P: "Restore" paint mode for transition areas of graduated/radial filters

Report · Apr 25, 2015

It's great to finally see the "mask brush" for graduated/radial filters introduced in LR CC. But I'm having the same problem that I have in ACR since this feature was introduced in v8.5:

- I draw a graduated filter
- I erase part of it using the brush, over the transition area of the filter's "mask"
- I realize I've erased too much of it, so I try to paint it back partially... but I can't paint back the original transition (the mask fading), I just paint the mask at 100% (or 0% if I erase). [Well, I can lower the flow, but it's near impossible to match the gradation of the original mask.]

It would help a lot to have some kind of "restore" checkbox (or brush mode, same as A / B / Erase) that allows to recover selectively parts of the original mask. Or just a keyboard modifier to be held while painting (that would be great!). Otherwise this feature feels a little half-baked to me since you can't correct mistakes over the transition areas, just ctrl+z every time or start from scratch.

Maybe there's some way to fix this problem that I'm not aware of? If so, please let me know. Otherwise, please consider this enhancement, thanks.

PS. If you were to add this... please make the "restore" brush the same size as the regular brush - it's enough of a nightmare the size switch that happens everytime I go from "A" size to "Erase" - I hope this other related requested is implemented someday too: http://feedback.photoshop.com/photosh...

Report · Apr 26, 2015

Same here. I was happy to see this being finally introduced in Lightroom CC, but the fact that you cannot restore (paint back in) the graduated/radial mask stumps me.

The whole reason of the Brush feature in a graduated/radial filter is to brush out the graduated mask, so that it doesn't affect certain parts of the image. If I can brush OUT the mask, i should also be able to brush IN the original (graduated) mask. I shouldn't have to delete everything, redraw my graduated filter and then attempt to brush out certain parts again.

Thus, when it comes to the graduated/radial filter the brush should only allow to paint IN or OUT the graduation mask. For any other kind of brushing, the regular adjustment brush can be used.

Here's the flow as I see it:

- You draw a graduated/radial filter (for the sky for example)
- You use the new Brush mode of the filter to paint OUT certain parts of the graduation (over the moutains, let's say, if it's a landscape, so the mountains are not affected by graduated filter).
- If you make a mistake and paint out too much of the sky, you need to be able to paint back IN the graduated filter (the graduation), instead of painting IN like with a normal brush, which would make it very obvious that one part is faded and the other is solid.

I am including an example image to illustrate this. In this example, I painted out too much of the graduated filter that covers the sky (around the trees on the left). I would like to fix this by erasing what I brushed out and restoring the graduated filter over that region only.

If I attempt to do this, notice how the graduation is not respected (in the second example image).

Overall, I feel this feature is very helpful and needed but at the same time it is incorrectly implemented, seriously limiting its practicality.

I hope the Adobe team will consider this, correct it and issue an update to LR CC in the near future.

Thanks.

Report · Apr 27, 2015

You're right, Andrei - maybe more than a checkbox or modifier to paint back in (as if it was some kind of "special feature") what we need is simpler: just to make "paint in/out" (or erase/restore) the default behavior.

The ability to also paint/erase regardless of the original gradation in the mask (in other words, painting "solid" areas even where there was a transition), could be a nice feature. It adds flexibility and I can think of some uses for it. But as you say, if need be, truth is we can already woraround that by duplicating the same parameters with the adjustment brush, while right now there's nothing we can do to recover the original gradation of the mask along the transition areas... short of deleting everything and starting over.

I trust this will be considered sooner or later (in fact it's strange that AFAIK, nobody suggested it yet after ACR 8.5 came out - I thought about posting this idea back then, but I thought I would wait until it was implemented in LR, because I hoped this problem would be fixed by then, i.e. by now...).

Thanks.

Report · May 30, 2015

I just realized that this entire issue becomes an even bigger problem when copying and pasting gradients from one image to another.

Say that you added a gradient on an image and then used the Brush mode to erase part of it. Now if you copy and paste on another image, more than likely the gradient will no longer match/align with the objects/composition of the new image.

I know you can reset the Radial Filter Brushes, but if all you need is a minor adjustment, it's overkill to reset and painstakingly paint out again everything needed.

I am attaching an image as an example where I painted out part of a radial filter so that it doesn't affect the mountains in the back. I then tried to paste the settings onto another similar image but with slightly different composition and found myself facing the problem I described.

Does anyone from Adobe want to weigh in on this matter?

Report · Oct 18, 2015

This is unbelievable. I just used this for the first time and cannot believe the way this works. How did something so crippled make it through to a release. Why not hold off a bit and release a feature that is actually useful?

Report · Oct 18, 2015

When you are brushing, you can hold down the Alt/Option key and the panel's Reset button (bottom of panel) changes to Reset Brushes. This isn't very obvious.

Report · Oct 18, 2015

John: Yes, but do you mean that as a solution? All that "Reset brushes" does is reset (erase) the brush strokes. As far as I know, it does not allow to paint back in the original gradation, does it?

Report · Oct 18, 2015

It repaints all the original gradient, not restoring parts of it, but in my view it's sufficient - and the bigger problem is that it's not obvious.

Report · Oct 18, 2015

This is just a global reset. It doesn't help restore the gradient selectively. If you've spent 20 mins on the mask only to decide you want to restore part of the gradient , how is it 'sufficient'?

Report · Oct 18, 2015

Because IMHO a global reset is good enough for a very large proportion of cases.

Report · Oct 18, 2015

I don't agree. I think it's just poor design. With the budgets Adobe have these edges should not be rough.

Report · Dec 08, 2016

For those of you who understand spanish, I've posted a video detailing the oddities of the "filter brush" and sharing my view on them:

http://www.photoshopeando.com/2016/12/08/el-filtro-pincel-en-lightroom-cc-gran-idea-mala-implementac...

Not that I bear much hope of seeing it fixed so long after this report was initially posted, but who knows...

Report · Dec 09, 2016

Since I posted this suggestion, some people showed me several limitations of the "brush filter" design I was not initially aware of. To summarize, the updated suggestion would be to:

• allow the user to restore the gradation back in when painting (after erasing an area that overlaps the original gradation)
• provide some method so that we can move or even remove the erased/painted areas independently from the "filter" they were painted on (as if they had their own "pin"). This is needed not only when copying/pasting from one image to another, as Andrei already pointed out, but also when duplicating a filter on the same image, since the painted/erased areas are duplicated also, but can't be removed unless all filters (original and duplicates) are removed from the image and recreated again from scratch.

(It would be even better if masks in LR could be taken to a whole new level so that we could fill, invert, combine them, etc. independently -similar to the way C1 handles selections as "layers". I'm afraid that's not on LR's roadmap, though.)
Thanks.

Report · Jul 16, 2018

Since I am not sure of the effectiveness of voting for a change request, I decided to create a new application.
The fact that the brush behaves like a normal brush when editing the mask of a graduated or radial filter is quite beyond me.We need to be able to paint back fully or partially, the GRADATION of a graduated or radial filter, just like the erase brush does it.
This has already been reported three years ago and still no change in this behavior.
Please wake up...
https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/lightroom-cc-mask-brush-restore-paint-mode-fo...
https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/please-make-editing-a-graduated-filter-with-t...

Report · Jul 16, 2018

It is crazy that using a brush on the graduated filter destroys the gradient. I would expect that using brushed would mask/unmask the gradient, not edit the gradient directly.

Report · Jul 18, 2018

Although not what you’re asking about, it may help you achieve certain results quicker. https://youtu.be/SFuHYJvBXIQ