The Luminosity Blending Mode In ON1
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This article is part of a mini-series about the blending modes in ON1 Photo RAW and ON1 Effects.
What Is The Luminosity Blending Mode?
The Luminosity blending mode limits the impact of a blended layer or an Effects filter to only the brightness, or luminance, values. Consider switching the blending mode to Luminosity if you see an unwanted color or saturation shift in your image.
Prevent Color Shifts With The Luminosity Blending Mode
A rule of thumb I follow for when to consider the Luminosity blending mode is when I add an Effects filter and the colors shift in an undesirable way. Take the example of a Curves adjustment to boost contrast - the classic S-curve. Adjusting the tonal curve also has an impact on color. In my landscape photos, blues in the sky can shift, taking on an unnatural or over-saturated hue (at least for my tastes). Switching the blending mode of the Curves filter to Luminosity protects the original colors.
An S-Curve adjustment to boost contrast also shifts the blues in the sky and at the horizon.
Switching the blending mode to Luminosity limits the impact on color, keeping the blues truer to the original image.
Refining a Glow Look With The Luminosity Blending Mode
Glow looks are about diffusing light, often brightening highlights. Depending on the glow look, shadows can be fuzzed and darkened. Notably with the darker glow looks in ON1, colors get more saturated and amplified. In this photo of a creek with autumn leaves, I have applied a dark glow look. Notice how vibrant the oranges and yellows are, even after tempering the Glow filter with a lower opacity. Switching the blending mode to Luminosity insulates the color shift. The glow look is delivered without the drastic change in color.
Glow looks, notably the darker glows, have a tendency to enrich and exaggerate color.
Change the blending mode of the Glow filter to Luminosity to deliver the glow look while maintaining the original colors.
Pop Contrast And Detail
An interesting use of the Luminosity blending mode is to pop contrast and detail. The curious part of this technique is that the filter of choice is the Black & White filter. The recipe is:
Add a Black & White filter in ON1 Effects
Adjust the filter sliders to make the image the best B&W photo it can be
Change the blending mode to Luminosity
The results is a pop in contrast and detail. Luminosity only affects brightness values, so the resulting image is still a color photo. Remember … Luminosity doesn’t change hue, only luminance.
An image before applying a Black & White filter.
Adding a Black & White filter and adjusting the sliders to make a strong B&W image.
Switch the blending mode of the Black & White filter to Luminosity. Contrast and detail is increased.
Up Next
The next article in this series on blending modes in ON1 is the Difference blending mode.
Cape Perpetua Surf
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