Yes. That is exactly what I did.
I do not see why I can not just put the cursor on the middle of the histogram itself and drag the whole thing left or right, or why I can not place the cursor on the ends of the histogram and drag only that part. That is what seems logical to me.
One thing level curves are incredibly useful for is identifying even the smallest dust goobers on your sensor. To do this for a blue sky background, for example, activate the tone Curve adjustment and place a handle about 1/3 of the way up the diagonal line and pull it upwards to appoint slightly above the mid horizontal gridline. Next, place another handle two thirds of the way up the diagonal line, and pull downwards to be low the one quarter horizontal grid line. The result will be an orange sky with despots standing out as bright white objects against this background. Using the healing tool, you can very easily zap all of these, and paste them to all images in your workflow.
Backgrounds of other colors require different manipulations of the curve, but all are basically two handled operations, and simply playing with it while viewing the preview will reveal a combination that highlight your dust spots. Once you have zapped all of your despots, simply turn off the tone curves adjustment and your image will return to normal.
Hope that this helps.
P.S. I have come to DxO from Apple’s Aperture, so I agree let the tone curve superimposed over a histogram would be helpful because you can see the effect that your adjustment is having on the appearance of the image as a function of color channels all in one place. It’s not really a big deal, but I had gotten quite used to it.
The tone curve can sometimes provide the levels kind of adjustment. however you cannot recover highlights with the tone curve. There is no way to adjust the curve ABOVE 255. Your RAW file will have 1.5-2.5 stops of information above 255 (more or less depending on other adjustments) but there is no way to access this. If you pull the maximum level down it just clips. This is really useless.
If you are trying to INCREASE contrast with the levels tool, the tone curve can do that. If you are trying to DECREASE contrast and recover highlights you can’t do it. You have to do it with a combination of tools.
Finally a levels tool that processed before the tone curve would be a great way to make the contrast/brightness capability of the levels tool independent of the tone curve.
Here’s a feature request you can vote for if any others are still interested in this:
Beware: The tone curve’s horizontal axis is labeled 0 to 255, but these values just stand in place of whatever range a camera offers in its raw image file.
My EOS 5D Mark III delivers values between 0 and somewhere near 14’000, but black level is at 2048, so 0-255 corresponded to (the most significant bits of) the range between 2048 and 14’000… Black- and white levels can vary too, and the camera writes the respective values into the file’s metadata fields so that an application can interpret input data sensibly.
Yes. The point is the curves doesn’t allow any access to what DXO currently views as 255.
The point is with the tone curve you cannot bring “255” down to “240” and have 241-255 fill in with what was previously above 255.
There’s a feature request which may be of interest to those here:
I’m not sure if I understand you correctly.
Instead of this:
you want this?
There is nothing above what is called “255”. 255 stands for whatever your camera delivers as “white” (x-axis) and what DPL will present as “white” (y-axis). I’m not saying that 0-255 is BS, it is simply a range of numbers. Adobe Lightroom calls it 0-100.
Here’s a couple of raw image histogram of shots with clipped highlights. Clipped highlights display as y=255 in DPL, whereas the value in the camera file is way above “255”. Check out the values for black and white in each of the histograms, both are translated to 0-255 in DPL.
EOS 5D
EOS 5D Mk III
Note: Different cameras present different values for black and white. Even different models from the same brand do.
You can imagine there is highlight detail in the raw file that wouldn’t be present in a JPG file of the same capture. However when you load that RAW file with no adjustments at all, you can lower the exposure by 1 or 2 stops and recover the highlights.
You can do it with exposure/contrast you can recover those highlights with selective tone.
Try to recover those highlights as you would with levels by using the tone curve. You can’t. The tone curve doesn’t pull levels down from the raw file above the JPG clipping point.
If you take an image that’s overexposed by 2 stops you can recover some blown out highlights with selective tone. Try to recover those highlights with tone curve.
I want to be able to recover those highlights with a levels tool. Not with selective tone.
@MikeR, with ALL channels in your raw file at maximum (R 255, G 255, B 255), there is NO more information except pure white – NO chance to recover anything.
When bringing down the clipping point you get a certain degree of grey, but no texture.
You’re missing the point. When you bring a raw file into DXO DXO renders it similar in brightness to the JPG file. Values on the histogram and on the tone curve from 0-255 represent the current rendering. The raw file actually goes to 1000 or 1500. Or some number well above 255.
When I bring the 255 level down to 240 I want the information from 256 to 1000 or 1500 to start coming down. JUST LIKE IT DOES WHEN I MOVE THE HIGHLIGHT SLIDER.
Are you familiar with Fast Raw Viewer or it’s siblings?
If you know the tested DxO mark DR you can see if there is clipping present.
Most have around plus 2 stops headroom against ooc jpegs.
If you have filmpack elite then move contrast highlight and selective tone hightlight the same level.
Much less grey blotches.
Exactly. Simply moving the highlight slider to the left shows there is detail above 255 in the RAW file. I simply want to be able to recover that with a “levels” like tool.
You’re missing the point. When you bring a raw file into DXO DXO renders it similar in brightness to the JPG file. Values on the histogram and on the tone curve from 0-255 represent the current rendering. The raw file actually goes to 1000 or 1500. Or some number well above 255.
When I bring the 255 level down to 240 I want the information from 256 to 1000 or 1500 to start coming down. JUST LIKE IT DOES WHEN I MOVE THE HIGHLIGHT SLIDER.
The camera captures an analogue value and digitizes that to a digital value. When using a 8 bit conversion than 255 is the max. There’s just nothing more then 255. But when using a 12 or 14 bit conversion then the numbers can be more but 100% is still 100%. For 8 bit 100% is 255, for 12 bit 100% is 4096 and for 14 bit 100% is 16384.
George
What do you mean with a “levels like tool”?
A combination of exposure and black and whitepoint?
I want to be able to change the expose and contrast at the same time with one control. I want to be able to put a specific peak, for instance a white shirt around 240 without having to adjust exposure and contrast and exposure and contrast to get the shirt at 240 and the blacks still black.
With a levels tool this is a piece of cake.
This is how I always adjusted all my pics first. Then the other stuff like highlights shadows to tweak specific tones come after that initial equalization.
If contrast is increasing you can do this with tone curves. If contrast needs to decrease or any of the scene is overexposed you are stuck with the balancing of exposure and contrast sliders.
Ah ok, so if dxo makes a checkbox to connect advanged contrast sliders with the selectivetone sliders so they move as one this would make you happy?
Dxo has with the selective tone sliders one thing.
The overlap is a bit big. It’s feadering alot inside the controlled zone of the next slider.
Which is a good thing for smoothnes of the transision but a pain if you are targetting a certain exposurelevel. Those levels i use controlpoints for. (which selects lumination and color.)
What DxO would benefit from are a distinct difference between sharpening microcontrast slider like clearview plus and a DeHaze kind of blacklevelslider.
Nonsharpeningcontrast. Finecontrast in combination with blacks does a bit this function or a small pull in tonecurves blacklevel.
I would like a smart exposure tool in smartlightingtoolset which has two eyedroppers.
Whitelevel and a blacklevel. NOT the same as the use of boxes.
Then i can set white point and drag darkshadow to black
Give those eyedroppers a 0-10% adjustable in preference drawback from edge 0 and 255. So i can do a two click exposure ánd DR setting.
The smart exposure idea with two eye droppers is another idea. You could use those eyes toppers to set the white point and black point on that levels tool.
The key point here is to be able to change the contrast and exposure by adjusting the white point OR the black point. Today, any adjustment to the exposure slider changes the white point and the black point at the same time. Any changes to contrast slider also changes the white point and the black point at the same time. A true levels tool would be a great alternative.
With ‘‘Levels’’ do you mean this new tool should look similar as Levels in Capture One?
C1’s levels tool offers great possibilities and is easily the implementation I like best.
Make the size of the pickup tool variable and DxO would get another of my votes.
We should add a feature request for this!
