Inspiring

Question

Color Mixer: Target inspector adjusting multiple colors?

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
March 2, 2024
3 replies
1763 views

I'm wondering if the Lightroom Classic Color Mixer (not Point Color) inspector tool is capable of detecting and adjusting multiple color bands simultaneously. Either I'm missing a setting/toggle, or it's not capable of doing it as you can in Lightroom Mobile and Desktop.

Lightroom Classic simply indicates which single color it will adjust when mousing over the image. In LrD/LrM, the inspector for adjusting HSL will almost always pick up two colors for a spot in some relative concentration—and then adjust the given HSL parameter according to that concentration. (E.g. at a brown spot it might pull orange saturation down 20% but yellow only 8%.)

I find I can often get better and more useful results quickly out of Color Mixer as a result. I know it is possible to do something like this—and do it more precisely—in all products using Point Color and adjusting the range, but that's a little more time intensive. It may be that this is an intentional feature differentiation and LrC users will largely always want the precision of point color. But as someone coming from LrD originally, I do miss it.

If I'm not just missing a setting, perhaps this is a feature request for LrC if others would find it useful as well.

--

Currently using LrC v13.2 on MacOS v14.3.1.

macOS

This topic has been closed for replies.

J

Jao vdL

Community Expert

It absolutely is capable of doing that. I use this all the time. Just use the target adjustment tool. Mouse over the image and start dragging up and down. If you are on a region that falls in multiple color "buckets", it will change both proportionally just like you describe. It won't highlight the two colors when mousing over the colors in the image, but it will still adjust multiple. See screenshot indicating where I was mousing and the result in the color mixer.

Conrad_C

Community Expert

I was going to post this too…my experience matches that of Jao vdL: If the Lightroom Classic Color Mixer Target Adjustment Tool is over a pixel that includes more than one Color Mixer component, when you drag the tool, more than one slider will move. So I assumed it worked the same way on all Lightroom variants (Classic, cloud, mobile…) and Camera Raw.

U

umlautnordAuthor

Inspiring

Thank you all for helping clarify—I appreciate it! I am realizing that I combined two things to make my original incorrect conclusion:

1) The "only highlights one color when mousing over" piece, not realizing it would adjust two, particularly because:

2) On some images, when using the TAT, blues were often adjusted solely as magenta. It turns out those images are ones with HDR editing enabled.

Apparently, I noticed only magenta getting adjusted (#2) on a couple of HDR images, then checked a few other images just by hovering over and noticing only the main component highlighted (#1).

Now, I've tested more extensively, and I'm seeing the proper expected behavior outlined by folks above—except on HDR editing enabled images, where the color selection appears to be very off. As such, it does very little to actually adjust the target area. Point Color doesn't seem to have an issue.

I've attached a video of what I'm seeing. You'll see that the blue adjusts solely as magenta in Color Mixer; the yellows/golds adjust as aqua or aqua and green. Since it's adjusting the wrong color, the actual image doesn't change. The gold area is past the HDR threshold; the blue area is not at an HDR level. So that doesn't seem to be a differentiator.

If I disable HDR editing on the same image, the TAT does choose the right colors to adjust in the range I'd expect.

So, I guess my question becomes: Does the TAT work as expected others on HDR-enabled images?

Apologies for starting off base here!

HDR_Enabled_TAT.zip

Bob Somrak

Legend

The TAT (targeted adjustment tool) in Color Mixer will adjust TWO color sliders most of the time in real photos. As you can see by the attached video on this calibrated test print photo the Mixer will adjust only 1 sometimes for specific colors.

M4 Pro Mac Mini. 48GB

Screen_Recording_2024-03-02_at_10-23-10_AM.zip

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

The TAT (targeted adjustment tool) in Color Mixer will adjust TWO color sliders most of the time in real photos. As you can see by the attached video on this calibrated test print photo the Mixer will adjust only 1 sometimes for specific colors.

By @Bob Somrak

Yes, of course you can move the TAT tool around in the image and adjust multiple colors that way. If you want, you can move every single slider using the TAT tool! I thought the OP meant that he wanted the TAT tool to pick up a much wider range all at once, and so move maybe up to four sliders all at once.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

J

Jao vdL

Community Expert

The confusion is probably coming from the fact that in Lightroom Desktop, it shows the multiple (max is 2 due to the way HSL color works) colors the TAT tool in color mixer will affect right next to the mouse pointer when you are mousing over the image. Classic does not have this feature and only highlights a single slider even though you will affect two sliders when you start dragging. So OP probably thought that because of the single slider highlighted it would not work the same. It works identical to Lr Cloudy and Lr Mobile but just doesn't have the color patch feedback next to the mouse pointer.

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

I'm wondering if the Lightroom Classic Color Mixer (not Point Color) inspector tool is capable of detecting and adjusting multiple color bands simultaneously. Either I'm missing a setting/toggle, or it's not capable of doing it as you can in Lightroom Mobile and Desktop.

By @umlautnord

It is not designed to do that.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

U

umlautnordAuthor

Inspiring

Cool. I'm glad I wasn't missing something! Thanks.

If mods could convert this to a feature request, then? No idea if there's broader interest, but would like to put it out there.

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

I don't think it makes sense to file this as a feature request. The answer will be that Lightroom already has what you want and that the name is 'Point Color'. Yes, there may be subtle differences, but that does not warrant yet another tool.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

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