Interesting exercise! FWIW, here’s how I’d do it (though I don’t have a one-slider solution):
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Nice!! What did you do?
Very nice! I’d be very much interested in the PP3…
well I cheated 
I used not just global controls (mostly dynamic range compression, shadows push and exposure compensation), but I also darkened the stage with a local mask. I don’t have a (useable) pp3, but I’ll try to show the main steps later. I think you should be able to do everything in photoflow as well
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That explains my perplexity! 
Haven’t read the blog post yet. I applied lens correction in PhotoFlow but it is different from @agriggio’s.
@agriggio I followed your idea, and partially restored the stage with a local mask:
@afre the relight tool is based on a close-to-linear curve in log-lumi space, which translates into a sort-of power function in linear space. That’s why it is quite aggressive in the deep shadows. Also, the curve is applied to a blurred luminance channel, which helps preserving local contrast…
I will finish writing up the blog post about the new shadows/highlights tool as soon as possible. That’s the place where I will explain all the technical details…
Can you post a new Windows release with the Relight filter?
Continuous builds are available on github here: Release Continuous build · aferrero2707/PhotoFlow · GitHub
The latest macOS build has the relight filter, I assume the windows version does too.
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I was going to post a similar reply, but @paulmiller has been more reactive 
If the tool is missing from the latest windows build (currently this one), then it’s a bug…
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Thanks. First attempt with the new filter was successful.
I had to set the contrast to 30 to make it look fine, but that’s ok.
I haven’t been around for a while, are there NR and Sharpening filters in PF? or any micro-contrast filter?
That is somehow expected… how do you find the filter output?
NR is still not very reliebale. On the other hand, there are various sharpening options, all available from the “sharpening” tool (accessible from the “details” tool group):
Unsharp mask is the most classical one, RL deconvolution uses the code from RawTherapee, and “texture” uses a texture sharpening filter from G’MIC.
For micro-contrast you can use the “local contrast” filter. It works more or less like the unsharp mask, but the underlying blur filter is edge preserving. Hence, if you keep the radius and threshold small, only fine textures are sharpened while strong edges don’t get over-sharpened. I personally use it more and more at the place of standard sharpening. One has to fiddle a bit with the radius and threshold values to find the optimum for each image…
Thanks for the explanation about the sharpening and local contrast filters. After looking closer at my image, I think it doesn’t need much detail enhancements, but rather mostly noise reduction.
This is an image that I already processed in the past with Lightroom, so I’ll append the LR version at the end. This is how it opens in PF out of the box:
With +1 exposure in the RAW development filter, and with the Relight filter and minor add of saturation, it looks like this:
I think I could do better, but I’m still not experienced enough with PF. For example, I could set a lower exposure value in the RAW Development filter, and apply the Relight at a higher strength. I think I clipped the clouds too much with the +1 exposure.
I also think I should have added more ‘pop’ to the image but I’m not sure how - I find the contrast control in the ‘basic adjustments’ filter is too aggressive.
I also wanted to apply some adjustment to the WB on the people holding the baby - since they are in the shade and the global WB is not ideal for their skin tone, so I added a WB layer but found it difficult to mask out the rest of the image and to find the right values - small changes to the temp/tint result in too big visual changes so it’s hard to find the value you look for. This is something I originally did in LR (see below).
This is the LR version that I developed a few months ago, which is pretty similar:
LR global settings:
LR local adjustments on the people in the front:
@assaft One thing to know about LR is that its default settings don’t equal to unprocessed, so the screenshots of sliders aren’t as helpful for our reference as you may assume. E.g., it looks like some tone mapping and sharpening has already been applied.
Not a problem, but it means that, with FLOSS apps like PhotoFlow, you might need to take several more steps to get where you want.
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Hi! I’d be very happy to try some edits on your image, to show what is actually possible to achieve with photoflow.
Since I understand you want to hide part of the people in the picture, I propose a semi-raw edit: you provide a 16-bit TIFF file with a minimal processing (basically a raw file with demosaicing applied), you blur what should be hidden, and then you post the image. With such a file it will still be possible to apply global and local WB and to recover shadows/highlights details.
Here is how to obtain a “demosaiced RAW”:
- open the raw and go to the RAW developer settings
- set the WB to “spot” with all RGB mutipliers set to 1, the exposure compensation to 0 and highlights recovery to “clip”, like in this screenshot:
The picture will look green-ish, but that’s not a problem. - in the output tab of the raw developer, set the working profile to “camera profile”, like this:
- export the image as a 16-bit TIFF, preserving the image dimensions and working profile:
You can either blur the image directly in PhF before exporting, or later in GIMP. If you open the image in GIMP, be careful to preserve the embedded ICC profile and not convert it to GIMP’s working colorspace!
I’d be glad to share it the way you described. And thanks for spending time showing the potential of pf.
PA271505_shared.tif (91.3 MB)
By the way, I think I didn’t say it clearly but I find the relight filter very impressive.
I tried it on another image, perhaps a harder one in terms of being more back-lit, and relight was excellent and dead simple to use. I’m sharing the RAW file below. In this case NR is even more needed, and also perspective correction (PC). I found it hard to apply these with pf. and I couldn’t get close to my LR processing of this image. I also wanted to ask about applying exposure compensation: I wasn’t sure where it’s best to do - in the RAW Developer layer or in a separate basic adjustments layer. It looks like the later - as I ended up with less highlights clipping, but I find this counter-intuitive.
PC063051.ORF (11.4 MB)
PC063051_1.pfi (24.6 KB)
PC063051_2.pfi (24.6 KB)
Lightroom version:
PF doesn’t clip until you export the file and it also depends on the file format. What you need to do is recover the highlights and saturation using the appropriate tools. What exposure compensation does is bring up the middle grey to an appropriate level; some tools work best when it is the in the right range.
What you need to do is recover the highlights and saturation using the appropriate tools
Can you tell me which tools?
I tried to put a basic adjustments layer with -1.5ev exposure compensation, and also a Highlights/Shadows layer with the highlights at -100. However, I still can’t recover the highlights that seem to be clipped by applying +2ev exposure compensation in the RAW Developer layer.
PC063051_1_more.pfi (24.6 KB)
The exposure compensation in the RAW developer does not introduce any clipping, and an opposite exposure applied later will restore the original image. here is a demonstration: PC063051_4.pfi (19.2 KB)
Here is the closest I could get to the LR output:
PC063051_3.pfi (33.7 KB)
I will explain you the details later tomorrow, but you can already inspect the .pfi to see the set of tools I used…
There are a bit more halos in the clouds compared to LR, something we should still try to improve!
The exposure compensation in the RAW developer does not introduce any clipping, and an opposite exposure applied later will restore the original image. here is a demonstration
Thanks, I see your point. However, if I add a Relight filter between the RAW developer and the layer that restores the exposure level, I can’t recover the highlights. See here: PC063051_1_more_2.pfi (28.9 KB)
I ended up with this processing: PC063051_2_v3.pfi (35.8 KB)
I think it has more ‘pop’ than the LR’s development.
Do you know how to avoid the yellow cast around the clipped areas? and is there anything to do with the noise?
I like you development too. Could you explain why you went with the Shadows/Highlights + Tone mapping approach, instead of Relight?