When using the tone equalizer I often have to adjust the module’s histogram to spread further from left to right. However, this histogram is shown in the advanced tab but the adjustments are performed in masking tab. I find myself going back and forth between these two tabs until I get the best adjustment. This seems to me to be an unnecessarily awkward process. I am proposing that the information and adjustments available in these two tabs would be better combined into a single tab. I wonder how other users feel about this suggestion. Please be kind
TBH, I’m not too fussed… but I see the logic of your suggestion.
I would suggest (for the sake of discussion assuming that someone wants to make a change) that the three tabs are retained, as the top half of the masking tab is in my case not used very often, but move the 2 mask compensation sliders over to the advanced tab.
I often end up switching between these tabs when I’m adjusting the mask and I agree with the principle, but IMO including the histogram would make the module UI too large. I’ve mostly worked around this with some keyboard shortcuts for the exposure and contrast compensation sliders (and the “auto” buttons)
If you don’t use the QA panel or even if you do…you can make a custom version of the module by adding the elements that you use including the graph?? Suggested as a sort of work around not a rebuttal of your idea…
I’m all for this! I’ve had the same exact thought. Even just a miniature display of the histogram (no adjustment points) would be very helpful.
Sometimes I want my mask to bias highlights or shadows so I can finetune those with more “resolution”. It would be much easier to set this up with a little histogram display to reference.
Yes it would be far better. Like @elstoc, I’ve set up shortcuts for the mask exposure and contrast compensation. A shortcut for each auto button, then shortcuts to increase/decrease each of the two sliders. Now I only need to go to masking tab to adjust the other sliders, which is far less frequent.
Thanks for the replies so far. @elstoc I don’t feel that the UI would get much bigger and tone equalizers UI is not very big compared to some such color balance rgb or diffuse or sharpen, but I agree that UI size is an important consideration and maybe the histogram height could be made adjustable like is done with the display in filmic.
@priort as a personal preference I never use the QA panel, but I am unsure how I could make a customised version of the module. If this is practical to do I would try, but I am unsure where to start. Is this the same “shortcut” setup that @elstoc and @elstoc are talking about?
and you can create the ‘customized’ version of any module by selecting the elements you want, by right clicking on the tab.
Example:
As I’ve probably said before I like the quick access panel - easily customizable and gives a very quick and familiar initial point of access to everything else.
I take back my suggestion for a mini-histogram because all of these ideas are a much better solution. Only a single tab with everything you need and maybe some less-used mask settings in a collapsible section.
This is great but please keep the simple tab. I use it often after doing adjustments by hovering the mouse over an area of the image. It does have a purpose and it is just a tab that people can ignore or like me exploit. The rest of the ideas you have are brilliant.
@123sg I never knew the QA panel had this capability. I learn something new and I will do a reconsideration of the QA tab in light of what you have shown. Thanks.
I also put the graph and exposure compensation into the QA panel.
I find, however, that my workflow pretty much always involved pressing the auto exposure compensation button. I wonder, could this just be always active? Is there ever a place where you’d want to use the tone equalizer with a blown histogram?
I often do, to get more ‘resolution’ for want of a better word, when focusing adjustments on either the shadows or highlights.
I don’t think I’d have an issue with an initial mask auto compensation though.
In my experience the magic wand (auto adjustments) are never correct and often clip the shadows or the highlights. If they were correct and could be calculated without user input that would be great and would seem a logical improvement.
keep in mind that at this phase the image might span over even more than those 9 EV. You have to decide, which tonal range should be covered for corrections using the module. That can’t be done automagically.
As several scene referred tone related module the default values are based on the assumption that the relevant midtones are properly set via exposure module.
Well, this has been nagging me forever, so thank you for bringing it up. I’ve always thought that at least “mask exposure compensation” and “mask contrast compensation” should be accessible via the advanced tab, under the histogram area.
While we’re at it. Is there a reason why there’s no ‘’mask contrast compensation” in the ‘’preserve details: no” mode of tone eq? This is the mode I use the most.
Often my histogram doesn’t fit within the bounds of the histogram area which means the tone equalizer can’t work on all parts of the image. Frustrating.
The code is in the initial workflow Lua script to tun the key auto pickers in DT… You can do exposure filmic b and white relative and the tone eq mask… You could use that or just pull out the code for a smaller script as that script can set several options
Edit @Terry as for the auto buttons…they can on the first press often end up not centering the mask … If you do two quick cycles of each auto picker then they usually end up with the mask nicely centered but often I shift it anyway… A good example is with the relight preset that I use a lot as a starting point. The mask often comes up shifted well right and this works nicely with the curve of the preset… If you apply the preset and hit the auto pickers the result is often much worse as now the mask not a match for the curve that gets applied…
“Often my histogram doesn’t fit within the bounds of the histogram area which means the tone equalizer can’t work on all parts of the image. Frustrating…”
I often use two instances and skew this on purpose to have finer control on either highlights or shadows… the histogram is just the mask histogram not your image data so it’s not a big deal
In line with what @priort is saying, how important is it to have the equaliser histogram perfectly aligned with the image (or as close to perfect as possible)?
I noticed that most of the time, I need to correct part of the range (be it highlights, shadows or mid tones). For those situations, the mask adjustment can be done just fine by watching the image with the mask activated (especially where the hightlight correction is concerned), because it doesn’t matter if part of the image is not properly covered by the mask.
