One of the most common situations in landscape photography is not being able to squeeze a scene with a wide dynamic range into a single frame. The sky is too bright, the ground is too dark. And even if the camera shows that the picture is exposed without overexposure or underexposure it often fails to process the picture so that the texture of the sky appears. For such situations there are a number of techniques that allow you to stretch out the too bright lights and accurately and naturally blend them into the picture.
Then hold down CTRL and click on our alpha channel to turn it into a selection. Go to the Layers tab, mask out our black layer and carefully start painting over the mask with a white brush with 40-60% opacity. The brush will act only in the selection area, showing our dark sky and not touching the ground.
Can someone please explain to me the concept of processing a landscape with brightness masks? How does it work and what are the advantages of using this technique in photography?