Highlites, sharows and midtone in 2021 and 2022
In On1 2020 adjusting one of these sliders affected all other too much. I wrote about it to support and the reply to the best of my memory was: "we are aware of the problem and working on it". Consequently for 2021 I bought another application where I didn't have this problem. Now that 2022 is about to be released the question is if this issue have been addressed and solved? and also if it can be tested prior to purchase?
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As an ex Lightroom user, I have found the sliders in PhotoRaw much more sensitive. How that compares with other software I don't know, but my recollection is that LR doesn't have a midtone slider anyway.
You can get a trial version 2021 to see how it is for you, and of 2022 when it comes out later this month.
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You might find this Preset helpful. It applies different colors to the Shadows, Midtones, & Highlights so you can visualize which parts of the will be will be affected by the respective sliders. There's a video showing how to use it at https://scottdavenportphoto.com/blog/visualize-shadows-midtones-and-highlights-in-on1-photo-raw. Please let me know when you've downloaded it so I can clean up my Dropbox space, thanks.
Something I've found helpful is to add 2 Local Adjustments with Luminosity Masks, one of them Inverted. Now you have control over the shadows and highlights separately and you can control the midtones with the Levels sliders for each mask. This also allows you to color correct shadows separately from highlights. What is counter intuitive is you can make very subtle adjustments to shadows with the Highlights mask and use the Shadows mask for subtle highlight controls. The midtones sliders don't do much with these but I control those by controlling the level of blending between them with their Levels sliders.
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Thank you Ray Miles. It has been long long tie since I used Lightroom. You may be right about not having than a slider for mid tones but if I am not wrong, when I adjusted the shadows slider the highlight was not affected to a noticeable degree. Since than I used 3 other applications in all but On1 adjusting midtones hardly affects highlights or shadow etc.
On1 is a great program and a lot to like about it but proper separation of highlights from shadows is must have for me. All the rest is bonus.
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Thank you Brian. Interesting preset which I have never felt a need for it. With or without it I still need to know that when I am moving highlight, shadow or mid tones sliders, only the tones responding directly to that slider be affected and not the other two. So far no one told me if the issue was fixed or will be solved in the upcoming release.
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The preset is a visualization tool that allows you to see what parts of your image will be affected by each of the 3 sliders. Once you've learned to recognize those ranges you won't need the preset anymore.
There is no hard and fast line between what is a highlight and what is a midtown or between the midtown and shadows. There has to be an overlapping range to prevent hard edges from appearing as you make adjustments to one slider or the other. Imagine driving the shadows all the way down and the midtones all the way up.
Use the Local Adjustments with Luminosity masks for shadows and highlights as I described above. You'll find much more sensitivity and you can control the amount of overlap between them that way.
This isn't Lightroom. Expecting it to behave the same way is unrealistic.
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By chance I have been experimenting with how to make adjustments to a narrower range of tones than the standard sliders manage.
If you make a basic exposure adjustment in the Develop Tab then you can use local adjustments using Apply To to select basic Highlights, Midtones and Shadows range, which can then be restricted further by setting appropriate values in Range and Protection sliders. (The options to change these settings are revealed after clicking on the Gear icon at the top of the filter)
If the mask is inverted then the adjustment becomes a global adjustment and changes to the exposure settings are applied to the appropriate tone across the image. If mask is left black then the adjustment can then be applied to part of the image by brushing or using masking bug. This then effectively imitates the Photoshop technique of dodging and burning through a selection based on a luminosity mask.
Unfortunately there is no standard way to view the impact of adjusting the Apply To settings as there is for a normal mask (just added a request for this to PhotoRAW Project), but if you set the adjustment to Paint With Colour, choose an appropriate colour and invert the mask so that applied to whole image then you can see the impact of changing the Apply To settings in real time. When done you turn off the Paint With Colour and adjust the exposure settings to get the required result.
One of Scott Davenport's courses from a while back had settings for a selection of tones. I used these and playing around with a test image showing the tone zones to set up a set of Local Adjustment Styles with the Apply To values set, Paint With Colour set and inverted (white revealing). So to target a tone I create a Local Adjustment then just scrolling through the Styles highlights the zones so easy to select the one I need. If not quite right then the values can be tweaked with the zones highlighted by the Paint With Colour.
If anyone is interested here are the values I have come up with for targeting zones, not 100% match and there is some spill that helps with feathering if needed.
Zones Apply Range H/L Shadows Skin
0-1 Shadows 19 55 0 0
2-3 Shadows 37 55 42 0
4-5 Shadows 60 0 61 53
6-7 Midtones 27 0 0 24
8-9 Highlights 55 35 60 0
10 Highlights 23 0 0 0
There is another way of showing tones in an image and that is by using a LUT. This can't be produced in On1 but I managed to generate a couple based on techniques I came across in Photoshop which use Gradient Maps etc. If anyone is interested I can see if I can sort out how to share them via DropBox.
(Sorry if this a bit too much but the Sydney lockdown is getting to me!)
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Thank you Brian for your kind guidance. I truly appreciate the thoughts and ideas.
I am not new to image processing nor am I comparing it to lightroom. In all apps I have used these sliders has a meaning of simplification time saving compare to curve adjustment. By suggesting to do local adjournment instead, you negates the very essence of sliders. Try to use curves by marking 6 or more points along the curve while it is a line. than pull one point gently up or down. the points you have set earlier may need slight adjustment but for the most part the curve remain straight with the exception of the point you pulled out and a couple of points next to it.. Sliders are the points you pulled on a curve. What I see in ON1 2020 is a shift of the entire curve.
SOOO, question remains same. Have the sliders algorithm changed in 2021 or 2022? If ou know the answer please let me know, if not, who should I ask?
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Thank you David. interesting write up and good one in a later stage of localized image processing. I am inquiring right now which is basic highlight and shadow adjustment.
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David,
"If you make a basic exposure adjustment in the Develop Tab then you can use local adjustments using Apply To to select basic Highlights, Midtones and Shadows range, which can then be restricted further by setting appropriate values in Range and Protection sliders. (The options to change these settings are revealed after clicking on the Gear icon at the top of the filter)"
This is exactly what the SMH Preset I linked to above does. It sets a range then applies a color to that range. One for each of the Shadows, Midtones, & Highlights.
"If the mask is inverted then the adjustment becomes a global adjustment and changes to the exposure settings are applied to the appropriate tone across the image. If mask is left black then the adjustment can then be applied to part of the image by brushing or using masking bug. This then effectively imitates the Photoshop technique of dodging and burning through a selection based on a luminosity mask."
You can create a Luminosity Mask by clicking the Lumen button with controls to restrict it to just the range you want. Adding one gives you a mask for working with Highlight, Inverting it gives you one for Shadows.
Thanks for the Styles settings. I'm going to give them a try.
Ruvy, no they have not changed. Working with restricted tonal ranges is why we've got luminosity masks. If a slider is changing too great a range then restrict that range with a Luminosity Mask or with the Blending Mode options David mentioned. They don't have to be a Local Adjustment, you can put a Luminosity Mask in any Effect you add.
The program is working exactly as designed. You just need to learn where the controls you're seeking are located. They are there.
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Ruvy, this is just a guess but I would think On1 would not change the algorithm of the sliders. If they did it would impact all edits done in previous versions of the software which would probably make many people unhappy.
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Brian,
I did look at the preset and it does work in a similar way to my technique but my goal was to simplify how to make adjustments to a particular tone so I came up with the way I used Local Adjustments. If I want to just visualise an image or see how any changes impact it then I use my LUT approach, just a single filter to turn on and off to switch between image and visualisation.
I do use Luminosity Masks and indeed have come up with another set of Styles to target zones. Where standard Luminosity Masks can be restrictive is if you want to make an adjustment just to part of image. Sometimes adding a radial or linear mask on top is enough but not so good if you need to be more precise or make subtle variations to the effect of the mask.
Using my styles I can restrict which tones are affected and then control how much of the adjustment gets applied to which part of image by brushing using opacity and flow. For example adding structure to one rock face in an image by brushing in a darkening local adjustment to shadows and a lightening one to highlights without impacting highlights and shadows across whole image.Really comes down to having a range of tools in toolbox to get the desired effect in most appropriate manner.
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Agreed 100%. I don't use the Preset myself either. I found it useful as a learning tool for getting a handle on the different default ranges.
Trying to hand paint adjustments to Luminosity Masks is a bear. It is hard to match the gradient of the mask. There's no way to control the opacity of the paint according to the luminosity of the area being painted over. Both highlights and shadows get the same brush stroke. Maybe something like a Perfect Brush that ignores color and triggers on luminosity would be cool.
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Brian
Trying to work with your ideas of using luminosity mask and failing all the time to get rid of the mask mesh
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I don't know what you mean by "mask mesh", sorry. A screenshot might help.
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When you g
o to mask and choose luminosity masc you get the pattern over the image0 -
It looks like you've applied the luminosity mask to the Layer Mask and there is only one Layer so you are seeing the checkerboard pattern that identifies the Canvas.
You need to apply it to the Local Adjustment or Effect that you want to control via luminosity.
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Stupid me. Yes' I should have created a new layer first...
By the way. is there a way to create a new layer that is not copy nor looking for another image?
Thanks
I am struggling with your ideas of adjusting highlights and shadows. So far it looks way more complicated and time consuming than ever before.
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"is there a way to create a new layer that is not copy nor looking for another image?" No, that is what Layers are for. Note I use a capitol L for them. Each Effect or Local Adjustment is also a layer (lowercase l) so I want to differentiate what I'm referring to.
I use Local Adjustments for those Highlights and Shadows luminosity masks. They show up as layers above the base image Layer. That gives you the same set of controls as the Develop panel plus a couple more without having to add a new Layer. I've saved Styles for them with all controls set to 0 and just the appropriate luminosity mask applied. The get me started with a single click after adding the Local Adjustment.
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Thanks.
Much appreciate.
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I meant to tell you this previously, sorry. You might find it helpful to understand the order in which Photo RAW processes the various elements we use to do our editing. It is described starting on Page 9 of the User Guide in the section titled THE EDITING PIPELINE IN PHOTO RAW 2021.
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This is an interesting thread :-) Thanks to Brian Lawson for sending me here. I read the comment by David about his technique for narrowing the selection range. I had never experimented with the Paint With Colour option as a way to see what's being selected. Very cool. As I play with it, I suspect I'm doing something wrong. My goal is to select a particular colour in my image and then be able to see where that colour exists elsewhere in the image. I'm trying to select an area that is almost pure white...on the verge of being blown out. I add a local adjustment. Invert the mask to white. Go to paint with colour and select a bright green. The image is now fully bright green. Open the gear icon and under Apply To and click the eyedropper to select a spot on the image. Clicking at a random spot then activates the Apply To colour and I can see the image with lots of green. Now I zoom in on the area that I'm interested in and re-apply the eyedropper. So, now I should have selected the Apply to colour that I want. Blending mode is set to normal. I reduce the Range slider to 0, thinking that this should really limit the colour to what I've chose with the eyedropper. At this point, I expect that my chosen colour...directly beneath where I clicked the eydropper should be painted with bright green. But it isn't. It's actually untouched by the paint with colour. However, I can see lots of green painted elsewhere on my image on areas that are quite visibly a different colour. Am I doing something wrong? Any ideas why I'm unable to simply select an Apply To colour, and have it painted with my chosen colour? If I increase the range, the area filled with green definitely increases, so range is doing something...it's just not doing anything to my selected pixels...weird. Also confusing is that the painted colour is not a solid colour. It still has some transparency so that I can see the image details. Adjustment Opacity is set to 100. Paint with Colour Mode is set to Solid Paint. I'm stumped.
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John
Also confusing is that the painted colour is not a solid colour. It still has some transparency so that I can see the image details. Adjustment Opacity is set to 100. Paint with Colour Mode is set to Solid Paint. I'm stumped.
Paint with color doesn't paint OVER anything, it simply changes the color that's already there. It's not intended to cover over everything like a paint brush.
Note: It changes only the color. Not the luminosity or anything else.
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Rick, when painting in colour set to Solid Paint it does cover everything. Create a local adjustment, set paint with colour on then invert mask and whole image becomes solid colour with no sign of underlying image. It is the other options that bring in the underlying colours.
John, I don't think that Apply To using a colour has the sensitivity to choose colours as accurately as selecting a colour range. In a test image I could use colour range to select a small corner of blue in a cloudy sky by setting range to lowest setting. Doing the same with Apply To and selecting the same spot selected other areas of the sky with a hint of blue through the clouds.
I don't know how the eye dropper works in On1, it does not have a sample area setting as in Photoshop, so it may just select a single pixel making it difficult to accurately drop it on your "selected" colour. The transparency may come from way On1 decides to action the Apply To.
I think that you might have more success in what you are trying to do if you select the colour using Colour Range option in masking. My use of Apply To came about as a way to make changes to small range of tones, Luminosity Masks and Colour Range Masks, coupled with gradients and brushing where needed are a better way forward it you need more global adjustments.
If you can see if you can find a test image that includes colour wheel and tone zones. I found this was a good way to experiment and see how changes to masking/applying impacted image.
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I don't know how the eye dropper works in On1, it does not have a sample area setting as in Photoshop…
I'm not sure how it works either but on the Mac, if you see a color wheel you click it then use its eye dropper to select an individual pixel.
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Brian, the fact that it can only select an individual pixel is part of the problem since normally the colour one is trying to pick is actually made up of pixels of different colours. In Photoshop sampling can be set to average over a number of pixels, with 3x3 or 5x5 being recommended when creating colour based masks.
Macs have a Digital Colour Meter for reading colour values that does allow a change in sample size (called aperture in the application) but it doesn't seem to link to the Colours Utility, and time consuming to copy values between utilities.
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Yes, I understand all that. The comment was made about the difficulty clicking the color you want, this allows for better control of all that.
We still don't know if the tool selects only the pixel that was clicked on, or if it does any kind of averaging. That's a question for tech support.
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Brian, I only see a colour selection window when I click on the coloured square in the Paint with Colour section. I don't see any colour selection window when I'm in the "Apply To" eyedropper. David, I'll try your suggestion about using masks. I've had ON1 PR for about 3-1/2 years but am really only now trying to dig into it. A new laptop helped. Regarding my belated hijacking of the thread...here's my take. I'm not trying to be a smart ass, just summarizing what I've been able to learn through experimenting, and chatting with you guys..
- when using the eyedropper to select an Apply To colour in a local adjustment...we don't seem to know what that eyedropper is actually selecting.
- when using the eyedropper to select an "Apply To" Colour, we are not shown a box indicating what colour we've selected.
- when selecting a near white colour in Apply To, along with Paint with Colour, the colour that I chose (directly under the eydropper cursor) is not painted with the chosen. It seems that different colours are being painted other than the one I just selected. If I just chose that colour, shouldn't it be painted...and no others painted when the range is set to 0? This suggests the chosen colour is not directly under the eyedropper cursor. Seems like an omission to not display the colour selected, or to allow selection from a colour chart.
- When using Apply To, Paint With Colour seems to be applied to much larger areas than those selected. From what I can see, paint with colour is applied at different opacities on different parts of the image. What is really happening, and how are the colours to be painted determined?
Brian mentioned Tech Support. It seems that I'm poking around in an area that's rather ill defined and not documented. What's the best way for me to continue learning how this all works? Should I carefully document what I'm seeing and submit it to tech support?
I do appreciate all the comments!
Thanks!
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John, what I showed is a feature of the MacOS, it comes with the color picker control. I don't know if Windows has any equivalent.
- when selecting a near white colour in Apply To, along with Paint with Colour, the colour that I chose (directly under the eydropper cursor) is not painted with the chosen.
When you used the eyedropper to click on the image you chose that color to be painted. The eyedropper chooses the color to paint with, not the color to be replaced. For that you need to use a Color Range Mask. You can use the two together to pick a color to be painted with and a mask to choose where the paint will be applied. The resultant color will depend upon the blend Mode you have chosen.
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Brian, maybe I'm not describing this well.
- there are two eydroppers. One is for the "Paint With Colour". If I double click that, I see something similar to what you showed on a Mac. I can use this to select the colour to use for painting.
- the one I'm having trouble understanding is the shown in the Apply To area beneath the Blending Options (after choosing the gear icon for more options). I've attached a screen shot to show what I mean. The Apply To eyedropper is circled. When I use that eyedropper to select a colour, I believe I am selecting a colour to which the Paint With Colour chosen colour will be applied.
- the red arrow in the screenshot shows where I selected with the Apply To eyedropper. I expect that colour to be Painted with Colour. But it isn't...other colours are. Hence my confusion.
Does that make any sense? If i'm misunderstanding what the "Apply To" eyedropper is supposed to do...I'd be happy to better understand.
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This is the windows color picker. Click the button to select a screen color.
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