Test the new and enhanced Shadows/Highlights tool

Software RawTherapee
29

@RawConvert I believe that there will always be “issues” whenever you compress the dynamic range. Try exporting a neutral profile image from RT and try manually taming it using 1-2 curves. It isn’t easy, at least for me!1

I haven’t used either version of the shadows-highlights tool, but based on what I have read, its improvements are substantial.

PS 1 Lately, that is what I have been doing with my recent PlayRaws. The results don’t get a lot of likes but I have been hard at work experimenting on ways to tame the dynamic range and making everything super clean. That is why I ask the reader to zoom 100% to see the difference. I use simple curves and other simple ideas, so it isn’t like I am doing anything crazy like what others are doing with the venerable RT, DT, GIMP, etc.

30

hi afre, I don’t see why. You can compress using simple scaling or a decently-smooth curve, and I don’t think that could ever cause artefacts like banding or noise - as it seems you are finding!

You may think it’s pernickity that I’ve gone on about this, but lots of people spend lots of hours using RT, DT, etc and I’m sure everyone, especially the developers, want the apps to be as good as possible. Being aware of shortcomings and possible bugs can only be a good thing, even if they can’t be fixed for whatever reason.

Is there a case for more organised testing? Should some or more of us users work more closely with developers to test changes?

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31

Absoltutely! Very good idea!

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32

Definitely, that is what the thread and we’re here for!

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33

I’d love to have a pool of sample RAW images that are particularly suitable for testing shadows/highlights adjustment and dynamic range compression in general (actually, I believe the two things are the same). I am also doing some work with edge-aware blur filters and dynamic range compression, and it would be great to be able to directly compare results. I am mostly playing with the concepts and examples provided here.

What do you think?

34

Yes and the banding shifts if you change the tonal width. The raised shadows doesn’t quite reach the lowered highlights that is why there is a wider stripe.

What I find strange is what happens in the raised shadows:
Original picture was a jpg gradient, white on the left and black on the right.

Gradient_R-1
Gradient_R-11000×500 43.7 KB

See the black pixels they stay black for some reason when raising the shadows. The halo on the dark end comes from raising the radius. Which means he seems to detect an edge there?

These were the settings:

Screenshot
Screenshot705×621 37.8 KB

35

Hi,

I have no direct experience with the bilateral filter, but I’m a huge fan of the (fast) guided filter. It’s a simple, efficient, and yet extremely powerful tool. It can be implemented in a few lines of code, and has many interesting applications, not just dynamic range compression (e.g. also dehazing, denoising, feathering, detail enhancement… see the paper for examples). Here is a little demo of some of its possibilities (note, this is my “playground” version of RT, it’s not in the official repo):

https://filebin.net/8qeqmo4htk4i67zp/Peek_2018-10-19_14-03.mp4?t=01i9fcft

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36

I’m also very much interested in this option, as I still have few “theoretical” difficulties with the bilateral filter and its proposed optimizations (in particular those that rely on image down-sampling).

Could you point me to the relevant file for the fast guided filter in RT?

Thanks!

P.S: could you remind me in which post I can find the picture your are using in your video? Thanks!

37

Hi,

Here. There are a few other interesting ones here as well.

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38

I LOVE the guided filter. I use it and link it whenever I have an excuse to do so. A lot of sophisticated applications and derivatives have been researched since. At its worst, it performs as well as the bilateral but is faster and simpler. … At least that is what I have read and experienced so far.

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Just did a quick test with your settings, 100% view, RGB and Lab, I’m not seeing the halo or anything strange -

mccap-settings
mccap-settings2495×1416 911 KB

40

There’s some similar stuff here to my “Tone Enhance” filter in G’MIC (bilateral + tone masking), so perhaps it’s useful to show a breakdown of how the gamma adjustment part functions. It can possibly be simplified further.

Edit: I must point out the example here is from a quite heavily compressed “sample” image in G’MIC.

  1. Median then bilateral the image, convert to luma then split to 3 tones
    fruitsmask
  2. Create a “gamma mask” from that with the user supplied values (an exponent value per pixel)
    gammamask
  3. Apply it (raise to that exponent), example here uses gammas 2,0.8,0.5 for shadow, mid, highlight
    fruits_toned

G’MIC code stripped down to those parts:

gcd_tone_simple : skip ${1=1},${2=1},${3=1},${4=128}
  repeat $! l[$>]
    +n 0,255 median. 3 bilateral. 2%,30 gcd_srgb2luma.
    sub. $4 +abs. negate.
    +max.. 0 min... 0 abs...
    mul... {if(iM#-3>0,(1/$1-1)/iM#-3,1)}
    mul.. {if(iM#-2>0,(1/$2-1)/iM#-2,1)}
    mul. {if(iM#-1>0,(1/$3-1)/iM#-1,1)}
    add[-3--1] 1 mul[-3--1]
    m={0,iM} div[0] $m pow[0,-1] mul[0] $m
  endl done

The main thing I wanted to show is that G’MIC is very good for prototyping this sort of thing (there’s also a “guided” filter in G’MIC).

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41

Interesting. I like the look of the fruit in the second image. (The two colour images are presumably before and after?)
The process is above my head but where did the three gammas 2 .8 .5 come from / how derived?
Is it easy to apply this processing to my test image above, the TIF? - I’d be interested to see the results.

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Completely arbitrary gamma values just to demonstrate (higher = brighter, untouched = 1). That’s all I wanted to do here - show that gmic makes testing extremely fast compared to writing in c and compiling. I wouldn’t suggest this as a drop in replacement; it’s working in sRGB “gamma” and doesn’t allow radius selection amongst other issues. Nonetheless, here’s an example of the test image with quite aggressive values 2,1,0.5:

tester1
tester1800×780 188 KB

As you can see, there is some halo. That could be reduced by changing radius.

Edit: yes the previous was before (top) and after (bottom).

43

I would like to understand the problem better. What would the gradient ramps look like ideally?

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I’d suggest something like this -

  1. Before

    afre-before
    afre-before2398×2236 532 KB

  2. After

    afre-after-1
    afre-after-12398×2236 486 KB

  3. After but with less tonal width

    afre-after-2-narrower
    afre-after-2-narrower2398×2236 493 KB

@garagecoder, thanks for posting your GMIC version.

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45

I did an experiment. I get that too when I really push the the edges of the ramps. See how @garagecoder’s ramps have dark and bright edges? When I try to smooth them out perceptually, the artifacts appear. I won’t share the G’MIC code or images because they didn’t output correctly and I don’t have the time to figure it out.

46

I looked for that build, but didn’t find it on 181025.

47

@agriggio could you please explain briefly the structure of the algorithm behind new shadows/highlights tool? I know what a guided filter is but I am having some trouble understanding the C code.

I may have some suggestion for modifying it to prevent gradient reversals like the above but I want to make sure I know what’s going on before spouting off.

48

Hi,

the idea is pretty simple (actually naive I’d say). The algorithm applies a “gamma” (i.e. power function) to highlights and shadows separately, with exponent > 1 for highlights, and < 1 for shadows (with the actual value dependent on the “amount” sliders). The “tonal width” sliders decide the thresholds (in percentage of the L* channel) for determining what to target. For example, the “highlight tonal width to 70” means that all the pixels with an L* value >= 0.7 in a range [0,1] will be considered highlights. A guided filter is used to blur the masks for smoother transitions. The “radius” parameter controls the smoothness essentially.

All suggestions are very welcome. However, IMHO the examples above show that the tool is “broken” in the same way as the following shows that the Tone Curve tool is “broken”:

59
591920×1170 161 KB

(I.e., if you push the sliders too far, you are going to get artifacts…)

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