Now with the proper tool I set the pipette in the upper right of the sky and positioned the control line at the bottom of the photo. Then I set both chroma and luma sliders near 100. Next I zoomed way in and positioned the negative control points at the top of the bird’s head.
@rrblint Thank you for taking the time to show me your process. I was using the Control Line and had C & L up to 100 but as you noticed the top of the head still needed to be masked. That trick with the little control points works well but looks a bit tedious. However, I’m glad there’s a way to do it!
Not really but I guess it depends on your definition of “tedious”. Anyway it just took me about 5 minutes including making the screenshots. Without those it might have taken about 2 minutes. Not very “tedious” IMO. Glad I could help you out.
I’m really not sure but I don’t think so. The sliders just revert back to 50/50 when you change to CP from CL, but the actual Chroma/Luma values don’t change. That’s probably a bug that needs to be fixed.
This thread is about exactly what I’m trying to do. I have the control line set, but there is a small area at the right that I do not want to be darkened by the control line. So far, everything I have tried has not worked.
This is as far as I got in the other thread, but this thread is more appropriate to as in. There is a building at the right, the top part of it having been darkened by the control line. I want to “mask” the building so the control line makes the sky dark, but not the building.
Lots more editing to do, but I’m trying to learn all this, one step at a time.
Lots more adjustments to make, I’m just starting, but I don’t know how to add something to this adjustment that will protect the building - which I think means “painting the building” with a negative control line, or masking it, or ???
I have constantly been clicking on “show masks” during this procedure. I guess instead of posting images, I should capture a short video. In the meantime, I’m stuck, until I learn how to add an additional (negative) correction to go along with my control line correction. I suspect there is some tiny thing I’m missing, to get this to work. Later today, I just woke up.
herman
(Leica M9 | iPhone 15 Pro | iMac M1 | PL6, FP, VP | Photo Supreme)
22
Have you tried the “Protect an Area” option of the Control Line?
For whatever reason, the “Protect an Area” is missing on my screen??
I think there are demons inside my computer, deliberately trying to make me more confusabobbled than usual…
herman
(Leica M9 | iPhone 15 Pro | iMac M1 | PL6, FP, VP | Photo Supreme)
24
Just hover the mouse cursor over the icons to the left of the Show Marks / Show Cropped Areas boxes on the bottom of the Control Line window and you will be surprised…
Well, that explains why I don’t see the words for about two seconds.
Since I wanted to “paint out” the building with a mask, which I now accept is not possible, I will do what @Joanna did, lots of “negative control points” to not only cover the building, and also the skyline, the buildings off in the distance. Being much smarter than I am, @Joanna added the graduated filter to lighten up the water - which I guess was a good time to do that. I was going to deal with the water as another step, much later.
In retrospect, I wasted a lot of time in trying to use a mask to protect the building at the right.
So, I will go back to the original image, and do all this on my own, using what I have learned here.
One last question - is there any way to leave a ‘note’ about each virtual copy, that I can read as I hover my mouse over the VC images at the bottom of my screen? I know what all five of them are right now, but a year from now I won’t unless I can leave some kind of note.
No you cannot. But on the Mac version you can give your virtual copies a unique name which may help. This feature is not available on the Windows version.
Mark
herman
(Leica M9 | iPhone 15 Pro | iMac M1 | PL6, FP, VP | Photo Supreme)
27
I usually create a textile in the same folder as the ‘master’ image to jot down notes.
In my workflow these text files have the same name as the master file, just the extension is different, so it would be something like DSCF4930 | 2023-04-09.txt
A simple text file created with TextEdit suffices for me, although you can make it as fancy as you like.
These files are not visible from within DPL but they are visible from my DAM which is good enough for me.
After creating my control line, I now knew how to create a “-” control point and how to bring up the message “protect area”. But when I went to the control point, wanting to change the (negative) strength of the control point, there was no way to do so. The settings in the box in the middle were for the original control line. Here’s a full image at this point:
You can’t change the strength of a negative control point or control line. They just protect the area from the effects of the associated control point and/or control line. When you look in mask view you can see what areas are protected and which aren’t . You can enlarge or add more negative control point and lines as needed. It would be nice if you could just paint a mask or erase the affect on a specific area with control pointsand lines, but that feature is unavailable. There is an erase feature with the graduated filter. It would be great if something similar was available for control lines.
Pipette was placed in the top right corner, like what you did.
Oops, it moved to near the center of the image??
I moved it back to the top right, but nothing changed.
Sensitivity settings, as shown in Local Adjustments Palette:
Hmm, you are right, when I look at the mask view, but they’re not doing very much.
If I make many, many, more control points, there starts to be the desired effect.
Eventually, I got this:
I think I ended up with the result I wanted, but was this done correctly??
The sky is close to where I want it, and it no longer looks like the control points are being darkened by the control line. If so, more control points to be added…
Also, how do I move the controls for the control line out of the way, so I can work on the area behind them?
So, you left the sensitivity on default, which does nothing to separate the sky from the rest of the image. Play with the sliders and see how much of the mask turns white or not.
Time to stop, catch my breath, and sort out what to do next.
Few of the other suggestions are done yet, and I’m not even sure this is done.
The sky matches the image, the building isn’t darkened too much.
I think the whole image needs to be a bit lighter, and maybe with more punch/impact.
I would be tempted to stop here, and move on.
I’m not a @Joanna, and I don’t notice anything else I need to do.
I like the water dark, like it is here.
I need to practice all the above more often, so I don’t forget.
