DxO Smart Lighting for setting the black and white points?

DxO PhotoLab
#1

I understand that the spot weighted mode can be used to set the black and white points by choosing lighten or darkening for the chosen regions. I fail to see how that can be done. My software seems to have no options for the areas to chose from.

PL6 Elite, WIN 11.

#2

In the Smart lighting palette:

  1. select the ‘spot weighted’ button
  2. click on the ‘tool’ button
  3. click and drag on the image to select as many areas as you want. In this case two, over the darkest and brightest parts of the image
  4. click on the ‘close’ button (bottom right of the image)

Job done!

#3

Yes, but how to determine if the areas are for dark or light? That is what I understood is possible.

I saw one comment in this forum saying that is possible I forgot where it was said. (Joanna???)

#4

Simply draw around the brightest and darkest areas and this will set the white and black points from within those rectangles. PL will work its magic in deciding.

Just be sure to be generous with the size of the rectangles

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#5

I never thought it was that easy without having to tell PL what is intended to be the dark and what the light ends. I Tried that and it seems to work providing the brightness of the selected areas are not too equal.
Thank you Joanna - again!

//Klaus

#6

Yeah, as mentioned just use spot weighted tool and draw a rough line around bright and dark areas. You can have more than two as well and you can reposition and change shape or delete them after the fact. Super useful.

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#7

There is an other trick which works very well.
1 set a box on a brightest spot. In smartlighting keep it at modes slight.
(image gets darker.)
2 use normal exposure compensation to raise exposure.
(smartlighting try’s to keep this box the same brightnes wile you raise brightnes by exposure compensation…)

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#8

Oh and to be clear about setting blackpoint and whitepoint that’s not what is the case.
It’s near white and darkisch shadow. Only the tonecurve has black and white point setting i am afraid.
They work a bit like high key and low key.
Original the boxes are for faces of people. By marking the faces you mark points of importancy for brightnes. (dragging a face out of the shadow wile the image doesn’t need to brighten overal.)
So don’t use the boxes to set black and white.
Use them for marking important items in your image.
Protect bright point for getting brighter=> place a box around it.
Drag a object out the deep shadow? => place a box around it.
Protect a face for getting to dark. => place a box around it.
Keep it as much as possible in modes slight. 25% the higher you raise the smartlighting bar the flatter, more stretch the tone curve gets. Aka you lose contrast.

I use it mostly to fast drag a bright point a bit down, or raise the deep shadows a bit.
(use both at the same time and your tonal contrast suffers a bit.)
Restore this with other tools wile Smartlighting adapt on your changes.
Or box faces wile you change selective tone or use masking in locals to edit surroundings.

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#9

Thank you alot my friends.My question was more than answered and I learned alot new. It is not useless to be member of the community. I hope some day I can help other users as well.

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