Whites and Brightness

PhotoLab does not carry a whites or brightness slider like other editors, although I am sure the functionality is covered. What is the best way to adjust the whites and general brightness in PL?

Thanks

Hello @ColinG,

I think what you are looking for is slider “Higlights” in subpanel “Selective tone” from “Light” panel.

Regards

Thanks Marie but highlights are not whites in my books and neither does it cover brightness. Maybe brightness is supposed to be covered by midtones but that does not work for me and tends to take away contrast as it is increased.

Aren’t blacks, shadows, … to whites just synonymes for the parts, that you get, if you split the x-axis of the curves tool into 5 peaces?

Reducing the whites would mean decreasing the slope of the curve behind a point at 80% or so. This was my understanding so far, but maybe I am wrong.

Would be interesting to know which ranges are covered by the synonymes in PL.

Hi Colin - - It’s probably best for @sgospodarenko to respond to this - but, it’s my understanding that PL’s “Smart Lighting” handles much of this functionality for us … in a manner that allows us to adjust the Smart Lighting settings to achieve the “look” we want - without having to adjust explicitly-named sliders (such as LR requires).

Regards, John M

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Try in HSL channels system in the “Color” palette,
The Luminance slider allows you to interven on blacks and whites.

Pascal

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Hello @ColinG,

Well, as you have already advised above a lot of corrections can be responsible for the modification you want: Smart Lighting, Selective Tone, HSL and other but without your image it’s difficult to say which one is necessary for you. Could you, please, provide us with the image either here or upload to upload.dxo.com if you want it to be private.

Thank you
Regards,
Svetlana G.

This is not an image specific query. Most editors have white and brightness sliders along with black of course. PL does not and I wonder why. Yes there is the tone curve but that is not so convenient, others have curves in addition. Smart Lighting may be the answer but it has not bridged the gap for me thus far.

As an example, here is an image go a cruise ship entering Amsterdam. I just cannot get it to “pop”, it looks flat to me - lacks brilliance.

Should mention I tried to upload an 8 bit tiff and the original raw (nef) but the forum would not accept them. In both cases it said it could not determine the size - image might be corrupt.

Well,
Selective tones is mostly responsible for that. But you can also make some improvements with Smart lighting and Clear view and Color accentuation corrections (in case of your sky I’d suggest the local clear view).

Regards,
Svetlana G.

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To make things pop, I normally drag the centre of the curves tool up and move it to the left or right, until it looks good. This is called ‘changing the gamma’, I think.

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Asser, an excellent tip. Thank you so much, it really does help big time.

Colin

As already said, you can do it with a slider.
The Luminance slider in HSL channels system, allows you to intervene on blacks and whites.

Pascal

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