Waltarus

Thanks for the reply, mikerofoto. It seems that what a few of us are having trouble with (on this and another thread) is first making adjustments to the actual mask itself, so that the mask affects an adjustment to the pixel layer in the way we want it to. The only workaround I've discovered is to make a luminosity selection. add selection to a mask, then in channels right click "mask alpha" and create grayscale layer. (At this point you can delete the first mask because you won't be using it.) Now you can add an adjustment to that grayscale image, levels for instance, and drag the adjustment into the grayscale image. Select them, and rasterize to mask. At this point I temporarily turn off that mask so I can see what I'm doing to the background layer. Now you can put a curves adjustment, for instance, on the background layer to make the sky more dark and dramatic. Finally, you can turn back on your mask and drag it below the curves adjustment, so it's only affecting highlights and sky. Making the adjustment to the mask first, gives you more control over what is going to be affected by subsequent adjustments to your background image. In PS you can just click the mask and adjust it. (I mean the black and white mask image, NOT the background image) If there is a less convoluted way for me to do this in AP, I'd love to know about it, but his method works for me. It just requires a few extra steps.

Very cool. I'm going to try that.

Hi Rainon. A few weeks ago, I asked almost the exact same question and received the same advice and ended up with the same results. Still couldn't adjust the mask. So I tried the method again when I found this thread and ended up with the same results which you show in your screenshot. I'd love to know if there is something we're missing or if there's something not clear in the way we're asking the question, or if Affinity just can't do what we're wanting it to do. HVDB Photography (Thank you HVDB) suggests using blend ranges, which can be very useful and I sometimes use, but that's a completely different approach. Although it works great in some instances I would still like to be able to just adjust a simple luminosity mask. Any help would be much appreciated.

Thank you for sharing this, smadell! I'm new to AP and these luminosity selections are just what I was looking for. Cheers

I'm new to Affinity so this is exactly what I needed. Cheers!

Thank you, firstdefence. When I do that, the adjustment only affects the pixel layer underneath. Obviously, that would usually be what you'd want but I would like to be able to increase the contrast in the actual mask itself. When I click alt + the mask to reveal the b&w image, I can't seem to make any adjustments to it. Is there a way you can do that?

Hi all. I'm new to Affinity so I hope I'm asking this in the right place. When you make a luminosity selection (by clicking ctrl+alt and clicking the thumbnail) and then open an adjustment layer (say, curves for instance) then click alt and thumbnail to show the mask, can you not make an adjustment to that mask? Levels, for instance? I can't seem to make any adjustment to it. I'm pretty sure you can in PS.

Hello all. I'm new to Affinity Photo and to the forum. I'm a former LR user and occasionally dabbled in GIMP and PS Elements as well as tried a couple of other trial versions. So far I'm blown away by how well AP is working for me and I'm happy to find that the community seems very helpful. Looking forward to exploring some new techniques. Cheers.