What software have you purchased?

Ab S said:

Digital Nigel said:

Ab S said:

Digital Nigel said:

Ab S said:

Digital Nigel said:

Ab S said:

Digital Nigel said:

Ab S said:

Digital Nigel said:

Ab S said:

Glen Barrington said:

That just didn't work out the way you expected?

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Actually that was DxO PL6 Elite. What didn't work out as I expected are the tonal sliders (highlight, midtones, shadows, blacks) together with DxO Smart Lighting:

In particular the slider for the Blacks are heavily affecting also the Highlights. I found a work around to get what I want (*), but it is time consuming. This is really one of the major points where DxO should improve PhotoLab.

*) i. See what you can achieve with DxO Smart Lighting, ii. Lighten up with Blacks and/or Shadows, iii. Bring overall exposure down with Exposure Compensation.

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You should do the heavy lifting with DxO Smart lighting (I use a default of 60), and make sparing use of the tonal sliders (I seldom move the black slider).

Don't try to use PL as if it's a inferior copy of C1; it has a different, smarter, faster way of working. You need to learn to use PhotoLab as it's meant to be used, not expect DxO to change it to be more like C1.

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I deliberately did not compare to C1 (this time). In the case above I indeed enhanced Smart Lighting to 60, but that was not enough to lift the dark parts and I did not want to darken the light parts more. But at the end I found a satisfactory setting.

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I push SL up to 80 if needed, but not usually more than 75. I start with it at 60, and typically end up with it between 40 and 75. I start with the highlights at -20, and adjust if needed.

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Thanks Nigel, I will do more experimenting. What I don't understand (theoretically) is that you use quite high a value for Smart Lighting - which should result in lifting background, but also reducing highlights - and then you even suppress highlights more with the value -20. Does that not give to much a highlight suppression?

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Yes, it sounds like it should, but it stops highlights getting blown. I adjust the exposure compensation to suit (starting out by default with Center Weighted Average in my preset). I normally shoot with -0.3 or -0.7 EC.

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Thanks, I will try your settings! I also shoot default with -0.3 EC.

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I know you shoot birds, which I seldom do, but here's an example of an unusual bird in flight (a chinstrapper penguin on a small island called Hydrurga Rocks). The first image was processed using the DxO Standard Preset (but with DeepPRIME) and the second is with my default preset, with no tweaks at all:


DxO Standard preset, but with DeepPRIME


My preset, without any tweaks at all

The raw file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/od1kkjb5d47qgox/DSC02187.ARW?dl=0

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..I see what you mean: with your preset the shadows are enhanced while the bird remains about the same; it is a good example.

In this particular case I would prefer the DxO standard preset to keep the background darker.

Below with my default preset: Smart light 25, Microcontrast 25, color vibrancy 20, DeepPrime

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Yes, that's nice. There's lots of scope to tweak it. For example, if I were to do a bit of tweaking after applying my preset, I might produce this:

View attachment 3432047
My preset, plus a few further adjustments

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yes, that is even better: the orange in the 'wings' of the bird are more pronounced, very nice! What have been your "few further adjustments"?

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I used the HSL wheel to emphasis the orange and de-emphasise the green rocks, increased the CVP and reduced SL to 50. I also applied a blur vignette on the outer rocks.

Something else that's worth trying is to use a local adjustment to make the subject brighter, sharper and more vibrant, and toning down the background. I deliberately overdid it a bit here, but I think it's a useful technique:




The jumping bird is brighter, sharper, more vibrant, while the background has been made duller and less sharp.

yes, these local adjustments - both auto-masking and control points - are a nice feature of PL!

Here an example where I applied a control point in the orange/red of the divers wet suit to emphasize these colors a bit.

But we stole this thread a bit so I stop here (may be we continue in a new thread to exchange practical experiences with PL6..)





Cheers,

--
Ab

In the past I have tried Affinity, Raw Therapee, Dark Table and Gimp but found all of them far too complicated and finicky to use. I used Polarr when it first came out and found it very easy to use but I have not used it for a long time, although I did recently install it onto my chromebook just in case I needed to do some editing on the go. The software I use now is Luminar Neo which I upgraded from Luminar 4. I loved Luminar 4 and it has taken me a while to like Neo because there has been a lot of problems with it initially but it is getting better and better and I love it because you can get incredible results with very little effort. Another program I have used for a long time is Photoscape X Pro, which is a brilliant and very underrated program, it has some fantastic filters and effects built in and I also use it to edit the EXIF data and to catalogue my photos. The newest piece of software I use is Topaz Photo AI, which is also a bit like Luminar Neo in that it is constantly developing and getting better and better.

I purchased LR 3-5, by the time it was time for LR 6 I gladly switched to the subscription to get PS and cloud services to tie in my mobile devices into my workflow. Then I bought Luminar Pluto because of the nice UI for noise reduction - not that I needed it - and it didn't survive an OS update after about half a year of "ownership"... I got so bamboozled by their marketing for Luminar 3 that I ended up buying that POS - which I got refunded after they dropped compatibility with their own files (well you could still open them but the stored settings resulted in grossly different looking results)... Since then I haven't touched their ever growing mess of shenanigans anymore... I evaluated a lot of other programs (Topaz, On1, DxO) but they all fall down when it comes to longevity and sustained development - and in terms of consistent results, the more "AI" they incorporate the more unpredictable the results get...

Ab S said:

yes, these local adjustments - both auto-masking and control points - are a nice feature of PL!

Here an example where I applied a control point in the orange/red of the divers wet suit to emphasize these colors a bit.

But we stole this thread a bit so I stop here (may be we continue in a new thread to exchange practical experiences with PL6..)



Cheers,

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That would be useful for us who perhaps struggle a bit with DXO

Ian

As a DXO PL user I found this discussion far more interesting than the original subject.

Even if I don't feel I struggle with the program at all, your suggestion to set the smart Lightning function higher than my default 25 may save me a lot of time and tweeking...