Swap a washed-out sky in minutes and hold plausible gentle on the horizon. When a composite must respect highlights and shadows with out tedious masking, “Mix If” offers you management over the place a layer seems primarily based on tone values.
Coming to you from Phlearn, this sensible video walks you thru “Mix If” inside Layer Model and reveals how splitting the sliders with Alt or Possibility feathers a transition as a substitute of snapping it on or off. You begin on a easy black-to-white gradient to see what the Present Layer sliders do as you conceal darks or lights on that layer. Then you definately change to the Underlying Layer sliders to disclose your energetic layer solely the place the bottom picture is vivid or darkish, which is the place the magic occurs on actual photos. Nace separates every deal with to create a delicate handoff so edges don’t look reduce out, and also you see precisely the place feathering pays off on floor textures and vivid sky bands.
Nace strikes from the demo gradient to a sky substitute with an actual background, utilizing Choose Sky to construct a quick masks after which unlinks the layer from its masks so the sky could be positioned independently. With “Mix If,” you conceal the sky layer from the darker tones it shouldn’t cowl and conceal it from the lighter tones of the underlying layer the place the unique scene’s highlights have to glow by way of. The preview toggles present abrupt edges vanish because the feathered break up pushes the brand new sky into the scene’s gentle construction. You watch the horizon choose up native luminance from the plate reasonably than a pasted look, and the sliders keep editable so you possibly can nudge the edge later.
The lesson goes past compositing into tonal colour work. A Stable Coloration fill on Regular at lowered opacity turns into a fast grade once you use Underlying Layer to take away the tint from highlights whereas leaving it within the shadows. Altering mix modes like Comfortable Mild or Coloration shifts the impact from luminance distinction to hue-only changes, and the identical logic applies to Gradient Map. You construct a heat spotlight grade by proscribing the map to brighter tones with “Mix If,” which preserves clear blacks whereas giving sunlit areas a managed push. The by way of line is constant: use the Underlying Layer break up to focus on tonal ranges with out portray a single masks.
You additionally choose up workflow habits that save time. Double-clicking the layer to reopen Layer Model retains every little thing non-destructive, so you possibly can hold experimenting after format modifications or sky swaps. Unlinking masks prevents unintentional drift once you reposition the substitute layer, which retains choices correct with out rebuilding them. Channel-specific choices exist for superior instances once you want the restriction to trip on crimson, inexperienced, or blue values, and you may stack each Present Layer and Underlying Layer splits to carve in two instructions directly. Try the video above for the complete rundown from Nace.
