Local Adjustments. A feedback topic

[KimALdis]

I'm about to submit a second customer feedback form, as per requested here a few days ago, centering around creating masks for local adjustments. Before I do I thought I'd drop my thoughts here for comment:

I'd like to talk about the limitations of local adjustment mask creation. I use this almost exclusively for dodge and burn, much as I do in Lightroom.

Dodge and burn is a key part of the post production process for any photographer but the tools you offer for this are very basic. Essentially, paint, erase and gradient an not much else.


* painting areas with very broad soft edges isn't easy with a brush. Modifying them is even tougher. I'm good with a brush - I'm a VFX artist of many year's standing - but I still find this excessively time consuming. Two things to help here; an ellipse tool, as per Lightroom. Ellipse makes it easy to create large, very soft but smooth areas. And a gaussian blur tool.

* there is no clear command

* painting is slow. There's a very noticeable time lag between painting and the result of painting appearing on the image. Rapid and responsive visual feedback is essential for this kind of work. Lightroom is far superior in this respect.

* Lack of hotkeys. You can't work quickly if you have to keep jumping to a menu to change opacity, softness, etc.

* Something odd going on with the brush icon. When making it smaller, at a certain size it just disappears.

* Clone and heal layers. That there is only one offset for brush-strokes within a layer seems odd to me. This is a very slow workflow if you have many areas in the image to heal or clone; each area requires a different offset to the others, means you have to create a new layer for each. Very kludgey.

* Luminance masks. Capture One lacks the shadows/blacks/whites/etc adjustments of Lightroom  and I miss these greatly. A command to create a set of luminance comasks in CO would be a valuable addition.

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

I would agree on most of your points. A luminance based mask would be most helpful in LR, too.

The radial filter is very useful in Lightroom, allowing local adjustments like lifting shadows with little effort. It also allows to erase parts of the the implied mask. A bit more useful that I initially thought.

The great benefit in Lightroom for me is the content aware handling of the highlights and the shadows sliders. Before Process 2012 I often resorted to Photoshop, making a HDR toned copy of the image and mixing with the original. With LR I can fix the same thing with just the gradient tools and the sliders.

Best regards
Erik

I'm about to submit a second customer feedback form, as per requested here a few days ago, centering around creating masks for local adjustments. Before I do I thought I'd drop my thoughts here for comment:

[KimALdis]

The radial filter is very useful in Lightroom, allowing local adjustments like lifting shadows with little effort. It also allows to erase parts of the the implied mask. A bit more useful that I initially thought.

It's worth adding here that Lightroom has the best of both worlds in this respect. The radial mask, and the grad mask of course, is editable at any time - which is critically important in my view - and yet you can still paint additions or subtractions to it. This makes masking very powerful in my view.

[Paul2660]

It's worth adding here that Lightroom has the best of both worlds in this respect. The radial mask, and the grad mask of course, is editable at any time - which is critically important in my view - and yet you can still paint additions or subtractions to it. This makes masking very powerful in my view.

Capture One, also has this feature, in fact Capture One's ND mask was editable before LRs almost 2 years or so.  The Radial mask has always been editable, and has the same basic flow/opacity controls as LR's. 

I agree on the Macbook pro 15", the brush icon as it you slide it towards the smaller sizes, just disappears, thus use of smaller brushes is hard at times.  Not the case for me on windows machines.

Not sure about the Luminance masks point, as C1 has a highlight/shadow adjustment slider, IMO basically the same as LR's.  And this can be used in a local adjustment.

I do a lot of brush work also in C1, don't find a problem with painting broad areas, with a fine edge brush, as the controls of the actual brush make that pretty easy for me.  Again similar to LR's at least to me.

Auto Mask, in C1 could easily be improved, as it is only really accurate on true solid edges, like a building.  Unlike LR's auto mask, which many times can make a very accurate selection around a tree line.

Of course, LR still won't allow you to turn on or off an individual adjustment brush as you can a local adjustment layer in C1.  You can delete an individual adjustment brush and see the effect and then use the LR history (which I greatly wish C had) to bring it back, but I prefer C1's ability to to just uncheck, or re-check an layer.

LR allows duplication of a individual brush, as does C1, but C1 also has the ability to create a layer from a previous layer (thus a duplicate) and then invert it.  Not sure LR can do this at least I can't figure that out.

Paul C


Black/White adjustments, best done in C1 in the curves tool, or levels tools (old fashion tools similar to CC), I would like to see a black/slider in C1 also.

Hotkeys, don't use them, but I am sure that if you are a user of hotkeys, it would be a nice addition.

[KimALdis]

Capture One, also has this feature, in fact Capture One's ND mask was editable before LRs almost 2 years or so.  The Radial mask has always been editable, and has the same basic flow/opacity controls as LR's.

Capture one doesn't have a radial mask. Only a linear grad mask. And it works very differently to Lightroom's. Lightroom stacks masks and retains any paint or delete operations added to it. Capture One's grad mask wipes the entire layer, effectively destroying any prior work.

C1 has a highlight/shadow adjustment slider, IMO basically the same as LR's

No, it's not the same. LR allows adjustment in four seperate areas of brightness, CO only two. An you're missing the point of Luminance masks, which is that once they're generated they can be operated on; painted, adjusted.

I do a lot of brush work also in C1, don't find a problem with painting broad areas,

Painting broad areas is fine, it's working on or building areas with very broad soft areas. You can get there, to a point, using a large brush with broad softness but I challenge you to paint an area with a soft edge broader than the broadest a brush can manage and keep it even enough not to be blotchy when masking smooth areas in an image. Even if you could, there are quicker and easier ways to do this; why do it the hard way.

[KimALdis]

Also, the CO grad does weird things when you grab its handle and move it around. Create a diagonal grad, mask bottom left, clear top right. Now grab the handle, move the mask toward top right. You're left with borders on the mask, left and bottom. You could, of course, fill them in by hand. But why?


The basic design that underpins adjustment masks is solid but the tools that overlay them are too basic and poorly considered. They could easily be made better and doing so would make adjustment layers special. I posted in another thread that I thought workflow in Lightroom was slicker than Capture One. This, I think, is an area that illustrates my point.

[Paul2660]

C1's allows multiple ND masks, but they each have to be in a separate layer and you can duplicate from a previous layer.  LR allows a ND on a ND adjustment but in LR all adjustments appear a one big layer at least to me. (as you can't turn off a individual brush or ND adjustment in LR just delete it)  You can layer multiple ND's on each other in separate layers in C1.

Issues: are that that once a layer made, either by brush or ND grad, you can only make a color selection in the bottom most layer, as if you attempt multiple layers and multiple color adjustments, the layer on top will error out on color.  You can make multiple saturation and WB adjustments just not individual color selections.  Never have understood that and have asked C1 multiple times as to why, never have been given an answer.

As for luminosity, C1 is not as strong as LR, here, but they did add a Luma adjustment to the curves tool in 9.x which can be implemented in a layer.

I agree also that the ability to get a faded demarkation with the standard mask tool in C1 is hard, I missed that point.  I tend to draw the mask, then go back and fade a part of the mask with the eraser tool on less than 100%.  Takes a while but gets the desired effect for me.

Paul C

[KimALdis]

I know this. I'm well versed in how layer compositing and masking works. I'm saying they're not doing it as well as they could; it could be quicker, easier and more powerful.

[IanSeward]

I'm about to submit a second customer feedback form, as per requested here a few days ago, centering around creating masks for local adjustments. Before I do I thought I'd drop my thoughts here for comment:

        View Profile Kim-Aldis.co.uk Email Personal Message (Offline)

Local Adjustments. A feedback topic




    I'd like to talk about the limitations of local adjustment mask creation. I use this almost exclusively for dodge and burn, much as I do in Lightroom.

    Dodge and burn is a key part of the post production process for any photographer but the tools you offer for this are very basic. Essentially, paint, erase and gradient an not much else.


    * painting areas with very broad soft edges isn't easy with a brush. Modifying them is even tougher. I'm good with a brush - I'm a VFX artist of many year's standing - but I still find this excessively time consuming. Two things to help here; an ellipse tool, as per Lightroom. Ellipse makes it easy to create large, very soft but smooth areas. And a gaussian blur tool.

    * there is no clear command

    * painting is slow. There's a very noticeable time lag between painting and the result of painting appearing on the image. Rapid and responsive visual feedback is essential for this kind of work. Lightroom is far superior in this respect.

    * Lack of hotkeys. You can't work quickly if you have to keep jumping to a menu to change opacity, softness, etc.

    * Something odd going on with the brush icon. When making it smaller, at a certain size it just disappears.

    * Clone and heal layers. That there is only one offset for brush-strokes within a layer seems odd to me. This is a very slow workflow if you have many areas in the image to heal or clone; each area requires a different offset to the others, means you have to create a new layer for each. Very kludgey.

    * Luminance masks. Capture One lacks the shadows/blacks/whites/etc adjustments of Lightroom  and I miss these greatly. A command to create a set of luminance comasks in CO would be a valuable addition.

Agree on all of this.

Ian

[N80]

I have no speed issues when painting. Would agree on most of the other points but in my workflow do not need much of any of it so I'm not missing it other than the grad tool. It is clunky and requires a lot of guess work and or repeated attempts. Like LR one much better.

And while I think we should request any and all features that will make CO a better program for us I think it bears remembering where CO is in its evolution vs where LR is. The level of layering capabilities and selection capabilities requested approaches PS capabilities. Is CO supposed to be, expected to be or planned to be a full featured RAW converter, editing suite and DAM? I don't know the answer to that and would initially say no, but when one considers CO's price point, PO has got to understand that expectations will be high. A single user license is $300 USD. Its subscription price is $15 a month. You can get LR AND PS for $10 a month. For that type of money it is probably realistic to expect more than what we have in CO9. Can PO deliver?

[Wayne Fox]

The main issue I have with the C1 adjustment brush is the weakness in the Automask feature ... it just doesn’t detect edges nearly as well.  It seems to rely on much higher contrast and less color information than Lr.  I’ve been experimenting with using the color selection tool to create masks to duplicate techniques I like to use in Lightroom, sometimes this works pretty well, but not as efficient as Lr.

[ronaldnztan]

For me, I want C1PRO to remain a RAW software converter with LIMITED minor adjustments to fix some "oops" moments, while the remainder of the editing to be left to a REAL pixel editing software—Photoshop.

I agree that sometimes, the drawing of the make in C1PRO (current 9.3) lags. Do I care?! NO!!! Why? Because if I need to major dodge and burn for beauty retouching or to give my images that "hybrid photo painting look," I export the file into Photoshop CS6 to complete the retouching process. I have been using C1PRO since 3.7.8 and Photoshop since CS2. I know what I'm talking about with my work (credibility) to back me up.

For version 10 and abroad, I want C1PRO to remain RAW software and focus its internal funds and research on making the irrevocably best RAW SOFTWARE converter there is, you know—living up to their motto: what the world's best photography is made of.

[IanSeward]

For me, I want C1PRO to remain a RAW software converter with LIMITED minor adjustments to fix some "oops" moments, while the remainder of the editing to be left to a REAL pixel editing software—Photoshop.

I agree that sometimes, the drawing of the make in C1PRO (current 9.3) lags. Do I care?! NO!!! Why? Because if I need to major dodge and burn for beauty retouching or to give my images that "hybrid photo painting look," I export the file into Photoshop CS6 to complete the retouching process. I have been using C1PRO since 3.7.8 and Photoshop since CS2. I know what I'm talking about with my work (credibility) to back me up.

For version 10 and abroad, I want C1PRO to remain RAW software and focus its internal funds and research on making the irrevocably best RAW SOFTWARE converter there is, you know—living up to their motto: what the world's best photography is made of.

If you want C1Pro to be around in a year or two it needs to be competitive to LR.  It is a simple business reality.  The days of "just a raw converter" are over - it is 2016.

Ian

[alatreille]

I think it would be wonderful if you could pull the gradient out past the edges of the frame as you can in camera raw or LR.
This can allow you to do very soft little hits of adjustment to corners or edges.

I find the local adjustments in C1 clunky in comparison to LR or Camera Raw.  It's stepped forward, recently, but still lags.

I like all your other suggestions, and think I'd find myself doing more work in C1 on the Canon files if some of the thoughts you had were introduced.

Thanks for doing this.

[Hoggy]

If you want C1Pro to be around in a year or two it needs to be competitive to LR.  It is a simple business reality.  The days of "just a raw converter" are over - it is 2016.

Agreed.  That is old style thinking, and a noted issue with many CO enthusiasts IMO...  Any deficiencies are why CO is better. 

And on that note, how does anyone not consider the maximum size of spot brushes to be severely lacking??  As pixel density goes up, max size goes 'down' - due to its size equaling pixels.