RT Local adjustments - Excluding spot definition

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After seeing few stunning edits with RT Local adjustments on my previous posts, I began exploring RT-Dev for local adjustments. Now I am so addicted to it that I tend to prefer it to RT-5.8 most of the times :slightly_smiling_face: Really awesome… Comments by @Jade_NL and videos by @Andy_Astbury1 were a great help. Thank you guys…

In this picture, my objective was to bring the Passion flower alone brightly in the foreground and leave the rest dimmed and darker. I used three spots - Red flower, yellow/green stamens and the rest of the green image. Although I am happy with what I am seeing, I thought excluding spot method might have helped in dimming the background, but I could not do that.

Excluding spot - What is excluded? I thought everything in the scope of Preview-Delta-E (ie whatever appears in green color) is excluded and rest that falls within the spot boundary is the object for change. But I suspect this is not what it means. Would appreciate some clarification.

Spot vs spot shape - Clearly the spot is the circle whose diameter can be changed. And the “RT-Spot shape” is the boundary (Eclipse/Rectangle). Would “Spot boundary” be a clearer term than RT-Spot shape for documentation purposes? Just a suggestion.
IMG_20210930_110423.dng (22.9 MB)
IMG_20210930_110423
IMG_20210930_110423.jpg.out.pp3 (30.9 KB)

These files are licensed Creative Commons, By-Attribution, Share-Alike.

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Hi,
For what you want, you have to take into account what I indicate:

EnfoqueFlor
EnfoqueFlor1920Ă—1230 190 KB

20211002_IMG_20210930_110423.dng.pp3 (21.1 KB)

You can also look at:
http://rawpedia.rawtherapee.com/Local_Adjustments#Example:_changing_the_color_of_all_the_green_leaves.2C_except_for_one

Edit: And too:
https://discuss.pixls.us/t/revealing-more-refined-details-using-rt/26602/5

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It is used to exclude/negate part of what you did with a previous spot or spots. I’ve used it twice in this example, although one is turned off:

la.example
la.example2560Ă—1440 2.04 MB

Here’s the pp3

This is just a rough example, only using the Color & Light tool to show how some of it works: The first spot, Red Flower, has some overlap with the partial flower just below it. You can (partially if needed) remove this spill-over using an excluding spot (spot 2 - Excl. Bottom Flower)

The order in which a normal/excluding spot is used is important. If I would have placed the first excluding spot below the Green Leaves spot it might/would have influenced the greens it covers, which you don’t want.

At the moment there is no way to move created spots up or down (I created a Feature Request on gitHub for this: #6359). At times it would be very handy to be able to move spots.

Spot 3, Green Leaves shows how to dim/darken. I used the simple Colour & Light tool, but there are other ways too.

Spot 4, Pistle, shows that it isn’t always easy to get the mask/shape that you want/need. I turned it purplish just as a showcase, but as you can see certain parts aren’t really taken into account.

You really need to play with the Transition Gradient and Shape detection tools to get the hang of it. I first use the Scope slider that goes with the tool used, then dial in the Shape detection (this might be a back-and-forth), once I’ve made the changes with the tool I’ll then sometimes use the Transition Gradient sliders if the changes are too obvious in the parts you don’t want them (due to a mask/shape that isn’t all that perfect).

The last spot, Excl. Part of Leave (turned off at the moment) is a more obvious example what can be done with the excluding spot.

BTW: Just to make your RawTherapee live even more interesting :grin:: I would not have used Local Adjustments to tackle the red in the flower and the greens. Using the Colour Toning module and its, rather powerful, masks would be my preferred first choice to tackle this.

Turn off the Local Adjustments module in the provided sidecar and turn on the Colour Toning module to get an idea what it is I’m talking about.

EDIT

I just remembered that I made a test image back when that might also be useful to test the masks and shapes for both the Colour Toning and Local Adjustments modules.

masking - masking.tif (16.9 MB)

This one is downscaled and not as good as the original, I’m not allowed to upload 250+Mb images (how unfair… :rofl:). It does the trick though.

Just in case: This one is CC0 - No Rights Reserved

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Thank you @arturoisilvia… much appreciated.
I need to learn how to use excluding spot.

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Thank you @Jade_NL … Looks like I totally misunderstood the excluding spot method. Its making sense now, I will study the pp3 provided by you and @arturoisilvia. Also thanks for the masking.tif – useful tool indeed.

I agree the color toning masks are perhaps more useful here :grinning: Your pp3 shows that and I too had tried them on other pictures. What took me to the local adjustments was the possibility to use other tools like sharpening, contrast etc.