P: Relative Develop Presets

niceeee; love this ideaaaaa

Noise reduction in the shadows, midtones and highlights with different values (good for those noisy shadows with cameras that have good read noise but low DR so it wont kill detail in the midtones and highlights (there is a retouch tool but its tedious to use it in all shadows you want). This is for lightroom 4 beta.

I use Camera RAW in CS5 and would like relative adjustments as well as relative preset capability added to ACR and Lightroom. I would like this for all 11 parameters in the basic panel of Camera RAW. This would speed up adjusting images. I would make presets that allow me to increase or decrease each parameter by a fixed delta. Some of these would include adjusting multiple parameters at the same time like this example - increase contrast by 20 units and decrease saturation by 5 units.

Thanks Richard,

Yeah, its really hard to come up with generic formulas for mass relative manipulation of settings with any meaningful intelligence. I do like the idea of intelligent auto-presets though, where one could say: "I want this kinda dark with lots of black clipping", then click a "do it" button and have it. Or, "I want this bright and low contrast, highlight-clipping OK", and do it, or say "I want this highly contrasty but with no blown highlights", and get that... I submitted an Idea a while ago for it: http://feedback.photoshop.com/photosh...

- the idea being to set a *smaller* set of sliders that are aimed at setting things more qualitatively, then have the analyzer compute the actual values and adjust things accordingly. DxO has something like this.

Anyway, I'm not sure why Adobe decided to go with absolute for auto-sync, since if selected photos are all starting from the same starting point, relative *is* absolute, and if they aren't starting from the same starting point, then I *never* want absolute adjustments - maybe some people do. Maybe they had relative already taken by quick-develop, so absolute seemed to be available still for auto-sync. Really dunno...

Personally, I think the best solution would be integration of library and develop modules, and integration of quick-develop with auto-sync, plus unified/simplified targeting, such that one could set things to same absolute or relative, without blinking, then slap a couple keywords on 'em without thinking too much about it...

Cheers,
Rob

I think one central difficulty is that "basic settings" and "tweak adjustments" might have to be regarded separately - a question that does not apply with Autosync at present, if auto-sync is used with images that are quite similar in the first place.

Using auto-sync across one image that is underexposed and another that is overexposed does not really work very well since however we have individually worked around these differences, will be steamrollered by the applied corrections. The perceptual meaning of a +5 change in fill light is not only different when you are going from 0 to 5, than it is when going from 5 to 10. It can also be very different even going from 0 to 5, in the context of one image with a +1 stop Exposure correction and a 0 blacks, as against another with a 0 stop Exposure and a 5 blacks. I doubt that this can be programmed around except as some kind of "compensated Auto" that would eliminate prior individual adjustments.

One can easily imagine the "shaping adjustments" such as fine WB, tint, brightness, vibrance, clarity, (parametric) tonecurve shaping, overall sharpening strength being applied successfully as a relative adjustment and in these cases, a simple numerical method would probably be fine. I am assuming these are subjective tweaks made after the basic image settings are in place, and that they would be small in magnitude - though if we want to make a rash and crude change instead, I suppose we might as well be left that option! However the greater the magnitude of the change the less it will produce the same subjective effect since we will soon exceed the comfortable envelope on certain images and soon get into clipping, noise and threshold problems that may not be apparent on our primary image.

If we stipulate that relative adjustments are specifically ABOUT being able to work across groups of more dissimilar images, then we must expect such problems more often than with our present Autosync practice.

My real point was aimed at the other adjustments such as coarse WB, Exposure, Blacks, NR, sharpening radius and threshold, and some others which IMHO are better considered as both "basic" and "individual". We set these things in order to have a "proper" image that will usefully underly the "shaping" adjustments - to the point where we are happy with the image on an objective level, and want to start making some VCs and exploring the subjective treatments that it will support. Whitepoint and blackpoint are rather technical necessities which I would not expect to manipulate as a group "beautification", nor do I think they are really amenable in their nature to that kind of approach.

So I guess a new relative-sync function needs to focus on a subset of tools only, and restrict itself to a quite low-magnitude and rolled-off power of alteration. Analogous to the gentle "relative" massaging that the parametric tonecurve applies, as distinct from the potentially huge and untrammelled and highly image-specific "absolute" things the points tonecurve is capable of.

RP

Definitely agree auto-sync needs relative capability too. (I use DevAdjust more for applying relative adjustments of various individual settings (to multiple selected photos), than for applying relative presets).

The idea of "smart" relative adjustments I find very intriguing. If you could experiment enough to figure out what are equivalent perceptual (relative) adjustments for various settings, I may program that into DevAdjust, or Adobe might be more likely to program it into native Lr4or5. e.g. a percentage may be adequate for some settings, but others may need a different formula...

Note: your example above with tint is almost doable right now (natively) via quick develop - in grid mode its like relative auto-sync, it just doesn't include all the settings (tint is available as relative quick adjustment, but finest granularity is +5) - with the alt key you can access a few more...

I wonder whether once people start to think of applying a relative adjustment, they may want to apply these not only with a special kind of a preset, but also with (for example) AutoSync across multiple images that are selected. So a separate kind of Autosync might put you into a new mode where when you move the tint +2 from where it was before, all the other images get +2 tint compared to where each individually was before.

However, as I see it there are many commands where the "proportionality" may need some attention - or in some cases may not even make any practical sense - regardless whether we are working directly or by preset.

For example: a relative adjustment may be recorded from one image, which happens to take the Blacks from 3 down to 2. Then this is applied to another image which currently has a Blacks value of 9. In order to feel we are making the SAME relative adjustment to that, is it better to apply the same numerical change; the same percentage change; a nonlinear change of some kind that has been designed to have a similarly strong perceptual effect; or something else?

RP

I'd love it and I requested it since LR 2. Some high end grading apps for film and video got versions of it long time ago.

Agree with Rob, he's offering alternatives, work arounds and suggestions that are pretty fair

At least it isn't the rabid dog who used to fill the PS forums with his temper tantrums.