A modified approach to local adjustments

DxO PhotoLab
1

I have yet to download the PL10 trial, but I haven’t heard anyone gushing about how PL now supports, say, curves, in the local adjustments pane, so I’m guessing this oft-requested feature is not there. It’s even less likely that PL10 adds local adjustment support for Fine Contrast, something I really miss (you need to Film Pack to get this).

I feel like the local adjustments UI is the barrier. I have four panes that deal with global adjustments and just one for local adjustments. On that latter pane, DxO has to squeeze in—or omit—the adjustments from the other panes. The tendency is to exclude all but the most important.

I’d love to see DxO reverse that—each mask gets access to every adjustment except those that either don’t make sense (geometry) or for which there are technical limitations (demosaicing, color model, etc.).

The workflow would be somewhat different—you would have to make one mask the “current” one to which adjustments are applied. The local adjustments pane would then turn into just a mask creation tool.

This workflow might be more awkward to use, I realize. I’d still go for it.

In my mind, the program would generate a default mask for each image, something that selected all pixels at 100%, and then make that mask the currently selected one. For images for which you make only global adjustments, the change would be unnoticeable. However, I could delete that default mask if I wanted (if there are no masks at all, then only truly global adjustments would be available) or create multiple masks where all pixels at selected at 100% (you can do this today, but you only get limited adjustments on the masks).

What do people think?

The alternative is to have to continue to beg DxO to add adjustments to masks. They continue to improve the ability to create masks; they are just not allowing me to make all globally-available adjustments to those masked pixels.

The prime features I miss are, as I’ve mentioned, Curves and Fine Contrast, but (as an example) I might want to select some pixels and apply a different color rendering model. I can live without that, but it seems like an opportunity lost.

The workaround, by the way, is to generate multiple virtual copies of an image, and then do the masking and blending in some other tool, which might not have the same masking capabilities. So PL might have some fancy AI sky selection that I can’t use if I want to perform certain adjustments to the sky.

2

I don’t think there’s a need to create a default mask. If no mask is selected then adjustments apply to the base image. If one or more masks are selected then adjustments apply to those masks only.

The mask selection menu could be a pop-up to speed things up.

I agree with everything else.

3

As @LVS already mentioned, no mask is required if you want to make global adjustments, whereas for local corrections you need to define the affected area – and we effectively already have that.

However, if DxO were to proceed roughly as you described, the number of adjustments might be reduced to about half the current volume. A lot of adjustments would be universally applicable, differing only in whether or not they are “accompanied” by a mask or selection – which would effectively make PL less cluttered.

Well, there is still hope …

5

I had to download version 10 after formatting my computer, and I immediately noticed that the masks aren’t working the way they used to. The object-selection brush is now much less precise (control brush)~~, even if it is faster. If you use the “Add an auto brush” command, and afterwards the eraser brush to fix any bleed-over, you can no longer re-apply the mask. It seems to be a one way process which is not logic at all. Am I doing something wrong, or is there a glitch? This is a very important issue. This situation is slowing down a lot the workflow.

Thank you so much for some help.~~

6

Interesting point about the screen space available to work on masks.

Capture One seems to solve this elegantly enough, with a mask panel in the main edit panel where you create and modify your masks. Any edits you make to exposure, colour etc. happen on a global level (if you’ve selected no mask to work on) or a mask (if you have).

Seems simple enough.

Perhaps the whole masks pain could be moved over to the left side of the screen alongside presets, history, navigation etc.

The only issue there would be where certain tools really don’t work at a mask level (yet - for example tone curves can only be applied globally). But then neither can cropping and geometry changes, which also take place on the RHS of the screen space. It’d need to be clear what is enabled to edit locally/globally and what isn’t, and users might get confused as to why certain tools appear/disappear depending on their selection.

7

[ sorry – off topic here ]

Delete the Eraser entry (mask)

Screen Shot 09-08-26 at 04.15 PM
Screen Shot 09-08-26 at 04.15 PM391×137 4.21 KB

or

use a new Auto (manual) brush to re-add to the selection

Screen Shot 09-08-26 at 04.17 PM
Screen Shot 09-08-26 at 04.17 PM390×132 3.72 KB

which you then move into the first mask
Screen Shot 09-08-26 at 04.17 PM 001
Screen Shot 09-08-26 at 04.17 PM 001386×177 5.39 KB

yes … slightly complicated now

8

My proposal to create a default mask is for consistency, simplicity, and flexibility.

In the current system, you can work globally on the image by using any settings on the first four panes, or you can work on a masked portion of the image using only the settings in the local adjustments pane. In the proposed system, you have to select whatever you want to work on. The “no mask” selection is still a selection. Rather than treating it as a special case, it is just a default mask with no special properties. You could modify or delete it, just like any other mask.

If you delete it, you don’t lose the ability to modify the image globally. You could just create a mask with 100% selection of all pixels and continue on your way.

I prefer designs which minimize special cases.

Now, you mention selecting “one or more masks”. Currently, I don’t believe PL supports selecting more than one mask at a time. You can select a mask with submasks, but I don’t think that’s the same as selecting multiple masks. I’d have to go try it, but I think that each submask has its own settings, and the parent mask has its own settings.

Consider selecting two masks where the masks have different values for the Shadow adjustment. Which value do you display? The ability to select multiple masks adds a degree of complexity that I would rather not introduce.

10

Sounds sort of like what I have proposed. Thanks for letting me know someone has implemented something like it.

How does Capture One handle it? There may be a number of solutions, but what I would do in PL is to put all the global settings in one pane. This pane would have sections for whatever group of settings absolutely have to be global.

I would definitely not want the Curves setting to be there–this is one of the main settings I would like to apply to masks. There is no point in reorganizing things if the end result is that we can only make the same local adjustments that are available today.

11

Thank you so much for your reply. Sorry to say, but this Logic is creating me troubles and slowness. From my perspective there is no logic to lock the possibilità to correct an error, forcing to restart from the scratch. I do hope DXO will redesign this feature with a high priority.
Do you know where to download DXO 9? Thank you again.

12

It’s worth having a look at how the old Apple Aperture 3 has done this. Each module (e.g. curves) is applied globally by default, but you had the option to create unlimited instances of each module. Even without masking, this approach had many advantages. If for example you had set the exposure to a certain value for all images, then you could create a second exposure module instance with an exposure offset, and copy that module to all images. The previous exposure would now be offset by that value of the second module. Such mass editing is currently not possible with Photolab.

Also the curve tool becomes much more powerful. You could use one curve to create an S-curve for contrast. Then create a second curve module and adjust just the highlights for example. As each module can act independently, you can create many presets and combine them at will.

Now to masking, each module also had a masking menu, where you could select a brush. Then the adjustments would be applied locally.

This approach might need some rethinking, on how it would work with all kind of different masks that exist in Photolab, and how to combine them. Capture One might give some inspiration there. But I found the base concept from Aperture very elegant.

13

CaptureOne handles it by giving complete flexibility on where each tool is placed. For example the user could place the mask tool and the most commonly used adjustment tools in the same ‘tab’.

The icon on each tab could also be changed (if memory serves) to make it easier to remember what functions were in each tab. The system worked very well and I was able to customize the workspace for my specific needs very easily.

14

I believe you can create custom panels in PL as well. I used to do this, but I found that I preferred the default panels . In my proposal, I was just thinking of how the default panels might be laid out.

15

Can’t you do this in PL with presets?

You bring up something I hadn’t considered. Today in PL, you can only apply presets globally. In the scheme I’m proposing, it might be possible to apply presets to masks.

16

Well, you have to try to get the hang of it.

For local adjustments, we can now use multiple (parent) masks, each containing one or more sub-masks; the same settings apply to all elements belonging to a (parent) mask.
The exception is a (sub) mask that – when the “Invert shape” option is used and it is correctly positioned – excludes a specific area from the adjustment applied to all other masks within the (parent) mask.

And with each (parent) mask you can adjust something different (different selection and / or setting).

For global adjustments, we currently do not have masks or layers but we can easily apply multiple adjustments.

17

DxO remove previous versions once they release a new one. The only way to roll back is to maintain your own back ups of previous versions.

Or hope that a kind user here offers to share their backup of a previous version with you.

18

If I am not mistaken. it will overwrite the current adjustment. Relative adjustments are not possible. It might be possible to do this with masks, that are applied globally? But it is very cumbersome. And won’t work if you want to do rotations, because rotations and masks are not implemented properly in Photolab…

19

CO 16.8.5.3 is allowing me to use tone curve adjustments in a layer:

image
image1126×1286 208 KB

In my experimentation, it seems that if you work with an adjustment that is incompatible with a layer, it simply applies that adjustment on a global level without any to-do.

If you have Capture One set to the default workspace, all the adjustments that are compatible with layers seem to be in one tab anyway, which means if you navigate away from that tab you don’t even see the layer picker anymore (and therefore one could reasonably assume they’re not working on a layer anymore).

20

Well, I just tried it, and things didn’t work the way I thought. Sub-masks select (or exclude) pixels, the parent mask controls the settings for whatever is selected.

So, in the model I’m proposing, you would only have to select the parent mask from a drop-down. This would select which pixels the UI settings are applied to.

Personally, I would separate the mask creation from the adjustment settings. You create masks using creating one or more sub-masks. You apply settings to the mask. The current UI leads one (or me, anyway) to think that each sub-mask uses its own settings.

21

Ah, I see. The system you were describing allows you to combine things, sort of like a relative preset. So I might have a preset to increase the exposure by +1 and applying it twice might increase the exposure by +2. With PL’s preset, you’d still be at +1 because preset values are absolute, not relative.

As the details of the Apple Aperture 3 system are unclear to me, I’m not sure if it’s relevant to my proposal. It sounds more like a reworking of the preset system.

What is relevant is that I would like the preset system to operate on a masked area. The only intrinsic barrier appears to be the UI that PL uses.

22

… which is why I explicitly mentioned that this is not the case.

Think of the (parent) mask as “one” layer. It and its sub-masks – which define the affected area – are all subject to the same adjustments.
This means you cannot apply an exposure correction of +1 to a specific part of this parent mask (e.g., an area defined by a gradient) while simultaneously applying a correction of +2 to another part of the same parent mask (e.g., using a different tool such as a control point).

Instead, use separate (parent) masks / layers to apply different settings.