Selective masking of adjustments on PL6

[MSmithy (Milan)]

@mikemyers

One quick question here - once an image is edited in Capture One, and also edited in PhotoLab, what will the differences be, if any? Are they different only in how the tools are used, or does one of them create a “better” end result?

Well, PhotoLab offers better demosaicing and denoising and lens correction that in my tests can be seen when you compare the exported images of the two software.

Capture one and PhotoLab can have similar or different color rendition, depending on what you choose. Both program have plethora of tools for editing of tone and color of virtually all images for almost all needs. Its just a big different way of working that for some users takes a bit of getting used to.

Like Adobe, since few versions ago Capture One offers panorama stitching and HDR merging, I think it offers AI assisted horizon fixing and AI dust removal for dust on the lens and server.

It has some interesting features like ability to easier and better color and exposure matching between shots, it has probably the best theater support and more organizational type tools.

For that reason some people prefer to work in Capture One, but also prefer image quality of PhotoLab.

DXO’s PhotoLab or PureRAW offer, as you know ability to export Linear DNG + optical corrections and all the denoising and all that and it will be compatible with programs like Capture One to continue working as if the RAW was out of camera. Hence one can take advantage of both programs.

Overall, if the image quality itself is the goal, DXO is still the best. If you need a lot of other tools, DXO can be used with C1 or Lr to get the best everything.

[danielfrimley (Leica APS-C CL, Nikon D850 | MacBook Air (M1))]

@MSmithy

Overall, if the image quality itself is the goal, DXO is still the best. If you need a lot of other tools, DXO can be used with C1 or Lr to get the best everything.

Yup. This ^

[platypus (Canon & Mac (Intel and M1))]

@mikemyers

does one of them create a “better” end result?

Yes, they both do and no, they don’t.

You are the creator and they are just tools. Use the one(s) you like and learn how to use it (them) properly…or risk to find yourself in a Buridan’s donkey position.

[mikemyers]

I got Capture One at no charge as it was included with my Fuji cameras. It took while, but I got my version updated, and I think it is now working. I’m happy it is up and running, but I have no plans to start using it, until when/if I need it. I’m spending most of my time (it seems) on PhotoLab.

Along with that, I am probably going to put my D3 away for anything “complicated”. I needed to photograph a conference today, and what used to be effortless with my D780 had me guessing with the D3 - I had to use a high ISO, and but for PhotoLab, I’d have created three very noisy images. The people who want them will still be quite pleased, but the D780 would have done it better. It doesn’t help any that the rear screen on the D3 looks “faded”.

@MSmithy

Capture one and PhotoLab can have similar or different color rendition, depending on what you choose. Both program have plethora of tools for editing of tone and color of virtually all images for almost all needs. It’s just a big different way of working that for some users takes a bit of getting used to.

I “choose” to stick with PhotoLab most of the time, if not all the time. The only “extra” software I need is Topaz, and I already bought that.

[Prem (Win11, Sony a99, PL, FP, VP.)]

@mikemyers

Along with that, I am probably going to put my D3 away for anything “complicated”. I needed to photograph a conference today, and what used to be effortless with my D780 had me guessing with the D3 -

As @Joanna has already said to you. Why are you using your D3 instead of your D780. As you have found out from your latest escapade. You should never use old technology especially when your newer technology can do all the old technology can do plus a lot more. so all I can suggest now is next time you go photo hunting or have a project to shoot take your latest technology i.e. the D780 plus your 24-70 wide zoom and your 70-300 tele zoom. This will cover 90-95% of your photos. This will certainly save you having the wrong lens for the wrong picture and losing so many pixels.

[mikemyers]

@Prem

Why are you using your D3 instead of your D780. As you have found out from your latest escapade. You should never use old technology especially when your newer technology can do all the old technology can do plus a lot more.

In a logical world, I agree. I don’t think I am very logical, and I’m mostly doing photography for fun, because I enjoy it, it’s relaxing, and in the long run, I get pretty much the same results regardless of what camera I use.

The D780 is perfect, and has lots of capability, and I suspect it can do anything I’m likely to want to do.

The D3, and my Df, and my Leica M cameras are limited compared to the D780, and require a bit more “thinking” to get the most out of them. For me, they are more “fun”.

But, let’s go back to the reasons for using a D780. I suspect Nikon’s new Z9 can do things better than all the rest of my cameras put together. It can do things I never dreamed of, with no mechanical shutter at all, and perfect focus tracking all over my camera’s sensor. If I should use my D780 instead of anything else I owned, I should probably buy a Z9, which is the best one can buy in today’s world.

What’s not included in all the reasonable reasoning is why I do this at all - which is for enjoyment. My Mazda two-seater Miata is as close as I can get to my old 1960 MGA. Back when I had motorcycles, I enjoyed my ancient British motorcycles more than my (far better) Japanese motorcycles.

Of course you are right, as is Joanna, and if I were asked to take a specific photo, or was again doing so for a magazine, I would do as you suggest, and use the best gear I had.

…although, if I was going out for a walk, or going food shopping, and wanted a camera, I would probably take one of my older cameras, if nothing more than for the enjoyment of using them once again.

(While my experience yesterday told me that if I’m going to photograph people at a conference room in dim lighting, taking a newer camera would have, and should have, been a better idea, but I made the old D3 do what I wanted anyway, in “manual mode”, and even if the D3 was going “OUCH!” when I raised the ISO to where I wanted it, PhotoLab made those images perfect anyway, for their intended purpose.)

@Prem

This will certainly save you having the wrong lens for the wrong picture and losing so many pixels.

While that is very true, I usually make-do with whatever I’ve got.
…but if it’s anything important, I will certainly do as you suggest!!!

Most of you would probably capture beautiful images, even if all you had was an old “box camera” or one of the early toy “digital cameras”. The quality of the captured images would have a lot more to do with YOUR capability, than with the capability of the camera. IMHO.

[mikemyers]

@Prem

next time you go photo hunting or have a project to shoot take your latest technology i.e. the D780 plus your 24-70 wide zoom and your 70-300 tele zoom.

After my previous post, I decided to walk to the local food shop before the Miami temperature went off the scale, or maybe I should say my scale. It’s a mile or so walk, and I was mostly looking for shady spots, stopping occasionally to capture a photo. On the walk home, I felt rather exhausted - especially with the Florida sunshine beating me down.

I left the D3 at home, and was going to take the D780, but my lightest “good” camera is my Df, so I stuck my very light 24-70 lens on it. When I was almost home, I put my food bags down to capture an image of a rather photogenic tree - or was that an excuse to stand in the shade? I dunno.

I was surprised by a “rustling noise” from a little above where my camera was pointing, and found this squirrel who probably wished I would leave. I was wishing it would stay - and this is the first image I captured, while it was still a little startled. Then it came down another foot, and planted its feet firmly on the tree, and stared at me. I got a ‘technically better’ photo of it a few minutes later, but I prefer this image, where it was trying to figure out if I was dangerous.

It, and I, eventually moved away, with me wanting to get back into my air conditioned apartment. For the sake of the photo, I wished I had followed your advice and put on the longer lens, but that might have scared it off.

I didn’t do much to the image with PhotoLab, just making changes while watching how they affected the image on the screen, after cropping as much as I dared. I did use a control point to lighten up its left foot/paw. I’m sure Joanna will point out things I did wrong - but I’ve got a good smile on my face until that happens.

DF1_3217 | 2023-06-29.nef (34.2 MB)
DF1_3217 | 2023-06-29.nef.dop (15.6 KB)

I suppose this is a better photograph, but the “energy” is gone… I wonder if the squirrel also enjoyed the shade?

[Prem (Win11, Sony a99, PL, FP, VP.)]

I like the first one but the tree trunk that the squirrel is on could do with the top and bottom darkening slightly so that the eye does not try to go out of the picture. The second one the squirrels face is quite shaded and the top of the tree trunk again could do with darkening.

As I have said before you are taking pictures for yourself so my comments do not necessarily apply. You do what you want to do the same as I do.

[mikemyers]

Oops, these got posted here - I meant to post them in the “off-topic” thread.

@Prem

I like the first one but the tree trunk that the squirrel is on could do with the top and bottom darkening slightly so that the eye does not try to go out of the picture.

Wrong thread, but yes, I agree with you regarding the first image, which is the only one I like. Will do as you suggest. I hadn’t even considered darkening the tree on the left as it approached the edge of the photo.

D3 is packed away in a drawer, and if I go out hunting tomorrow, it will be with the D780. (But if it is 95 degrees again, I may just stay home!)

[mikemyers]

Corrected as suggested:

Thank you Prem.

[Prem (Win11, Sony a99, PL, FP, VP.)]

Yes, much better. Sorry for being so critical.

[mikemyers]

Please, don’t be “sorry”, and always just say what you think, good or bad.

Oh, and I think my squirrel was “splooting” - never heard of that before. I guess it was as hot, and uncomfortable, as I was!

The heat is making squirrels 'sploot' — a goofy act that signals something...

[MSmithy (Milan)]

@mikemyers

I didn’t do much to the image with PhotoLab, just making changes while watching how they affected the image on the screen, after cropping as much as I dared. I did use a control point to lighten up its left foot/paw.

I hope you don’t mind, but I took a proverbial shot at it.

Nice, action pose. Ideally, squirrel being the subject of the scene, the composition and lighting would draw attention to the subject matter. So I did some cropping and flipping around and some dodge and burn and this is what I got.

P.S.

For some reason on Windows DXO PhotoLab did not found the appropriate optical module for the camera and lens combo, so I run into some color and tone rendition problems. The exported JPEG looked different than raw, so I had to tweak the exported JPEG some more. Anyway, this is my final result.

[mikemyers]

@MSmithy

So I did some cropping and flipping around and some dodge and burn and this is what I got.

Not for me.

[IanS]

@mikemyers

One quick question here - once an image is edited in Capture One, and also edited in PhotoLab, what will the differences be, if any? Are they different only in how the tools are used, or does one of them create a “better” end result?

I guess you have the “free” version of Capture One. This is a severely cut down version of Capture One Pro and doesn’t even have local edits. I wouldn’t bother with it. The Pro version is excellent and my main photo editor. Photolab noise reduction and lens corrections are far superior to C1, but all the other aspects like colour, local editing, DAM (not as good as LR), highlight&shadow control, etc it is superior in my opinion. C1 has controls like luma curves (impact contrast without impacting colour), levels, brightness slider, advanced colour editor, panos, HDR, excellent soft proofing etc.that Photolab currently doesn’t have. Local editing is far superior (basically every tool can be used locally), largely because they have been doing it for many years and the tools have matured. That’s the good, the bad is C1 is relatively very expensive and they have basically changed to a subscription model which some people don’t like.

DXO have an opportunity to capitalise as users are looking for an alternative editor. I just wish they would focus on improving and enhancing the basic editing capabilities improving curves, adding luma curves, colour selection, luma masks, levels, edge detection and mask refining/feathering, split the Smart Lighting into separate fill light and highlight recovery sliders etc. DXO have basically everything in place to be able to enhance Photolab but development focus appears to be elsewhere. Competitors are not idling, Adobe recently destroyed the market for Pure Raw with their new Noise reduction and severely impacted the chances of getting people to switch from LR to Photolab. I hope DXO take note and keep Photolab competitive.

[MSmithy (Milan)]

@IanS

DXO have an opportunity to capitalise as users are looking for an alternative editor. I just wish they would focus on improving and enhancing the basic editing capabilities improving curves, adding luma curves, colour selection, luma masks, levels, edge detection and mask refining/feathering, split the Smart Lighting into separate fill light and highlight recovery sliders etc. DXO have basically everything in place to be able to enhance Photolab but development focus appears to be elsewhere. Competitors are not idling, Adobe recently destroyed the market for Pure Raw with their new Noise reduction and severely impacted the chances of getting people to switch from LR to Photolab. I hope DXO take note and keep Photolab competitive.

I wonder how much of this is true. It sounds nice. But I wonder. If you have been in photography business than you must have seen similar stories about Nikon, Canon, Sony, Panasonic etc. One company, say, Canon would come out with some new feature or lens and forums would be full of; “Nikon is finished” headlines and so called influencers, a term I hate would be trumping over themselves to be the first to make videos with headlines like… “I’m switching to Canon” or “Why I am Switching to Canon”, or “Canon just destroyed Nikon”, or “Nikon is finished”. Than two months later Sony would come out with new camera or feature and same headlines with only name change would populate the interwebs. “Sony just destroyed Canon”, “I’m switching to Sony”, “Goodby Canon”. etc. lol And yet all these brands are here, even Nikon with Z9 and Z8 pulled an underdog.

My point is that I’ve been watching this type of impressions as you outlined in your comment, and I just can’t take it seriously without a hard data to back it up. Especially in the case of nitch companies and user habits. People who used DXO will often stay with DXO because there is something about it they like. Switching their entire workflow is more a thing forum people do , not people who do a lot of work because its a hassle at best or a serious cost at worse, and if it works, they usually don’t switch lightly. You say: “Adobe recently destroyed the market for Pure Raw with their new Noise reduction and severely impacted the chances of getting people to switch from LR to Photolab.” I don’t know about that. Because there are other perspectives you can use. DXO stole the market from Adobe for years via plug in that was their existing technology and it didn’t cost them all that much to do R&D. In made people aware of DXO as well. To lose some of that was invetable, because of giant budget Adobe has, but for C1 users, PureRAW still works as it did before. For users who have a particular camera supported by Pure RAW and they purchased the product, no need to discart it if it works for them, does it? For people who don’t want to pay subscription of Adobe it still works. Pure RAW still offers lens correction better than Adobe, for some an important factor.

My point is that, unless there is some hard reliable data to back up DXO is dead narrative, I’m inclined to take it less seriously than you do. Similar as premature Nikon is dead narratives.

That being said, there is valid criticism or suggestions for DXO to improve existing tools or add new useful ones. I don’t know on what DXO team is working on next, but usually companies have few projects in the works that are not known to public. What they are, I do not know.

After looking at various masking abilities of many applications, I think the one that seems most intuitive, easy and useful would be implementation from Davinci Resolve called Magic Mask. If something is to be done, I vote for that, although I don’t think I’ve really had many if any situations where such precise masking was needed in DXO PhotoLab, because you don’t really do compositing work or FX job in DXO. its just a way to prepare RAW files in terms of demoseicing, denoising, and do color and tone adjustments. Precise, hard edge masking I find to be redundant and in some cases problematic because of the harsh transitioning effect that can create weird looking images when used too much. For subtle or even dramatic color and tone change sin an image, there is not many if any image I can recall that DXO was not able to provide me with tools to do what I wanted. Which makes me wonder, is it DXO that is the problem or people’s expectations. This is not to discard user expectations, but argue that current set of tools is sufficient for virtually all scenarios withing reasonable demand, for a skillful user. If DXO does not have such users as their primary base, than it might be in trouble. Otherwise, they should keep refining what they have and innovate in areas that are not done by other companies.

Like I said, if DXO was a compositing tool, or was about FX job, than hard edge, precision masking would be a must, otherwise I think its not needed, but if people want it and DXO wants it, why not. Than I would personally suggest that DXO team check out Magic Mask in Davinci Resolve. Easy to use, fairly precise and has decent amount of control and its as intuitive as control points, since you literally paint over objects you want to select. Unlike Magic Brush in C1 , this thing uses AI to find the edges. Naturally with this kind of masking, more layer control would be needed as well, otherwise its very limited.

How to use Magic Mask in Davinci Resolve Studio 18 | Tutorial

[mikemyers]

@IanS

I guess you have the “free” version of Capture One. This is a severely cut down version of Capture One Pro and doesn’t even have local edits. I wouldn’t bother with it.

Thanks; I guess we get what we pay for. Since I don’t use it, and won’t spend the $$$ for things I prefer to do in PhotoLab, I will forget about it.

@IanS

users are looking for an alternative editor

Why? Just to find more ways to confuse me? For 99.9% of what I do, PhotoLab is all I need. Lightroom? Why bother. Photoshop? Sometimes I need the things it can do, but not very often, and those things are rarely “image editing” the way I do things. If I remember correctly, I can even edit my infrared images in PhotoLab, but haven’t done that in ages.

@MSmithy

I would personally suggest that DXO team check out Magic Mask in Davinci Resolve. Easy to use, fairly precise and has decent amount of control and it’s as intuitive as control points, since you literally paint over objects you want to select.

Thanks for the reminder - although I did buy the paid version because I want 4K video, DaVinci Resolve is free, and seems to be just as powerful (maybe more so now???) than Apple’s Final Cut Pro which I’ve been using for several years. Sometime soon I need to check out those new features…

[MSmithy (Milan)]

Resolve, especially studio version is a lot more complete and powerful than Final Cut, but chances are you probably won’t use 90% of the features offered, hence it is questionable if there is any difference when using just few basic features. Final Cut, Premier Pro, Davinci Resolve, are all capable Non Linear Editors or (NLE), what will get the job done for most users looking for casual video editing. For working professionals or advanced enthusiasts, things start to diverge the more demanding things become. One good thing about Resolve as you noted is that it offers free version that is quite powerful and great way for many users to start, while studio paid version is not subscription or that expensive, and yet is more powerful and mature system than the competition. There is something for everyone.

[mikemyers]

Had I not gotten involved in 4K video for eye surgery videos, and then bought my D780, I was happy with the Apple software. The Davinci software was quite easy to use. I forgot about it when I returned from my visit to India, last July through September.

I guess I ought to install it on my home computer…