P: Gradient Eraser Request

Dynamic fitting of NDG filters would be a great feature for landscape photographers.

I often take natural light pictures in a stage setting. The subject is properly exposed but part of the background is overexposed. I usually go to Photoshop to blend the exposers. It would be much easier to apply the filter in Lightroom and erase the properly exposed part.

HL

Fantastic idea!

Graduated filters and brush filters are great in LR3 and much better in LR4b. However, I think that the graduated filters deserve the sort of control that the brush filters have.

Specifically, that once the grad filter is added, it could be further adjusted by adding to and especially removing from, with a brush tool.

For it to work, the brush tool would only affect the Alpha-channel that the grad filter created and not the underlying image.

Adobe could engineer it so that a right-click over the selected grad filter pin would create a (linked) brush option. When the option is selected, the view switches to a Graduated Filter Overlay (by default with the red mask active to remind you that you are adjusting the grad filter), and the tool has switched from the grad tool to an adjustment brush that only works on the grad filter.

You add to the grad filter by brushing, or by holding option/alt-brush to remove the grad filter. Using the flow/density modify tools would give great control in the same way that brushing a mask in a Photoshop adjustment layer does.

If you want to work on the grad filter directly (without the Overlay mask) then just keying O will switch to that view. Right clicking the grad filter pin gives you the option to switch back to standard grad filter behaviour.

If you now re-adjust the grad filter, the brush adjustments would need to stay in place relative to the pixels, not the grad filter.

If a further grad filter is placed over the brushed in area, a right click on the pin could load the previously placed alpha-channel brush adjustment so that a carefully brushed mask doesn't have to be created from scratch again.

Maybe this is complicating things too much, but hey! Sounds feasible and useful. Right?

Another useful addition to the adjustment brush is to have Shift-clicks to do contiguous straight lines, consistent with the way shift-brushes work in Photoshop. Very useful for deselecting grad-filtered or brushed areas around buildings and products.

It had never even occurred to me to be able to name the pins! BRILLIANT! And SO easy to implement!

Adobe, I can't think of a reason why at least this aspect couldn't make it into LR4 Final. Particularly since we have to do so much layering and stacking of different adjustment brushes and gradients to accomplish what we really want to with this tool. The ability to label these adjustments for future reference would really help.

I agree with Katrin Eismann's post. She requested improvements in the gradient tool including allowing us to:
Control the shape - at least include radial; be able to erase parts of the gradient (that is really, really important to me.); name the pins - on both gradients and brushes.

Without the ability to erase parts of the gradient, I only use it on landscapes with horizontal horizon lines, or on the edges to create a vignette effect, and we already have that.

Making the gradient more flexible would be fantastic.

Thanks,
Betsey

YES! I want to see a combination of all masking techniques available in Lightroom (graduated filters and adjustment brushes), Photoshop (pen tool, magic wand, whatever the even more impressive one also under the W shortcut is called (sorry, too much running to open Photoshop right now to remind myself), the different gradient types (not just linear, but also radial, conical, and whatever the double-linear one is called) which can be applied to layer masks, and the various forms of generating a mask by color or brightness or both), the nik software U-point tools, and more. Create it by any of those methods, and edit by any of those methods. (Let me drag a linear gradient mask across a sky, then either a radial mask or a U-point around the sun itself, then pen or brush (depending on the situation) to remove foreground objects from the mask.

(Yes, I know that I can do a radial mask with the adjustment brush tool, but there is a big difference between that and a U-point mask or even a radial mask where you can just click and drag to change the size of it. With the adjustment brush I have to set the size and feather controls before clicking, and you can't just adjust those after you click. You have to undo or delete it and do it again with new settings. This is precisely the opposite of an intuitive solution. I'm grateful that we have those tools in the program, I'd just like to see more for special situations.)

I concur, we need brush-applied masks which remain relative to the image, which we can then selectively apply/link to one or more gradients.

PS - Nik's U-points are kinda-nice, because sometimes they select just what you want. When that happens its very exciting. However, all too frequently they get too much or not enough. In the former case, you're only recourse is to drop "anti-selection" U-points, to kinda block the selection U-points. Sometimes this works perfectly - and when it does its very exciting. All too often however, it doesn't! Anyway, its my hope that Adobe will innovate a revolutionary auto-masking technology. Maybe make this technology available in Photoshop too, and put Nik out of business ;-}
R

PS - Nik's U-points are kinda-nice, because sometimes they select just what you want. When that happens its very exciting. However, all too frequently they get too much or not enough. In the former case, you're only recourse is to drop "anti-selection" U-points, to kinda block the selection U-points. Sometimes this works perfectly - and when it does its very exciting. All too often however, it doesn't! Anyway, its my hope that Adobe will innovate a revolutionary auto-masking technology. Maybe make this technology available in Photoshop too, and put Nik out of business ;-}
R