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Author Topic: Interesting LR Threshold Behaviour  (Read 7661 times)

Schewe

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Re: Interesting LR Threshold Behaviour
« Reply #20 on: June 27, 2012, 06:33:04 pm »

Now could I have gotten to this point in 5 or 6 deft adjustments; i.e. without “flailing around”? – probably not. I defy anyone to achieve such a feat (except perhaps Jeff and Eric). This is not a straightforward image and I had a pretty clear idea of how I wanted the tones in the Moon to be rendered. And now I’m there and significantly richer for the learning experience. Many thanks!

Yep...looks better–more natural tone mapping than your previous "Normal". And I think you learned a bit more about how the controls interact (and potentially interfere). I think using a + contrast was a good start and then using highlights and shadows to modify the contrast curve was really the key here. The rest of the changes really just refined your starting points. And make no mistake about it...it's perfectly fine to bounce back and forth with multiple iterations of adjustments, in fact it's inevitable. But I think moderation of the use of whites and blacks are important and I really do think that with the new adaptive logic, setting the white and black clip points is no longer a good way to go. In PV 2010 it was natural to set the clip points first using exposure and the blacks and then modify the midtones with brightness. Then recover to regain highlight texture and fill light to lighten the shadows. But that approach really kinda conflicts with the PV 2012 adaptive logic. Exposure to adjust the midtone brightness, contrast to adjust the tone curve, highlights to refine or recover highlight detail and shadows to refine or bring up shadow detail. Then really just use whites and blacks to tweak the desired clip points. I shy away from really strong whites/blacks settings and really haven't found a strong need. If you still need a harder clip point than you can get in the basic panel, I tend to go into the point curve editor and move the end points in. That has less impact on the adaptive nature of the rest of the basic panel controls.
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kwalsh

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Re: Interesting LR Threshold Behaviour
« Reply #21 on: June 27, 2012, 06:40:54 pm »

Hi Terry,

Thanks for sharing try number two.  Interesting to see the controls behave better at those settings.

One thought: while I don't have even a fraction of the experience of others here with PV2012, I do find the I get the easiest whites separation by using the tone curve panel.  

I think the basic panel controls in PV2012 are doing their darnedest to preserve highlight details and so no matter what you do the effective tone curve of all their fanciness is going to have a shoulder for output tones close to white.  Trying to be "film-like" I guess, and usually pretty desirable.  However, it seems to prevent strong white separation.  

I've found that if I want strong separation of output whites the best method is to move to the tone curve panel (which will let you clip easily and doesn't try to protect you from yourself) and move the end control point to the point that clips what (if anything I want clipped) and then add a steeper curve to the white end of things with another control point.

I think restricting yourself to the basic panel you may be fighting a loosing battle.  You are trying to separate whites - increase the contrast up there - but I think those tools are specifically designed to try and prevent that.  Better to leave your "whites" a bit grey but well separated with the basic panel and then drag the tone curve to shift them to the white output levels.

There is probably a big risk that I'm really just kludging things by doing this and missing some other technique because of lack of experience, but so far that's the best method I've found for strong white separation.  If I'm all wet hopefully someone will jump in with a correction.

Ken

EDIT: I see I cross posted with Jeff, and he mentions using the tone curve as well.  Hurray, apparently I figured something out halfway useful on my own!
« Last Edit: June 27, 2012, 06:42:45 pm by kwalsh »
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Peter_DL

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Re: Interesting LR Threshold Behaviour
« Reply #22 on: June 28, 2012, 11:39:00 am »

... you can talk about the order of controls all you want but any slider based system in which a control movement of +1 or -1 takes an optimal image to a completely broken image is a system with a UI flaw.

+1,
whether it is the UI, math, or philosophy behind.

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