› › COLUMN> PHOTOSHOP USER>^ MARCH 2020[ 84 ]
TURNING IT INTO
A SELECTION
We can now turn the Gradient Map
into a black-to-white-to-black gra-
dient by changing the color of the
stops to help us better isolate specific
tones. This gives us a great start-
ing point for selecting the river (as
shown here). Now let’s convert the
Gradient Map into a selection.Step One: Load a luminance mask
by holding down Command (PC:
Ctrl) on the keyboard and then
clicking on the RGB channel in the
Channels panel (Window>Channels).
Loading a luminance mask always
selects 50% of the brightest half of
the image. Because we’ve converted
this photo to a mostly high-contrast,
black-and-white image, it loads a
selection of the area we isolated with
the Gradient Map.Step Two: If we need to remove any
areas from the final selection, such as
the tones in the rocks on the sides, we
can quickly paint those out. While still
working in the Channels panel, add
a new alpha channel (a saved selec-
tion) by clicking the Save Selection as
a Channel icon (circle in a square)
at the bottom of the panel. Press
Command-D (PC: Ctrl-D) to deselect.
Now just click on the Alpha Channel
in the Channels panel to both target
it and turn off the other channels.Step Three: Using the Brush tool
(B) set to black (press D then X), paint
to remove anything that you don’t
want in the selected area. Here,
you can see we painted out all the
little areas of the rocks that were
originally part of the selected area.
This only took a few moments with
a semi-hard brush. If there are any
parts of the river you feel were miss-
ing from the original isolation, you
can just paint white into those areas