PL5 - I'm torn!

No offence taken,
Every one has it’s own priorities.
I would manage in one app and fine tune on the fly in dxopl the missed parts and be happy. When managing in dxo starts to be on par i just fade out app 1.

Never used capture one so can’t say anything thoughtfull about it.
The only lans i can break is control line/point has a certain , maybe steep, learning curve to get the hang of it.
Just watch some tutorials or people who are exploring the feature and show his here on the forum.
It would be a waste to upgrade to v5 and not explore that feature.

Peter

@StevenL
Yes sure
Why not simply give us decent Radial filter And just the left part slider in vignettes?

It’s there with PL5’s new selectivity sliders in Control Points

Yes, but it would be more useful as a radial filter if there was also a feathering control like the repair tool which would allow you go from no feathering to 100%. and a boundary area where the feathering would start and end…

Mark

Upgrading for one single feature? I watched “some tutorials” and I’m not impressed. To me, there are much better ways to organize my pictures than to bugger around with keywording, but as you said

At the risk of sounding arrogant: I suspect that most of you guys never got in touch with simpler concepts to manage images than keywording and tons of folders on your harddrives. Intelligent folders? Groups>projects>albums?

Well, I enjoy the stability of PL and some nice features. Of PL4. PL5? No big progress to me. But I’m also no longer using my Fujis, so that feature doesn’t matter anyway. C1 also had ages to go until they could finally support lossless compressed Fuji RAW. What a waste of resources! 50 vs 33 MB, 50% more diskspace was needed to save uncompressed RAW for no real benefit.

I know @Joanna , sorry I replied @StevenL without quoting him. He wrote: “w/ control point and chroma/luma selectivity set to zero you can reach some nice results…”

When figuring out what were these new features within this upgrade I felt just as @zkarj described.
I am not quite sure what is the real improvement with the Refined control point masks. The great u point algorithm of nik was based on two sections:

  1. Selection
  2. Correction

While the reason why Nik U point technology still works good after decades was based on the relationship between the Selection and Correction algorithms.
Now "refining the selection mask without changing the Correction algorithm, I am not sure that it gives you an astonishing results.
Up till now I didn’t see any tutorial that shows the significant improvement in the final result while using the sliders.
Even as an EA member I was confused with the control lines and I assumed “it was me” that I did not understand the full capabilities of the new control points. But now I’m more convinced that it is not that brilliant feature.
Therefore my 2021upgrade was to buy Luminar AI (37$) which really extended my toolbox, and No, sky replacement isn’t my cup of tea. But color harmony, advanced contrast and some other AI tools not to mention the brilliant AI portrait tools.
Now I am more afraid that DXO even though they are the Masters in Optics ( glass) with supereb Raw Converter and Optic module, while Deep Prime is the best in market De-noising tool.
Nevertheless other PL adjustment tools are Copy Paste from Nik collection.
I am afraid that DXO PL package is in “stagnation” there will be no new major editing tools in the near future. Because DXO is like the student who copied and pasted his homework. They have this PL package but they don’t have the knowledge…
In Skylum on the other hand (Was founded on 2008, two years after DXO PL) It is vice versa.
They started all from scratch designing that image editing engines with the new technologies of 2020. They had their Try & Error (and still do) but now they have the knowledge they have the Know How and we will keep on getting new features i the next years.
Yes the workflow is going to be cumbersome using PL as raw converter + some other tools and then exporting to luminar as DNG and keep on editing.

Supporting DXO? Well now they are busy with expending their Users: Fujifilm users and/or Pureraw users. They don’t really need my upgrading support.

Now DXO, you can consider this post as complaints of a spoiled child or as a Wake Up Call.
It’s in your hands.

Absolutely. And it does seem like a pretty simple ask.

But I get the feeling that one of the things that may put the brakes on ideas like this is the physical limitations of the “U-Point” tool. We are now getting to the point where it is hard to envisage adding new tools to the radial menu without it getting too complicated and/or cumbersome.

On one hand, we’ve got folks crying out for more local adjustment functionality; on another hand, we’ve got folks who absolutely don’t want to get rid of the equaliser; and on another hand, those who hate the idea of having adjustments in the palettes.

I have noticed that, with the new Control Lines tool, attention now has to be split between making adjustments to selectivity in the palette and making adjustments to content on the equaliser.

I just tried making a “radial filter” by using a control point and selectivity - the problem is that selectivity is based on tone and texture under the point, which can led to “texture” selection rather than a physical dimension. In addition, controls point selection is very “leaky” and can extend way beyond the intended zone unless surrounded with a mass of negative points.

My current thinking is that local adjustments need to be moved totally to the palettes, where we can select from a greater number of tools and each tool can have its own specialised palette; the only action possible in the image area should be the placing and selection of zones to be affected.

This is where I put my tin hat on and await incoming from this who hate me for daring to mention removing the radial menu and equaliser :pleading_face:

2 Likes

Yes the equaliser controls have to go so that new tools and controls can be added to DXO.

I can’t be the only one who has trouble locating the selection dropper in Control Lines when you are working with several CL’s?

I can see an option where the controls are in the menu area but it would also be possible to have the Selection dropper and Luma & Chroma controls displayed on screen following a right click to display them. Thus the user gets to draw a CL and then right click wherever is convenient to display the selection dropper and Luma/Chroma controls. It makes sense to display the fine tuning controls on screen and this is done successfully in other software like Capture One.

The other modification to the existing system would be to have an option to create a “filled” mask which when used with the Selection dropper and Luma/Chroma controls gives you global selection from the image. The current Kludge is to push a CL past the image edge to give you a filled mask - this is a dreadful Kludge and should be fixed quickly.

Hi all,
we have had a FR here Color Grading In Lightroom Vs. DXO 4 - DxO PhotoLab / Which feature do you need? - DxO Forums, and in this FR I’ve made a statement with tools like are in DaVinci Resolve…only a suggestion.

happy discussion

I get that some people like the equaliser to be present where the correction is being made but on more complex selections that’s not even possible, and every slider on the equaliser is in the palettes anyway for global corrections. I’ve been using PL since v3 was launched and I’m still not used to the equaliser. I particularly dislike when the image content makes it more difficult to see it, and I sometimes start a mask (multi-control point or one of the brushed ones) and end up deleting it and starting from a different location simply to get the equaliser in a better place.

4 Likes

On a big screen the equalizer eat less space, but on a 13" macbook it’s very unpleasant to work with. But on such a small screen everything is less pleasant.

In Capture One there’s no U-points, but layers. Easier to control as each layer can be adjusted like the image (with some exceptions). The cool thing with the equalizer clearly is - less distance for the mouse, but with a lot of U-points I start to find it rather confusing to use.

I assume you know you can uniquely rename control points and other Local Adjustment masks in the LA panel and you can select the mask you want to work on. from there.

Mark .

1 Like

Yes, you’re assuming correctly, but it’s this constant wandering through the panels and the incoherent behaviour (why can I not name the control point next to the equalizer, which would make it easier to organize it in the first place?) which makes PL sometimes feel like a bit of a prototype project software.

The equalizer will almost certainly be
removed altogether at some point in the near future. This has already been done in the latest version of Silver Efex Pro and Viveza in the Nik Collection . it’s just a matter of time. All new local adjustment features are planned for placement in the local adjustment palette.

Mark

1 Like

That would really help to get better overview. At some points the UI looks like a bit of patchwork and to me as a Newbie some “secrets” are still hidden or - if I stumble over them by accident - appear to be a bit more complicated than I think they need to be.

There are a lot of mixed feelings and pros and cons by users concerning having all the adjustment sliders in a panel versus having them in the equalizer. Some prefer having them in panel, and others prefer the equalizer.

The local adjustment palette with the equalizer sliders moved to it, along with all the other local adjustments tools, could also be dragged on screen, and potentially could be made transparent.

Mark

This is a great point, as dragging it on screen would allow the user to put it precisely where they want. Not sure about transparency though.

As for the “confusion of palettes” I can certainly commiserate with that, as I am slowly learning where I put the tools in my own palettes. Local Adjustments is already a “mode of operation” that completely changes the interface in the photo area. Perhaps it should also completely rework the palettes to only the relevant controls.

Purely for information, seeing as I am the fire… err… thread starter… I am no longer torn.

I completed the reprocessing of 167 photos from 2011 — along the way discovering in considerable detail the flaws of the lens in use at the wide apertures I chose on the day — using PL5 and made significant use of Control Lines to tame backgrounds that were trying to steal the scene. That brings my total number of photos reprocessed in PhotoLab 3, 4, and 5 to 1,585.

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About palettes, i was turned off in v1 bij the doubles of tools in essentials palette, it took only space. But now you just arrange your own palettes.
I have locals closed in top.
Then a most used base set, then a toolbox for special work and then the creative set.

The only thing i would like to have is when you click on locals or horizon or patching(clone/repair) that toolwindow is popping up on top no matter where it’s sitting in my duckrow. And when i close it disapears again to its place in my duckrow.

If they let the local adjustmentmenu float it’s fine enough for me, then i can replace it when it’s in the way. A right click on a slider for adding a number or use arrow up/down for fine tuning wouod be nice too.

But non of this is big enough to say it’s not improved enough.

Good idea, it helps to get rid of unnecessary clutter…