Like pf22 said, examples of what you have and want to achieve might make it easier to assess what alternative procedures seem feasible.

The best way to create a 'luminosity mask' would be to go into your channels panel and ctrl+click the RGB channel, this will select the darker levels in the image. With the selection you can now add an adjustment layer, If you need to work on the highlights, do the same thing with an inverted selection/mask.

The appropriate Blend If > Underlying Layer-settings should achieve something similar – not identical, though.

Is it a kind of High Key effect that you are after? You can achieve that with playing around with duplicating the layer, blur it and blend it onto the original one as soft light or maybe even overlay.

mantralightroom wrote:

 

because silvers v2 is a nice plugin , i like  how it can boost ,aplify the whites and the blacks

can't do the same results with levels or curve or selective color

I use CS5 with Silver Efex Pro v2, but again, without seeing an example of what you're seeing or what you want to achieve, it's difficult to suggest what specific technique will get you what you want using Photoshop alone.

I'm sure some combination of Luminosity Mask, Levels/Curves/Contrast Adjustment Layers would probably give you what you want, but if the Silver Efex Presets, perhaps with some tweaking/customization, give you what you want, and the speed, or lack thereof, is not a problem, well, just stick with what you have!

And as Duotone and Lundberg have pointed out, there are alternatives to Siver Efex; I'm sure you could download a 30 day trial of those packages to play with and see if they meet your needs.

Good luck

Paul