Taming Blown Highlights with Channel Masks: What Matt Kloskowski's Spring Color Workflow Taught Me

There’s a specific kind of frustration I know well: you get to a location at the wrong hour. The light is harsh, the shadows are fighting the highlights, and the histogram looks like someone punched it. I’ve been there on location shoots for book covers and album art more times than I want to admit. The image has potential, but the raw file is working against you. That’s exactly the situation Matt Kloskowski walks into at the top of this tutorial, shot at Magnolia Plantation in Charleston, South Carolina, at the end of March when the flowers were peaking but the light had already climbed too high.