Photoshop has an option called "Blend If" used to determine how the tonal regions of a layer and the underlying layer blend together. This is done with the two black and white sliders to specify which colors are visible in the active layer and which colors show through from the underlying layers.

Each of the sliders has two markers: black (left) and white (right). Everything on the left of the black marker is transparent; so is everything on the right of white marker. 

Combo menu: You can select a specific channel from the menu to apply the option to a single channel. The default channel, Gray, affects all channels in the image. The two sliders at the bottom of the Layer Style dialog box do the following:

Slider 1:    This Layer: Allows you to set a blending range. In other words, you can hide certain colors according to the brightness values in the active layer. By dragging the black triangle to the right, you exclude darker colors. By dragging the white triangle to the left, you exclude lighter colors.

Slider 2:  Underlying Layer: Forces the colors from the underlying layers to show through the active layer. Again, dragging the black and white triangles excludes ranges of colors.

I wish that we could have a similar option in GIMP for easily creating tonal effects on images. 

For a detailed description of how this works, please visit the link below:

https://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/quick-tip-the-magic-of-photoshops-blend-if--cms-23862