Ken Rennie
Well-Known Member
At the risk of oversimplifying things it may be better to understand how to use the history brush without luminosity masks. This will allow you to lighten (screen mode) or darken (multiply mode) wherever you paint. Once you can do that without having to think about it you can then apply a luminosity mask say a light mask now if you you use a history brush set to lighten (screen mode) it will lighten but only the already light parts. If you use a dark luminosity mask and still use lighten (screen mode) you will be lightening the dark parts and if you set the screen mode to darken ( multiply mode) you will be darkening the already dark. Looking at your image you need to work out what you want to do, lighten where, darken where, increase saturation etc. Of course you can do all of that in ACR with local adjustment brushes but luminosity masks allow you to target exactly the range of tones that you want to change. I think that his use of snapshots overcomplicates things for new users although they allow you to do very advanced things. Ken
