Shortcut to select 50% luminance pixels

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
May 7, 2023
4 replies
1670 views

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.

Windows

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Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

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.

D Fosse

Community Expert

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.