Being a beginner in RAW editing, I really appreciate ART! The tools at the right of the screen look very ‘logical’ to me without distracting complex terminology. Many thanks for offering this fork of RawTherapee.
I’m very much interested in local edits as well - and now comes my question. As a beginner, I have no troubles creating a mask, it all feels logical and easy. However, the tools that are available for local edits (Color correction, Softening, Local contrast and Texture) look very complex to me. If I would like to make some basic adjustments, like editing the exposure using a local edit, I cannot figure out how to do this.
Is this just due to my lack of experience? Maybe I missed some documentation about it. Or would it be possible to add some ‘easy’ adjustments in the local edit settings, that look beginner-friendly like the user-friendly tools in the Exposure tab? Any guidance would be highly appreciated!
I think there is a genuine lack of documentation for ART, unfortunately. Things are getting better, thanks also to the contributions of users (e.g. @BarryThomas recently added a “quick start” guide), but writing good docs takes a lot of time.
Regarding exposure/brightness adjustments, here’s a description of how to emulate a tone curve with the Color Correction module:
EDIT: in addition to what written above, if you want a simple exposure compensation, that can be done with the “slope/highlights” slider in the color correction module, which does exactly the same thing, except that the scale in the GUI is linear, instead of being logarithmic like in the exposure module (therefore, to add e.g. 1EV of compensation, set “slope” to 2).
I probably need to find some time to turn this into a proper wiki page – it seems many people struggle with this…
Thank you very much agriggio for your prompt reply! I did a quick try and indeed got promising results.
FWIW, for me as a beginner it feels like most modules in ART are pretty much self-explanatory, except the local adjustments. Maybe it was a (fair) choice to make the most powerful modules/tools available in the local adjustments. I love the fact that ART hides some of the complexity of RawTherapee, this just feels a bit different in the Local adjustments tab. This is in no way meant to criticize the product or its author! However, would it be possible to make local adjustments somehow easier accessible, that would be awesome.
The local modules are meant to be generic enough to be able to emulate most of the other modules – so that to have the flexibility of masks without having to reimplement everything. Naturally, this means that they are a bit more complex to use than the others. But I’m not sure whether there’s a good “techical” solution to this; I am certainly not interested in adding more tools at this point. I think it would be better to have more documentation instead (hint: help is welcome!
Hello All. Sorry to use this topic for my question, but I believe is not enough to open a new one
Related to color / tone correction, I undertand that the system work mixing input color (with its own saturation) with the color selected in the rotary selector (with also its own saturation). Also mixed result can be controlled its own saturation.
These saturation controls and color picker can obtain any color desired, isn’t it?
Also there are several modes to select. I understand the cases of RGB and TSL, but what is de difference between perceptual and normal modes?
In addition there is a “picker” that seems to select a color for the circular picker (available on “standard” and “perceptual” modes. I am struggling to undersatnd how to use it. Anyone could explain please?
Sorry for these basic questions.
Well, this is one of those questions that look simple but turn out quite complicated
Without going too much into the details, the controls let you pick any hue and a wide range of saturation/chromaticity (let’s consider them the same here) values. In order to select an arbitrary colour, you still need a 3rd dimension, that is the lightness/brightness. Plus there is the issue about what is the working space, what is your output space, what your monitor can display, and ultimately what is colour itself… but let’s not get there as it’s a big can of worms (and not something I really understand…, So next question)
Perceptual uses a perceptual color space for separating hue, “saturation” and “lightness” (i.e. Jzazbz), whereas normal uses a linear RGB space. As a rule of thumb, use perceptual.
The picker will select a combination of hue/sat that will neutralise the colour you pick. You can use it to remove colour casts or for some kind of local white balancing (it’s not quite the same as a “proper” wb, but for not-too-extreme corrections it works fine).
Thanks a lot Alberto.
With “the controls let you pick any hue …” do you mean the conbination selected with controls is the resulting color or it is the color that will be blended with original one?
I understand than the tool is not intended to change one color to another specific color because it is not possible to select lightness/brightness (one question arise because I can control lightness/brigbtness with the slope/gain/… in the same tool so with more effort can be make result near desired).
So I understand tool is better to use to make slight modifications as some kind of “white balance” as you explain.
I understan also there is no way (exept trial and error) to know what will be the final result, isn’t it?
I will try picker in the way you comment. I need some experiment.
Thanks a lot.
The tool is meant for colour grading. This can be subtle but also very evident, depending on taste, context, and application. I think the best way to get a feeling of what can be done is to try it out for a while indeed. If you have specific questions, I’ll do my best to answer.
