That's all rather lofty and presumptuous ... wouldn't you actually have to try the new Dehaze tool to determine if "tweaking" a single slider instead of many would actually kill the atmosphere or is a less "careful" process?
No Butch, it is not meant as presumptuous but more philosophical/creative, and based on experience with e.g. what happened with HDR tonemapping. Other than a number of pathological haze scenarios (e.g. aerial photography, abundant smog/aerosols obscuring important details), people seem to have difficulty in keeping measure when using these kind of tools.
Removing haze in a scene will
alter the 'atmosphere' of a scene, maybe from justifiably hazy/romantic/mysterious and adding atmospheric depth perspective, to harsh and clinical (and everything in between). Few will know how to keep measure, and many won't even grasp that one can also
add atmosphere instead of killing it.
Take the Clarity slider for example ... remember all the adjustment layers and "tweaking" we had to use on Ps back in the day to achieve what we can do now in a rather simplified manner? Yes, if you abuse that one slider it can cause unwanted results, however, with judicious application it does a great job that used to be a mundane task.
Correct, and I love improvements that speed up the workflow. But the point is that there are different implementations of a 'Clarity' control possible. I happen to prefer more control than a single slider can offer, however good it may turn out to be. I'm probably spoiled by Topaz Labs' implementation of Clarity which is so incredibly more powerful and tweakable than a mainly mid tone contrast adjustment.
I invest in software to reduce the quality time I must be in front of a monitor and streamline my workflow to make it easier to serve my clients ... the finished quality of the images I export shouldn't necessarily be a factor of the the quantity of sliders invoked to reach the end result. My time is far too valuable, which is why I expect my tools to ease that burden so as to invest more time in other areas that will reap higher rewards.
As always, there are (at least) two sides to the coin (there's also an edge, which makes three). One is productivity, which can also be achieved with presets (which I use a lot when speed is of the esssence), and another is ultimate quality (which is a more subjective/creative approach (trying to get a feeling/sensation across), and (much) slower). I prefer tools that offer both, and I use both approaches with TL Clarity.
Multiple sliders or one, it still doesn't remove the user's careful attention to exactly how far to adjust the tool.
Though, I'll wait until I actually use the tool to determines it's value in my workflow.
Exactly, that's my concern as well (as explained with the earlier reference to HDR tonemapping). It's less about the tool's effectiveness in removing haze (I expect it to do what it should), it's about what it will do to the actual image due to people abusing it. People tend to lose the subtle approach and gyrate toward cheesy Instagram effects, heck some made a business model out of that ADHD type of impatient need to score fast effect for the sake of it, taste doesn't seem to matter anymore. We see the same with the ACR Process 2012 defaults, they severely crush the life out of highlights, unless one moves the highlights slider towards -100. Most people have no idea what they are losing, and just love that their highlights seem to no longer blow out (which by itself is useful if you got your exposure wrong). That's why I prefer control (like that Highlight slider).
Cheers,
Bart
