New Episode: Editing request: how to achieve similar result as with Luminar Neo:
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I feel like it looks like a bit of halo in the OP Luminar image…at least it comes across that way… I notice it on the nearest point on the shore line or it looks like it when you flash the comparison… I find this sort of thing with the tools in ON1 when I use them as well…ie very prone to halos…
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Boris mentioned that in the video
Oh you busted me for skipping through… 
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One of those guys who heads straight to the comments section from the headline… 
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No quite… I did speed browse…. I was on a break at work… I do watch the full video esp those that Boris makes…. Just one of those things I really noticed when he would pull the comparison panel divider back and forth….
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@s7habo, thank you for another excellent tutorial. How did you decide to go with Color Balance RGB at the beginning to increase the contrast? My first instinct would have been Tone Equalizer, so I’m interested to know why you went a different route this time. Would you need two instances of Tone Equalizer, one with the “simple tone curve” preset to increase the contrast and then another (with the default mode instead of “simple tone curve”) to bring back the details in the shadows and highlights?
I like to use it because in one place it has everything I need in terms of contrast and saturation.
For contrast, Tone Equalizer would be just as good, yes.
Yes.
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Hello Boris,
Grest tutorial as always.
At the beginning you use color balance RGB to enlarge the histogram and then tone equalizer to shrink It again, in order to get lights and dark inside linear range of filmic. Apparently to me these two operarions seem to be One opposite of the other, but obviously i am missing something. Could you tell me please the result achieved? Thank you
I wonder if we are spoiled(maybe too strong a word) in this aspect when it comes to almost no halos in the current scene referred workflow in darktable. I do remember seeing some old technical AP videos and he really hammered on the idea of not having halos at all.
Sorry for the offtopic Good video as always Boris!
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Perhaps this graphic can help:
You see how at the end the highlights have been expanded so that a small part is also in the middle gray area.
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Thanks, this graphic is helpful! When I use Tone Equalizer, I always try to make the mask “bar” fill up as much of the space as possible without clipping either end before getting started. Is this the correct idea, or in some cases should the mask not look like this when setting up Tone Equalizer? It seems like having as much fine-grained control (by filling the whole “bar”) is a good idea
You might actually have more control in a region if you shift it say for highlights … I think using more than one Instance at a time vs trying to use one alway gets better results… making only small changes in one region in each instance and target another with a second or third instance will provided nice control. I think many users try this fill the bar approach and then start mouse wheeling all over the image and usually this gives an inferior result and can even break the image tonality…
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How do you tell when the bar is appropriately configured for a particular region? Is there something specific I should be looking for in the histogram or black and white version of the image that represents the mask?
I am likely off the mark but you have a range of 8 to work with in the UI so for example.one of my favourite presets relight often has the bar shifted well right… It’s usually great right out of the gate and if you center the mask…it’s often not great and then you have to fiddle with the curve. If I want to pull highlights I go the other way… esp if I am blending in a color channel to tweak a sky or foliage … it seems to allow for more subtle adjustment… but maybe I am fooling myself. I feel like this was discussed at some length in an older post… you might want to dig back
The tonal region of interest should be within the range covered by the mask. E.g. if you are interested in working on the highlights, it doesn’t matter that the shadows are not within the mask range. Otoh, if you want to do e.g. a global contrast change, it is important that the mask covers the full tonal range of the image (perhaps using the mask contrast slider).
Keep in mind that adjusting the mask doesn’t do anything to your image, it just sets for each slider in the other tabs which tonal range will be affected (so it’s purely a mapping operation)
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Thanks for the clarifications. The general situation I’m thinking of is the subject is in the shade outside (and thus too dark) but the background is bright and sunny. In this case I want to lighten the subject without blowing out the background, but I also want a smooth transition to the brighter parts, so I try to set the bar to cover the whole tonal range, but maybe I need to target just the darker parts of the image with the bar. I’ll play around with it more
I really liked the way you explain how to distribute luminance manipulation between color balance RGB and tone equalizer. I’ll have to watch the beginning one more time to really get the trick you explain about concentrating all the image in the medium “dynamic range” before expanding it again.
Once again, thanks for this very instructive video, even though I’m not really into the processing achieved with luminar …
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Try doing it with 2 instances and see if you get better results or at least more control… do the shadow lifting and then go back and tweak the highlights
I’ll give that a shot
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