In some of my previous posts, I compared DxO to Lightroom Classic and I may have expressed displeasure with my hasty purchase of DxO without taking advantage of the full 30-day trial period. However, and thank YouTube… I have seen the light and I whole-heartedly believe I made the right choice with PL after all. Masking seemed inferior in operation compared to LRC, but a few YouTubes on the subject proved to me that AI masking is somewhat better than that of LRC’s masking. Granted, neither are perfect, but now that I know how to utilize the PL masks properly, I am pleased.
At this point, I’m not going to try to resurrect my subscription to LRC as I suggested I might do. I’m in for the long haul.
Tootles.
3 Likes
mwsilvers
(Mark - New Jersey, USA, Win10, RTX 4060, PL9, FP8, VP5, Nikon Zf )
2
I am happy that things have turned around for you and you are now making the switch. A few other new users posting here recently have expressed extremely negative reviews of PhotoLab and PureRaw only to reverse themselves when they learned how PhotoLab actually worked rather than expecting it to work identically with their previous software.
Things posted on the internet are forever and some potential new users may have their opinion of PhotoLab colored by negative reviews regardless of whether those posting them later changed their opinions. I understand the frustrations some users have had and, of course, PhotoLab is far from perfect. I have found over the years that it is important to keep an open mind and seek assistance when problems occur before expressing strong negative feelings that will later need to be reversed.
Why masking is of such importance to you?
What are your typical goals to use them?
From my perspective, I’ve used masks to make people faces more “readable” in certain sports shots, i.e. tune local exposure. Control Points was enough for that purpose. With the AI masks introduction, I use masking more frequently mainly for subject separation, and local exposure correction is of course another typical masks use. And no, I would never want to make an overblown sky to turn blue (I must admit that I’ve once tried, all landing in trash). But one point still stays strong for me: don’t make the photo look artificial and use masks very sparingly.
BTW, PhotoLab has many other features, which are more important to me, like ergonomy (even though LR was quite good at that, PL is still better for me, not using DAM or “project features”), micro/fine-contrasts, clearvison, overall clarity and sharpness without halos, color control and preservation, lacking perhaps good texture creation/control and AI masks for face imperfections. Old LR, C1, and CNX2 user.
Ok, so maybe I over-emphasized the masking thing. I just found it (I thought) more quirky than LR’s masking. And, no, I don’t use it a lot, just recently on a bunch of vacation photos. I still think the shadow and blacks adjustment need a little tweaking as I think they both adjust the whole image a little more than is necessary. I expected the shadows adjustment to just bring out the shadows. But… that can all be adjusted around via other settings. And, yes, the clarity and contrast and lighting controls work very well.
Here’s the bottom line – I am very pleased with PL9. I have a learning curve ahead of me still, but I’m getting there. Ignore my rants. I’m a fan.
Selective Tones “selectivity” is a popular topic here. I think DxO choice was for color preservation. Someting LR or C1 users have to adapt, which is not that difficult, speaking from my own experience.
That said, I think some deepest blacks control should be added to PL. That’s for two purposes: (1) positive blacks local contrasts (used to expose shadow details) can bring posterization, which you would like to kill with superblacks, and (2) to spare you from using tone curve to set the “black point”. OK, it’s a subtle point, with many to disagree.
I’ve noticed having to adjust “absolute black” in my images lately.
What I’d really like is a picker for “absolute black” and “absolute white” and for any applied tone curve to automatically adjust to suit the new black/white points.
Something like “slight contrast (LUMA)” doesn’t scale to new black/white points, it only applies when the tone curve is at its default.
You can create a feature request for that as a separate topic. Or search PhotoLab Feature Requests here in the forum for a close match. The closest I’ve seen might be this one:
In practice, I tend to rely on Smart Lighting to scale other adjustments within a compressed dynamic range. Or I use Photomatix Pro, which has sliders for black point and white point.
In order to get more effect and retain detail in the pulled down sections best to use selective tone sliders with the counterpart in de contrast section. Only -60 in selective tone is totaly different as -30 in tone and -30 contrast. As in result..
Other thing: clearview uses a combination of clarity ( color vibrance) and dehaze spots of microdots of black.
Clearview can’t operate only on deepening colors it also sharpens edges. It works better then microcontrast allone but stil everything above 25% starts or is looking “processed”. If a motherest clearview isnt enough just use a mask filter on the hazy stuf in the distance and edit only that with clearview, contrast or something. ( if you look closely you wil see that optical correction of a lens also adds microcontrast … so best to stack small addings around a image then just rely on the smartnes of clearviewplus.
my default is 15% For pure clarity, you must use tonecurve to add blacknes. And then add some color vibrance manually. For instance virtual polaroid effect on trough watersurface shots.
Smartlighting works the best when used with boxes ( yes the one for faces) place them on the white and shadow which needs pulled up. Use 25% and then use general exposure correction to get overal effect. You wil see that the white box is trying to keep its brightnesposition , so the white doesnt get whiter and blowout wile the image get brighter.
