I know the usefulness of layers for sure, but even though I’ve escaped Adobe’s evil clutches, I feel like I still have to accept the Photoshop/Lightroom (pixel editor/photo editor) paradigm.
After all, it took until the features of PL5 for me to feel comfortable leaving Lightroom. The ever-improving and crazy-affordable Photo Affinity has been my pixel editor for a few years now. Neither are perfect, but two together really are giving me everything I need. I don’t even use Adobe Reader. (Foxit instead.) It’s wonderful.
(Excuse me, but I was an Adobe/Apple user for a long, long, long time.)
They are filters. You select with the eyedroper a certain pixelgroup then adjust the subselection of nearby colors sensitivy. And the luminiation band width.
That selection is the subject of your adjustment.
A layer is global and local adjustment is more selective but you can resize the controlpoint that big that it is covering the hole image.
By this definition, they are layers. You also forgot to mention the possibility of reducing visibility. All the mathematical operations PS is adding, all the grouping together came much later to PS. So, please give a definition what a layer does and the local adjustments could not do or could not be brought to doing.
Filter are filtering something out of an image. Local adjustments add: more or less saturation, more or less contrast, micro-contrast, more or less of a certain colour.
Another misconception! On each PS layer I can use a selection or transfer a vecor path to become one or become a mask. It still remains a layer! The only difference is the selection of parts of the picture always needed in PL, but switching the effects on and off is exactly how a layer also shows it’s effect.
As soon as a mask is involved which can be deleted or switched off, the effect is non destructive. It doesn’t matter if I delete a PS layer or a local adjustments layer - after deleting it the changes are gone and as long as it’s exisiting I can always go back to the original. That’s what a layer does.
Ok Mask then. You filter a selection out of your image. It’s a color and lumination selective mask.
Ok and what is the palette of local adjustment?
A list of masks which you can invert, adjust strength(opacity), turn off and on.
Sounds much the same as your definition of a layer.
Ok maybe APS can have more layers in the row/list then DxO.
I never said or claimed dxo has the same features as photoshop.
Yes and it was my misconception/misunderstanding to see your definition as a statement “a local adjustment is not a layer”. But as I re-read your statement, that appears to be not what you said.I think I misunderstood your post, sorry.
That’s what I also wanted to say, I misunderstood your answer. All “layers” are merged into the export file when it’s exported, but as long as they are accessible to be manipulated in the “local adjustments” panel, one can remove them without damaging the RAW file.
What everyone is forgetting is that layers are very order specific. Their effects are applied in order and masks on each layer allow certain parts of the underlying layers through to higher layers. This is VERY different to local adjustments in PL where you can’t change the order or opacity of each layer with masks.
It’s true that layers are order specific, but that’s also the case for PL layers. Try to adjust colours locally, after that another layer of micro-contrast adjustments and maybe a gradient or a noise reduction. Switch one of them off before you export the image and the result will be different - at least that was the case when I tried last time. It doesn’t matter wether DxO allows to alter the order, but there’s a stack of local adjustments and switching off/deleting some or one of them will affect the result. = layers, q.e.d.
In rawfiles and thus rawdevelopers doesn’t matter in which order the layers/mask are applied. Your playing in Workingcolorspace.
They have the same level of importancy/hierarchie.
I can’t get out the top of my head the order of applied tools in dxo but because they actual realtime adjust demosiacing when certain settings are changed.
Donlt know about pixel editors because those editors have a static developed rawfile to pixel file.
This is what people are asking for: they are wanting layers and all that come with them to be available in PL! In other words, people are wanting pixel editing functionality, along with layers, in PL.
It would be interesting to find out what the rather generic term “layer” stands for, for each of us. I think, we are not that far away from each other, and you try to prevent PL to become a Photoshop for RAWs and I think, the importat non-destructive part of RAW editing is only working with layers which to me is everything in a stack, being able to switch on/off or delete it without making the rest of the stack worthless.
This is effectively what PL is doing. Under the covers, every setting/edit that is turned on is applied in a predetermined order during export.
You can turn any edit on or off without effecting ANY other edit. So you could call that layers but we as users have no control over the order our edits are applied.
This is what I love about PL and did not like about Lightroom which applied edits in the order you made them. If you changed an existing edit it would make those later in the edit path. Yes you could go back in the path and if you wanted to start from that point you lost all later edits. PL is so much more elegant and intuitive.
So, I can’t see what layers would add if they were not full function layers as in PhotShop.
@KeithRJ you keep saying that and I have no doubt you’re correct technically but my brain doesn’t work like that
For me, it’s all about how one edit appears to be linked to others. For example, I might apply Clearview, think that looks a bit strong so dial it down on the slider, play around with contrast, apply some colour enhancements, lift the shadows a bit etc. etc. so one edit leads to the next and so on and so on. I accept it doesn’t make a blind bit of difference how I got there when the image is finalised, but I wouldn’t of got there (in my head anyway) if I’d applied them back to front.
For me it’s all layers, one change over the next, even more so with local adjustments BUT I’ve never really used any pixel editor so can’t draw any comparison.
Layers are not only limited to pixel editors. Vector graphics, CAD apps, video editors - it’s a rather common concept and under only one word is a huge bandwidth of possiblities.
Clearview plus is a great example.
The tool in the palette i go never beond 15.
I use a brush and controlpoints and controlline to play local with extra clearity/sharpening or to counter effect a global clearity by tuning it negative. It’s like painting small strokes on places and combine them until it looks like one.
That’s what i like the selective localadjustments you can target a problem area or stretch the adjustment over a larger piece of the image then build actikn over action and fine tune the hole bunch with opacity, so you don’t have to dive in your adjustments and tune it’s sliders equaly down.
Here I see a difference, but I’m not sure if that’s because I’m no native speaker. To me, “layers as in Photoshop is being requested” has a different meaning than “I’d never need Photoshop again”.
The first sentence implies a fully functional, complete layer concept which has been evolved during 32 years (!) since it’s introduction, with smart objects, layer groups, 27 different ways of effects, 10 ways of filling options, filters for layers, fixing methods, opacity and so on. DxO would never be able to catch up with this.
On the contrary, the second sentence implies to make Photoshop redundant. And this might already happen with a much simpler (and yet more elegant) app like Affinity Photo - I also don’t need PS as everything I need to do with the exported result, I can do with Affinity Photo.
So I was mabye mistaken to see the original request as “something like PS, not necessarily as complex and powerful” because given some of the bugs PL showed in version 6.0 I don’t think a RAW-Photoshop is within reach of DxO’s capabilities.
