Seeing colors and luminosity correctly is not always easy. You could calibrate your screen and be stuck working at the same place every day, but some people just can’t have a fixed office or studio. And even with a calibrated monitor, adjusting luminosity to your creative vision can get tricky. This is where visual help layers come in, especially one called the five-tone heat map. Blake Rudis from f64 Academy shows you how to use and why it’s so useful.
There are tons of visual help layers that you can create. The most known are probably the black and white conversion for dodging and burning or the solar curve for details and texture correction. However, others less known such as the five-tone heat map are techniques that you won’t be able to edit without once you try them.
The five-tone heat map essentially highlights the five main luminosity zones in different colors, making the differentiation between each of them more visual. It will make playing with curves and adjusting luminosity levels easier than ever. In the example shown in the video above, the picture is an excellent example of how we could misinterpret luminosity levels. Visual help layers are one of the most underrated things that everyone using Photoshop should look into and learn to use more.
[via f64 Academy]
Realy nice techique. I have been using it for years. It could be i tegraded to photo edit programs since it is comming from video editing for a long time. Try not to use only 5 channels but as many or less you may need
Ever since the D90 I've wanted False Color on DSLRs.
Now that is powerful!