stuck
(Canon, PL7+FP7+VP3 on Win 10 + GTX 1050ti)
3
Have you tried using the âSpotâ feature within 'Smart Lighting? That allows you to draw boxes over the brightest and darkest areas on an image. The magic of Smart lighting then adjusts things accordingly. You can then increase / decrease the strength of the smart lighting using the slider.
The first thing I do is to activate the under and over-exposure warnings under the histogram, as well as the Spot Measure mode on the Smart Lighting toolâŠ
Now, I know where the darkest and brightest parts of the image are to be found. So, I draw a couple of Smart Lighting âspotâ rectangles around these areasâŠ
You have now established the darkest and brightest (back and white) points on the image and Smart Lighting has âequalisedâ the tones in between. If you find that the white point or the black point still light up the warnings, I find that lowering the top to 250 and raising the bottom to 5 is about right, but that is going to depend on the image.
Now you can start playing with other adjustments. Here is my basic curve for this particular image, along with, more importantly, the Fine Contrast slidersâŠ
Finally, I adjusted the saturation on the grass tones and added a Control Line over the sky and made a few adjustments to bring out the cloud detailâŠ
2,253 for the vertical sliders is enough to have all the clipping disappear. Itâs the threshold PL uses. For the black and white point you use the horizontal sliders.
You use Smart Lighting before the curves. Iâll try that too and see what happens.
Itâs fine if you invent your style, but you should stiil be open and experiment in the free time. Look at photoâs potential, imagine your goal first, and then find the way. For example, I would probably have edited the example by @Joanna very differently, using Selective Tones rather than Tone Curve and VERY different microcontrast and fine contrast settings. If my goal was to get the boat a âmetallicâ feel, the sky a bit dramatic, and everything else a pure background, I would use SelectiveTones (funny to see many -/+/+/- patterns in my edits), a little of FC highlights, larger FC shadows, negative microcontrast and tune the FC midtones as desired (WB and Sat/Vib being a different story). The difference between ST and TC is in local contrasts and color preservation. Many paths may lead to similar targets, to be trivial. Stay open.
When you folks are talking about these numbers, where are you setting them? Are you setting these in the tone curve? âBlinkiesâ were mentioned⊠are you setting your warnings to +/- 5?
The tone curve tool exists out of 2 axes. The horizontal is showing what is read, the input. The vertical is what is written, the output. Normally the input and output are the same connected through the diagonal. Input x is output x.
The output,vertical ax, is what we see. Blinkies, just a warning, are based on the output.
When changing the limits on the output we compress the output.
When adjusting the input, horizontal ax, for setting the black or white point to the shape of the histogram we do the same. The 2 horizontal sliders represent the values 0 and 255. By moving these sliders we correct the input When the right slider is set to 200 by example we correct the input so that that value becomes 255. Everything above the 200 will become 255 by definition. Play with it and watch the histogram and the blinkies.