Hi I do a lot of video editing and really like using the RGB Parade and Vectorscope.
Histogram for photos aren't as detailed. Is there any plugins or features that have similar functions like RGB Parade and Vectorscope for use inside Lightroom or maybe as an external editor?
I would like to have a vectorscope available in Lightroom/Photoshop. I am heavily colorblind and do mostly video work (where I have access to a vectorscope), but when I want to edit my pictures, I don't have access to the vectorscope, which is a very capable tool for colorblinds are I quickly able to see where my colors lands.
For stills photogs that need accurate flesh tones, the answer is simple.
They DON’T trust their eyes any more than movie colorists do. It’s more trust but verify.
So still photographers either use something like a Color Checker and create a custom profile, or they use this technique as explained so deftly by color genius Lee Varis: http://varis.com/2014/04/22/color-correction-4-skin/
I would really like to see Adobe add this feature to Lightroom & Photoshop. Photos are being viewed online more these days than in print—and needing images to be consistent on a variety of screens & monitors is vital (just like for video producing). There are so many people that do both photo & video these days—I'm so surprised that Adobe hasn't integrated this feature yet.
YES both professional PHOTOGRAPHERS and CINEMATOGRAPHERS use Photoshop. So RGB parade and vector scopes would be EXTREMELY beneficial. IATSE 600 cinematographers use stills on location scouts to show the director and the Digital Imaging technician what the location would look like with different LUTs. Being able to show the wave form will make the transition from stills to full motion picture more seemless
Many PROFESSIONAL photographers edit their images on any monitor they have avalible. Unlike your eyes, John, many monitors are not perfectly calibrated for color. A vector scope and RGB parade shows you more detailed information about your image then a histogram ever could allowing a professional to edit the colors of an image with more precision reguardless of their improperly calibrated monitor or inferior eyes. It doesnt matter if the image is supposed to be viewed in a sequence(@ 24fps) or by itself.
It's an old thread, but just wanted to leave this link here:
Nobe OmniScope - scope solution that will work with Lightroom (and other photo editing software). It's using screen capture to monitor the source image in realtime.
I'm also in need of a more informative scope than just a histogram. Can't believe adobe hasn't implemented this yet. Seems like it 100% possible because they already have it in PP. I signed up for Nobe instantly! FFS adobe improve your software based on your customer whishes!
Lightroom is application for editing pictures and not really for videos. The support for video editing in LR is very rudimental. For a proper video editing you have to use an appropriate program like Premiere Pro or Premiere Elements
My System: Intel i7-8700K - 64GB RAM - NVidia Geforce RTX 3060 - Windows 10 Pro 22H2 -- LR-Classic 13.2 - Photoshop 25.6 - Nik Collection 6.9 - PureRAW 4 - Topaz Photo AI 2
Would love to see image analysis like that found in most video editing applications be brought into the Lightroom family. Custimisable histograms, waveforms and vectorscopes would be completely invaluable for color correcting.
Not only professionals, but hobbyists coming from a video-editing environment or color-blind people would surely appreciate this kind of tools. Hey, I'm neither of those and I really want to see these features in photography software. If Adobe can have them in Premiere or AE, they surely can have it on LrC and Ps.
There are quite a few reasons using "their eyes" is not as good an idea as using vector parade and vectorscopes. And it's definitely one of those things that you don't think you need until you use it. And since most photographers haven't ever had access to it, they may prefer just using their eyes for a while.
But your monitor color does shift over time. So you have to calibrate every couple weeks? And unless you lock yourself in a dark room, then time of day effects how your monitor appears.
And yeah, still use your eyes. For sure. But start with a scope. It'd be like saying....no no, don't use a histogram to see if your image is properly exposed when you take a picture. Just use your eyes. But if your digital camera's screen is a bit off, you may be unintentionally clamping your shots, losing out on a bunch more detail that you could use. Looking at my camera screen, then comparing to a nicer monitor attached, I see more detail and color information in the monitor. Both histograms tell me the exact same information.
The same goes for the other tools as well. You can quickly nail skin tones, adjust white balance using different techniques, and adjust values and contrast, knowing what the image is going to look like without ever even looking at the image once you get practice at it.
No. Probably not the kind of professionals that require quotes. But as an Actual professional, yes. Yes I Would use this to adjust pictures. I use it to adjust video. Video is just a bunch of pictures, one after another. Why wouldn't I want the same kind of experience to edit a photo as well?
We know Lightroom is for photos. But why not make it more efficient for editing photos then?
Vectorscope is clearly the superior method compared to eyeballing in order to getting scientifically correct skin tones, regardless of white balance or grading. It also makes it far easier to match colours between different scenes.
Yes colour checkers exist. But are they always practical? Can I run up a stage in the middle of an event, get the emcee to hold it? And then pass it around the entire floor to get perfect white balance/colours? What if I don't have a colour checker.
I don't know why Adobe doesn't implement it. It's there. Just needs copying over and doing some tweaks.
It's already there Axel. It's been there for quite some time, as has it been requested for Photoshop. Anyone who has learned to use them in the video applications that have them wonder why in the world this doesn't exist in image editing. Well, it Does exist in image editing, just not in Adobe. Affinity has it. There are also a couple pieces of software that have it to add to anything on screen, in case your software doesn't support it. Of course, that's limited to your monitor colorspace then, and only 8bit? And one big advantage to using scopes, is you no longer have to rely on what you see on your monitor to adjust an image. A completely colorblind person could set off a very good starting point for skin tones and white balance by just looking at the graphs.
Adobe has slowly been taking photo and video correction tools and moving them across to each other:
From photo to video, Adobe took the general Lightroom/ACR user interface and added it to Premiere Pro and After Effects as the Lumetri Color panel. Video colorists were not impressed, but it made editing video color a lot easier for photographers moving into video.
From video to photo, Adobe has announced that Lightroom/ACR will soon be replacing the Split Toning panel with the new Color Grading panel, which will have three color wheels for highlights, midtones, and shadows: Something unfamiliar to photo editors, but immediately familiar to video colorists, in the Adobe photo applications.
As for how to edit skin tones and color balance without these tools, it is not accurate to say that eyeballing it is the only alternative in either medium. Both print and video have had ways:
For print, experienced color pros know the target CMYK and Lab values for skin tones and can edit a photo by the numbers, by watching those color values in the Info panel and using the color samplers.
For video, experienced color pros know how to read a vectorscope for skin tones.
Both of these methods are so old that they have been used since before editing went digital, and both ways make it possible to make good corrections even on a badly calibrated or black and white display. Each tradition taught its students that its way was the right way; that is why most photographers never thought to ask for a vectorscope and most video editors never asked for a histogram. But now that digital makes more of us cross-media, more of us are waking up to the notion that some of the best tools for our work might come from a different discipline than the one we were taught.
Obviously Adobe is starting to share color correction tools between photo and video applications, but slowly. If you want Adobe to implement something like a vectorscope a little faster, you could nudge them along with a feature request. Several “vectorscope” feature requests already exist on the official Photoshop/Lightroom Feedback site, you can go there and vote.
I came from the print side, but I can see how inadequate the histogram is, and how useful the video color monitoring tools can be. With the tools in Photoshop and Lightroom, the clipping displays and the Info panel color values are much more useful than the histogram. The color parade display from video editing is also a lot more useful than a histogram because it shows you where in the frame things are happening. I would welcome the additional and very useful dimensions of color correction info that the waveform/vectorscope could bring over from video editing.
It's exciting to know that Adobe is starting to cross-implement features across their software. Still bummed at how waveforms and vectorscopes isn't coming in the next update, but I think it's still a great step forward. Hopefully it'll be added in the following update after this.
While experienced pros can look at CMYK values for skin tones and adjust them, people in the entry level won't be able to do that. That's where vectorscopes come in. Eyeballing with a vectorscope is more reliable than CMYK values, as those ratios change drastically based on lighting and skin tone. I've been struggling to find ratio "formula" but it's always a generic rule of thumb guideline of CMYK/RGB I hear, and not concrete science.
i could really use a vector/saturation scope in Lr. When trying to match skin tones or just overall saturation in an image, there's currently no way of doing so in Lr. My saturation on the desktop can appear fine, but then the same image on a mobile device may appear undersaturated. Since we have no scopes nor HSL readouts, i have no way of knowing the true saturation levels in my images.
A vectorscope in Lightroom would be wildly useful for those of us who do production work. Currently, it's extremely difficult to do any sort of basic color matching in Lr and a vectorscope would make this task so much easier. If you don't know what that is, please spend a few minutes to learn: https://youtu.be/SP2Qj9-rV-w Premiere has the Lumetri scopes now and it should be a no-brainer to port those over to both Lr and Ps.
Both Lightroom and Capture One have implemented "grading wheels", but without scopes, they are just subjective effect sprinklers with no professional and controllable use.
If Lightroom would implement scopes, this would put Lightroom way above Capture One in terms of professional color control. And, as earth_oliver said above, Adobe already have it in Premiere - just "throw" it in there! Capture One have to build it from scratch!
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