Local adjustments

Hello everyone !

I have been using RawTherapee for many years, and I am convinced of the quality and superiority of this software compared to Adobe Lightroom (which I used in my early days when I started developing .NEF files), at least as far as the development of the raw files is concerned. I’ve always regretted that RawTherapee didn’t become as cataloging as Lightroom, though. Being able to export images with a watermark etc. But that is another subject. Having photographed for many years with the Nikon D700, I stayed with version 4.2 of RawTherapee for a long time.

I recently acquired a Nikon D780, so I had to install the latest version of RawTherapee (5.9) to be able to develop my .NEF files (this is the subject of another post I published on this forum ).

In the latest version, I had the good surprise to discover new possibilities, such as dust correction. But the most important thing for me is the appearance of local adjustments.

The philosophy of local adjustments in RawTherapee is radically different from that in Lightroom. I discover the complexity of this tab, I feel a little lost. I therefore refer to the software manual, which takes the user by the hand to explain the subtlety of all the settings. It must be said, some are intuitive, others are not. This is the case for local settings.

So I read the section of the help that relates to local adjustments. As a beginner, I start to read “Getting started”, “First steps” … activation of local adjustments, preparation … I download the .NEF file which is used for the tutorial, you know, the beautiful red flower which we want to change the saturation and the luminance… So I add a new spot, as indicated… I position the 4 delimiters around the flower… and there, I block !

Can anyone help me ?

At this level of the tutorial, it says: "Select the Lockable Color Picker and locate 3 colors: a) one on the red flower, b) one on the blue sky, c) one on a green leaf.
In the example the 3 colors are:

 Red flower L=48.6 a=74.4 b=47.0
 Blue sky: L=68.6 a=-3.1 b=-16.6
 Green leaf: L=48.3 a=-28.3 b=51.4

No matter how hard I searched, I can’t find this Lockable Color Picker. Where the hell is he ? A more detailed explanation in the help would be welcome. Is it the “Color Check Anchor” tool located on the toolbar at the top of the screen ? I tried, but this one gives me the values in RGB instead of LAB.

It’s really painful, I’m completely stuck in my learning because of this Lockable Color Picker that I can’t find!

I would be very grateful to the good soul who could help me on this one…

Thank you for your answers !!!

Yeah, you got the right tool. You need to place a color checker and click on it while holding ctrl (I think). That way you can cycle through RGB, Lab and HSV.

Lockable picker usage (while hovering a spot):

  1. ctrl + left mouse click: decrease spot in size
  2. ctrl + right mouse click: increase in size
  3. shift + left mouse click: cycle through rgb->hsv->lab
  4. right mouse click: delete spot
  5. ctrl-shift left right mouse click: delete all spots

Alpacalypse Uli and Jade_NL Jacques Supporter

Thank you both for your explanations ! You helped me out a lot ! Thanks for your quick responses.

Hallo @preuthier, and welcome!

Have you tried to denoise that noisy girl yet?
In my opinion that tutorial is a very informative…

Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden