alan Pickering wrote:
how do I make one? Or any other ways of lowering contrast...

If you want to lower contrast based on tonal range, use Curves and flatten the curve (less than 45 degrees) where you want it lower.

If you want to lower overall contrast, add a Invert adjustment layer and set the blending mode to Overlay. Adjust opacity to taste. (This can cause some color shifting, though.)

You can do a similar technique using a duplicated layer, desaturated and inverted, and using Overlay blend mode; that only affects tonal contrast, not color. Often adding a slight blur (usually Gaussian) helps avoid edge artifacts. This is perhaps the closest direct analogue to a darkroom-based contrast mask, but it's not the only one. (Photoshop's built-in Shadow/Highlight tool does something similar to this, btw.)

There are numerous other approaches, but anything that increases contrast can be used to decrease contrast as well with the judicious use of invert and blending modes. The best approach  depends on the specific situation. Blurred masks, Blurred desaturated copies, inverted curves...there's a lot of options.

Angelo Lorenzo Photo wrote:
They're most commonly known as luminosity masks, google search it for a few tutorials.

While luminosity masks can be made to serve as contrast masks in some circumstances, they're not the same thing.

Kevin_Connery wrote:

If you want to lower contrast based on tonal range, use Curves and flatten the curve (less than 45 degrees) where you want it lower.

If you want to lower overall contrast, add a Invert adjustment layer and set the blending mode to Overlay. Adjust opacity to taste. (This can cause some color shifting, though.)

You can do a similar technique using a duplicated layer, desaturated and inverted, and using Overlay blend mode; that only affects tonal contrast, not color. Often adding a slight blur (usually Gaussian) helps avoid edge artifacts. This is perhaps the closest direct analogue to a darkroom-based contrast mask, but it's not the only one. (Photoshop's built-in Shadow/Highlight tool does something similar to this, btw.)

There are numerous other approaches, but anything that increases contrast can be used to decrease contrast as well with the judicious use of invert and blending modes. The best approach  depends on the specific situation. Blurred masks, Blurred desaturated copies, inverted curves...there's a lot of options.

Convert the inverted layer to greyscale to minimize color shifts.

You can also duplicate the layer twice, set the first dupe to Exclusion mode at about 15-20% and the second dupe to screen mode at about 50%. This will reduce contrast and you can adjust to keep the same brightness. Use a mask if you want to limit the portion of the image affected.

I used that basic technique on this image to get the milky skin tone.

https://www.modelmayhem.com/pic.php?pid=8547696