Shortcut to select 50% luminance pixels

[RobertD907]

In previous versions of Photoshop (like up through CS6), I was able to use a shortcut key in Windows of Ctrl + Alt + ~ to select all pixels that were 50% luminance or greater.

However, in PS 2023 (24.4), this shortcut doesn't work. It was probably an undocumented shortcut in previous versions.

But I had it recorded in a macro and was wanting to replicate the macro in PS 2024.

Any suggestions on how you can select all pixels that are 50% luminance. Thanks.

[Stephen_A_Marsh]

1) CTRL/CMD + ALT/OPT + 2

2) Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts > tick the "Use Legacy Channel Shortcuts" checkbox then use CTRL/CMD + ALT/OPT + ` (~) 

EDIT: I believe that this is also the same as CTRL/CMD clicking on say the RGB or other composite channel in the channels panel.

[Semaphoric]

nevermind

[D Fosse]

But note that this isn't a hard cutoff 50% or more selection! It's a luminosity selection, which is a whole other thing. A luminosity selection goes gradually from 0=least selected to 255=most selected.

Don't be confused by the marching ants. That just marks where the pixels are 50% selected, but the selection itself is gradual.

If you really need a hard either/or selection, I would do that with a Threshold layer copied into a layer mask. I'm sure there are other ways; that's just how I would do it.

[Stephen_A_Marsh]

@D Fosse 

Yeah, I've always thought that the wording is a little confusing:

[Trevor.Dennis]

You might find Sven Stork's free Luminosity Mask extension useful. It's a useful tool for targeting specific tonal ranges when using adjustment layers.