It took me a while to realize this but those presets are very useful. Different image conditions combined with different presets (and the options for “preserve details”) can either make an image work or be super frustrating.
I’d say, if one is finding an the TE difficult to work with, just go down the list and see how the image looks with every preset. At least one of them should bring a good result.
Often, just the “simple tone curve” works for most images, with preserve details set to no. Other images that have some dramatic dynamic range differences perhaps need the other presets.
Note that detail preservation is more important for the cases when you reduce contrast: when you increase it, details are preserved (enhanced) by definition: increasing global contrast translates into increasing local contrast, too.
Maybe naive from my point, but what do you consider useful?
I never needed a histogram for the tone equalizer, and I can’t see (yet) what that would bring?
The histogram is displayed whenever you use the advanced option to adjust your image. If the histogram is completely flat then your settings under the masking option are not “useful”.
You check the histogram of the blurred mask to make sure it covers the 0…-8 EV range as well as possible, so you can make changes to each brightness range separately.
If the histogram shows a narrow band, say, -5 to -3 EV, you won’t be able to make fine changes, as dragging the -3 EV point also drags along -4 EV and, to a lesser extent, -5 EV, to guarantee smoothness.
On the other hand, of the histogram shows that many values are over 0 EV or below -8 EV, you won’t be able to make direct adjustments for those; for everything above 0 EV, the setting of the 0 EV ‘band’ is used, and the situation is similar for those below -8 EV.
The histogram is for the mask, not the image, just in case that wasn’t clear from @kofa’s good post above. It’s essential to know your control points will act on the areas you want.
I have been using masks to split the effects of tone equalizer on sky vs foreground, water, etc. Happy with the increase in control but wondering if there is a way to match the exposure range to the UI graph (scale up) to improve sensitivity.
Much of the graph seems to be “dead space”. The luminance bars only extend over a portion - as if they represent the range of the full image rather than the mask.
