I was practising your suggestion on luminosity masks on Gimp.
As a matter of fact, it was giving me excellent results, since lm were providing the punch that I wasn’t able to get from RT.
But then I came across the need to go back and forth to the tools settings I was applying on each layer and the need to recover the last applied settings, so that I could restart from there, hence I started this thread.
EDIT: Not sure how you’d normally use the tools, but my work flows have plenty back-and-forths, usually spread over many days, so, the easiest way to work like that is by using smart objects and smart filters, which allow me to return to the settings and do small adjustments until I’m satisfied.
From what’s been said in this thread, I understood that these settings iterations on gimp are destructive, and thus should be avoided.