Insanely Difficult Photoshop Masks MADE EASY with "Calculations"

Learn the power of Calculations in Adobe Photoshop to mask a busy background with intricate detail.
I hope that you learn a lot from this video!
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📘 INDEX - Masking Using Photoshop Calculations
00:00 - Introduction
00:10 - Sky Replacement Mask Example
01:00 - Masking with Calculations
03:30 - Add and Subtract Modes in Calculations
04:33 - Fill Bottom Area with Black
05:20 - Add Mask Contrast with Curves
05:51 - Copy and Paste on an Alpha Channel
07:03 - Use Overlay to Paint on the Mask
07:33 - Use the Dodge and Burn Tool on The Mask
08:17 - Create the Layer Mask from the Channel
09:18 - Compare The Layers Masks
09:48 - Apply The New Mask To The Sky Replacement
10:50 - Paint Away The White Outlines (Fringing)
11:40 - Mask with Blend If
13:45 - Apply Calculations Using Multiple Images
15:09 - Final Thoughts
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CREDITS
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● Photoshop video tutorials by Jesus Ramirez
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[@WanderFeetChronicles]

Wow. To be honest mate that’s probably the best video that I’ve learnt about intricate masking in years of watching you and others. I’ve been watching for like 5 years now. Learnt so much today. This will make compositing so much more refined and meticulous. Love it pal. Thanks Jesus.

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

Thank you, ScouseTrooper!

[@flow_leit]

Honestly, this is exactly the same for me. I was pretty confident with my "masking knowledge" but this video damn ! It's a really good trick to be able to use other colors channel to be used on different document.

[@holtzykiwi9616]

@@WhyNot-qn7nq Jesus is the guy, bud

[@kevinconnery1974]

The interesting (sad?) thing is that Calculations has been in Photoshop from the very beginning; it predates layers, and was the only way to create drop shadows, embossing techniques, and the like in the early days. But every time there's been an improvement to 'smart' selection tools, the more basic and fundamental options seem to get pushed further and further into the background and disregarded, which is a shame, as you demonstrated well here. Dan Margulis popularized (if not coined) the phrase "every image has 10 channels" in his 1998 classic book Professional Photoshop, and Bert Monroy & David Biedny's Photoshop Channel Chops from the same year tried to expand the understanding of channels for both selections and color correction (and more!), but neither was widely accepted. I never understood why, as they were both excellent guides to some fundamental underpinnings of digital imaging, and still applicable 24 years later. Thanks for the refresher!

[@MLB9000]

Opened up my copy of PS CS3 and was pleased to see Calculations was there! Never even used it before

[@kevinconnery1974]

@@MLB9000 Yup! Calculations have been there since version 1 (not CS1, plain old 1). Powerful tool.

[@jobaecker9752]

Wow, I've been photoshopping for decades and this tutorial is incredible. Thank you for a process well explained!

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

🔗 *Masking Tips and Tricks* ► kzbin.info/www/bejne/f5bFeKxqfZVqn9k 🔗 *Blend If Crash Course* ► kzbin.info/www/bejne/r3KwiXWPrZWla8k 📕 *Channel Chops Book* ► amzn.to/3uaXgWn 💻 *Tutorial Images* ► photoshoptrainingchannel.com/calculations-in-photoshop

[@Serifinity]

Fantastic video, so well made and clear to understand. Thanks for sharing

[@DividedStates]

Wow. This is actually a pretty impressive and comprehensive tutorial of using channels to create highly detailed masks and it doesn't shy away from discussing the tedious parts of touch ups. Thank you very much for this.

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

I'm glad you found it useful, Nerdbert! Thanks for Watching!

[@soumyamajumdar9932]

This and piximperfect is the only two channels i trust for simplicity. Love you both.

[@brett7406]

This is really good. I love these advanced photoshop techniques, not all that many of them on the internet.

[@amarissimus29]

That shortcut for creating a clipping mask made my day. Can't believe I didn't know that one. Thanks.

[@MladenBozic]

Always finding a new way to blow my mind. Wow. Amazing tutorial. Thanks a lot, mate!

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

You're welcome, Mladen!

[@leftfight8466]

The best sly selection video I have ever seen in my video.

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

Thank you, left fight!

[@MisterAlibee]

This is absolutely mindblowing for me. Thanks

[@cliffordsalmon322]

Thanks for a comprehensive tutorial about calculations. This is the best tutorial on calcukations so far.

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

I'm glad you found it useful, Clifford! Thanks for Watching!

[@deepakmaharjan5022]

this tutorial is muchmore helpful for me, lot of thanks brother

[@shakulaka]

Reading books about photoshop channels, sounds ultra chad I love it. Thanks for this tutorial, a ton of new information. Photoshop really embodies 'the more you learn, the more you understand how little you know'

[@makealias6021]

Super job. You're an excellent instructor & presenter. I think it's great that you show mistakes as well as successes, since that's the real experience of most people -- especially on technically challenging projects/experiments like this one. I've used Photoshop since version 3.0.3 and this is true: I've enjoyed your tutorials more than anyone's. You are great with the application; your videos "show" as well as "tell;" and you're a heckuva nice guy. All are invaluable assets that keep your students engaged & coming back for more edification. Thank you, sir. You deserve all the accolades you receive.

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

Thank you so much for the kind words, Make Alias!

[@carlkristensen8398]

You keep amazing me. Every time I think I know what's worth knowing about something in Photoshop, You come and show me that I really know nothing. Yet another very useful tutorial. Thank You.

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

You're welcome, Carl!

[@ojoksimonstephen3555]

This is one of the best videos I have watch of you demonstrating your mastery in Photoshop

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

Thank you, ojok simon stephen!

[@shashankamrohi5148]

Thank you so much for this. You are very very helpful!

[@DavidMFranks]

Been a fan of Mr Ramirez for years - but this vid is EPIC. I've learnt stuff I didn't know, and I teach Photoshop to other designers. I just wish I could save this vid to refer to in future.

[@sondos006]

I don’t know how to thank you for the great effort in making this great informative video! Thank you very much for this amazing helpful video

[@SeanPruitt42]

Nice to see someone still using the old-school techniques. Very nicely done!

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

Thank you, Sean!

[@prkancheese]

Superb technique, thank you for sharing 👍

[@paolabueso]

Amazing video!! Thank you so much for sharing this. 🙌🙌🙌

[@gregv2821]

Your videos are always so next level. Great stuff.

[@tallaganda83]

You are the best, this has become a mainstay for me.

[@chepo1956]

Hey Jesus, Jose here. I heard about calculations, but I never saw it used, quite honestly. This approach you showed today will be extremely useful when all other approaches don't seem to get the results you want. Great job man!

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

Thank you, Jose!

[@perilthecat]

🤯 photoshop goes so much deeper than I can possibly fathom. Dang dude you have a lot of knowledge

[@WickBeavers]

As ALWAYS, you knocked this one out of the park! Thanks so much for this one!!

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

You're welcome, Wick Beavers!

[@jkoblivion4175]

My ignorance was slam hammered ..again! Thx Jesús Ramirez, for helping so much , building our Photoshop's knowledge. Cheers from this little country on europe's Atlantic coast, Portugal.

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

Thank you, jk oblivion! I would love to visit Portugal!

[@pawnoir]

Je n'avais jamais entendu parler de Calculations… Excellente video👍

[@bala1000mina]

Wonderful Jesus! Thank you so much man!

[@MikeGiovinazzo]

WOW - super comprehensive - will need to view this a few times. Many thanks

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

Thank you, Mike!

[@Bishop2563]

Its been a very long time since I've learned something new in photoshop. Youve definitely earned a subscriber. And I also need to nab me some of the newer Adobe products. Currently still stuck on CS5 lol...

[@boxmeta1834]

Thak you so much Sensei !!

[@OORVOKKI]

Thank you very much . You are a fantastic teacher. Your tutorials are very appreciated !

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

You're welcome, OORVOKKI!

[@Dickymint1000]

Great video as always a masterclass on PS techniques. Best masking video so far. Thank you

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

You're welcome, Richard!

[@rociojuarez5489]

Brooooo this is awesome! Learned more than my class years ago lol

[@sunilporeyana007]

That's absolutely a detailed masterclass... Thank you.. I hope you are fully recovered with your health..

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

Thank you, Sunil! I'm doing better!

[@jenmarsden]

What a great video! I am going to go and practice right now!

[@Nolivance]

Hi from France. Clear, efficient as always. Thank you Jesus. Your're the best prof ever.

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

Thank you, Nolivance!

[@DeMorcan]

I had used channels as masks for a long time. But never saw he calculations before. Thank you.

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

You're welcome, DeMorcan!

[@phphoto]

Jesus! You are brilliant !!! - Finally a way that will work on so many frustrating projekts - Thank you 🙏 I didn't know that option existed.

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

You're welcome, Phillip!

[@richardsonmedia9630]

Love your videos, definitely a Ps Wizard. superb

[@IvailoGeorgievBG]

Wow, excellent tutorial yet again! Thank you!

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

Thank you, Ivailo!

[@pauloricardoferreira2841]

Great video, Mr. Ramirez! Thank you for sharing your knowlodge. Best regards from Rio de Janeiro/Brazil.

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

Thank you!

[@SugaHoneyIceTea36]

I need to try this. Tkanks

[@ag-rl6ov]

For practical trainings that you give. thanks a lot

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

You're welcome, a g!

[@pkfitnesshub]

What an information dense video! Learnt a lot.

[@palazzoneguiseppe8281]

That's really great I didn't know calculation 👍👍👍👍👍Thanks

[@aiturtle]

This channel and piximperfect is best channels for learning photoshop

[@rukietizi38]

thanks for this

[@rgarlinyc]

Oh man, JR - thanks a ton. A whole lot of good here, and thanks too for the Channel Chops book link, I've long wanted to fully understand channels.

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

You're welcome, R Garlin!

[@NeanderdeOliveira]

Holy 💩! Most advanced technical vídeo I’ve seen. The KZbin algorithm is giving me a door to a new right of passage

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

Thank you, Neander! I'm glad you found it!

[@mdnaem7064]

love your tutorial

[@drshawnie]

I took a lot of notes ~ now to practice apply them! thank you so much! Jesus It is so great to see you perky and lookin healthy again! Take good care of yourself!

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

Thank you, Shawnie! Feeling pretty much normal now!

[@christiansteffensen6344]

This video opened my eyes to a whole new level of masking! Thank you, Jesus!

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

You're welcome!

[@FluffyPandaBeard]

Great video thanks for the upload 🐼

[@hani7up]

Genial, Jesus, gracias de nuevo, you are absolutely fantastic. Glad to have you in our world of Photoshop.

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

Gracias!

[@quirkworks4076]

Oh my, that was just astounding.

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

Thank you, QuirkWorks!

[@mousermind]

I was very pleasantly surprised to find this is also in CS6! I will be keeping this video on hand so I can use it for reference in the future. Thank you, Jesus (Photoshop Training Channel)!

[@experiencinglunistice]

I want to thank you thosand times for this tool.

[@huseyinsahin6502]

Perfect work

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

Thank you, huseyin!

[@babayaga5848]

TY for all the work that you do ♥

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

You're welcome, BABA Yaga!

[@stephenwood2344]

Great tutorial - the pace is level all the way through, if a little fast (some presenters start off slow, then speed up as they lose interest). I realise that it is really useful to have subtitles - effectively I get everything twice as I can read faster than you can speak.

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

Thank you!

[@YEIYO1]

Best photosop video evermade y hecho por un latino que mejor.

[@grossoanthony]

Jesus, this video is a 10/10! IMy workflow just became much easier. Sending you many blessings

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

Thank you, Anthony!

[@sidewaysdesign]

Excellent and thorough tutorial. As a Photoshop user since v1.0, I appreciate detailed descriptions of unfamiliar techniques and workflows. One thing I'd point out, though - converting to different colour modes via Image > Mode is a linear conversion that can cause significant problems such as overly dull images (esp. RGB to CMYK). Converting via Edit > Convert to Profile... gives much better results even with default colour profiles.

[@ileydesigns]

Thx.....Version 1!!! I trust your input👍🏾

[@dunnymonster]

Amazing Jesus. I've never used calculations before, learnt something totally new today. Thanks 👍

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

You're welcome, dunnymonster!

[@DogWaterManGuy]

youre a good lad. keep it up

[@JacksonCarson]

Great tips! 🙌

[@salvatorepar3494]

Amazing video Thank u

[@matheus260699]

Just, thank you

[@mdturnerinoz]

My head almost explosed with this one; wow!

[@BURTBROWN]

EXCELLENT!!!!!THANKS!!!!

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

You're welcome!

[@nano2101]

thumbs up for crediting Bert 👍

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

Thank you! He's a good friend of mine

[@biancadupont2931]

Hi Jesus, hope you are feeling better! thank you again great tutorial

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

Thank you, Bianca! Doing much better! I hope all is well with you.

[@HowieD1975]

DUDE!!!! I love how you went MAD SCIENTIST with this tutorial. Hope you are recovering and feeling better my friend.

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

Thank you, Howie!

[@rifaathanver1221]

Looks a bit hard to digest. Will try. Thanks, mate.

[@AR-vf7vg]

How on earth do You get to know this virtuosity knowledge in the first place...and then combine them to applicable workflow that makes such good sense ??? Mindbogling ;-)

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

I have close to 20 years of experience. And as I mentioned in the video, I read books on the topic

[@DickHoskins]

Amazing!

[@AimHimud]

This is awesome! Thanks!

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

Thank you!

[@LitchfieldParkFamily]

Subscribed!!! 📸 💯Great video, thanks for the info!

[@JohnBerthoty]

Game changing!

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

🙂

[@giahieunguyen8961]

Thank you from Việt Nam. Thank you so much. I wish you always happiness. Love you🥰🥰😘😘😘😘😘🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰.

[@LeonKolenda]

I'm sure glad you made this Video, as I will Never Remember al those steps. Thanks LOL

[@Baka_Oppai]

this video is pretty sick, just gotta remember the 900 key combo shortcuts

[@mularjan]

Very useful to me. Thank you very much!

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

You're welcome!

[@PeterJansen]

I don't know how I stumbled into this video, since I don't even have photoshop. But I am a compositor for film/tv and this sort of channel manipulation is very common in Nuke (industry standard compositing tool). You're constantly trying to extract detail and information from *wherever* you can get it from in compositing, so we're always switching between R,G and B, switching colourspaces to LAB, YCrCb, or just pulling keys in different colourspaces. Nuke works in 32bits per channel colour, so high precision float is default, allowing you to really push/pull/combine/crunch colours. One example is that this allows you to use a divide operation and allow values above 1 (1.0 in float, translation to photoshop speak is 255). So you can create a "clean plate" of your sky, in which you fill in anything that isn't sky with the closest sky colour. So you have just the sky, and then a blurry image representing sky colour, but it interpolates the gradients that are present in the sky. With that image, you can then divide it by the original image. Now colours that are the same between the two (the sky) have a value of 1 (anything divided by itself = 1), and the things that are darker than the sky (bridge, buildings etc) become darker or brighter, depending on which order you do the divide. Now you can subtract 1 off, leaving only the things that are different between the clean plate and the original image (that were represented by values above 1). This gives you a nice alpha that is optimised for every part of the sky - eliminating the need to tweak levels/curves (grades in Nuke) for different parts of the image. You now just have one alpha to tweak, which should have uniformly nice edges. This technique is an example of an "image based" technique, similar to Nukes legendary IBK keyer (IBK standing for image based key). Then of course there is the issue of fringing, which is another every day comp issue that can often be solved with maths or "calculations". But that's for another day 😂 Anyway - nice video. Was interesting to see how something like this might be done in photoshop. It looks utterly painful compared to Nuke, but interesting nonetheless!

[@ismailfaturrohman7438]

Da best tutor !

[@silentanuz9132]

It's a million dollar technique. 😍😍 Respect Man!! 😔😔

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

Thank you, Silentanuz!

[@rostislavadimitrova1486]

Wow this video is fantastic! Thank you so much fot that

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

You're welcome, Rostislava!

[@AhKiOye]

I'm just here for those life changing shortcuts 🤘😮

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

Thank you!

[@stanb8977]

This is a great tutorial. I had great success up to the "Paint Away The White Outlines (Fringing)" step. After following steps, after selecting the cable color for the brush tool, the sky would get painted but not the cables. I repeated your steps 5-6 times: Background active, new blank layer above the BG layer, clipped it to the BG layer, selected brush tool, held option to select cable color, and started painting away the fringe, but it painted over the sky and did nothing for the cables. Kept BG layer mask disabled per video. Any ideas? Enjoy your videos a lot.

[@thudar9]

Brilliant !

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

Thank you, RJG!

[@nguyenucmanh4377]

You're amazing, professional.

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

Thank you!

[@hridimaydas331]

Woah!! Cool trick. Thanks bro 🙂

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

You're welcome, Hridimay!

[@dontgetnastybro]

Damn Jesus, this was truly eye opening!, Thanks!

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

You're welcome, Juan!

[@KaiLiuvisual]

I believe this is very useful for masking window for real estate photography.

[@PhotoshopTrainingChannel]

I'm glad you find it useful

[@waynelytton7517]

I would like to see a tutorial on Color Spaces,Editing Spaces, file types and other technical information. All the Blend If, masking, compositing skills are useless if one doesn't have the correct output and color settings.