Normal pass to create lighting mask

Could not find much about Normal pass in general when searching internets. Is someone using it for creating "luminosity"masks in photoshop? I was thinking of maybe it could add some highlights in the right lighting direction for leaves etc.

Try this on for size: https://youtu.be/N9CTOw1lxQ0?t=12m59s

Yah that was a neat little trick I didn’t know about. (13 minutes in)

Oh the link i copied had the timecode stamped in…seems like the automatic embedding removes that.
soz.