Stones by Tony Kuyper — processed with lumi­nos­ity masks

 

Elephant's Feet by Tony Kuyper processed without luminosity masks

Elephant’s Feet by Tony Kuyper processed with­out lumi­nos­ity masks

 

Elephant's Feet by Tony Kuyper processed with luminosity masks

Elephant’s Feet by Tony Kuyper processed with lumi­nos­ity masks

 

Navajo Bridge by Tony Kuyper processed without luminosity masks

Navajo Bridge by Tony Kuyper processed with­out lumi­nos­ity masks

 

Navajo Bridge by Tony Kuyper processed with luminosity masks

Navajo Bridge by Tony Kuyper processed with lumi­nos­ity masks

 

Links /resources men­tioned in this podcast:

Lumi­nos­ity masks — Tuto­r­ial on Tony’s site
Tony’s tuto­ri­als page
GIMP lumi­nos­ity mask tuto­r­ial
Pho­tog­ra­phy assign­ment on our forum — Space
Level 2 pho­tog­ra­phy assign­ment on our forum — Dip­tychs
Illu­minight — Pho­tog­ra­phy exhi­bi­tion by Marko Kulik

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Thanks as well to Mike Bons, Lucy 72, Jimmy Brown, and Dar­nell B who posted com­ments directly on the blog.  Although ALL com­ments are appre­ci­ated, com­ment­ing directly in this blog is pre­ferred. Thanks as well to all the new mem­bers of the bul­letin board.

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You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player.

Thanks for lis­ten­ing and keep on shooting!

Comments

  1. Glenn Euloth says:

    Loved this pod­cast, Marko. While I haven’t put it to good use as yet, I am excited to give it a try and thank you very much for remind­ing every­one that these tech­niques work with free soft­ware such as Gimp. I will def­i­nitely be giv­ing this stuff a try soon.

    • Marko Kulik says:

      My plea­sure Glenn! I hope MORE peo­ple look into this. Yes there is a time invest­ment but OMG will it pay off expo­nen­tially on mul­ti­ple lev­els if peo­ple spend a few hours on this.

  2. Terry Babij says:

    I was intro­duced to Tony’s work while study­ing with a pho­tog­ra­pher in China last year. His actions are great for pulling out and the details in images. The Lumi­nos­ity masks are won­der­ful addi­tion to my post pro­cess­ing arse­nal. I sug­gest invest­ing in Sean Bagshaw’s video tuto­ri­als. Sean takes the mys­tery out of the work­ing with Lumi­nos­ity Masks. You need to be will­ing to invest many hours to get the most out of Tony’s actions. The action panel that you can install makes work­ing with them a breeze!

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