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Adjusting Particular Tonal Areas

meanwhile
(Anyone?)

In Irident Developer, there is an adjustment called "Brightness Shadows" (and also the corresponding Brightness Highlights and Brightness Midtones). It can be used to raise or lower (what I'm more interested in) the brightness of just the shadows.

In other apps a similar feature is called "Blacks", at least as far as I can surmise.

Now raising the brightness of the shadows is easy in C18 (HDR > Shadows).
How about lowering just them?


(Aperture, for example, also lets (or perhaps that should be "let") you brush masks into different tonal ranges (Highlights/Midtones/Shadows). That would be very handy in C1.)
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Comments

11 comments

Date Votes
  • meanwhile
    I know I can do it in a rough global way with a Curve, but hoping to avoid that as I'm stuck with only one Curve, and it's not something that can be applied locally.
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  • meanwhile
    Changed the subject on this one, it was a little confusing. Anyone?
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  • paintbox
    One way you could handle this:
    Create a local adjustment layer, call it "burn".
    Drop the exposure in that particular layer a little, then brush in your adjustment.
    The good thing is that once the mask is brushed in, one could increase or decrease local exposure via the slider.
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  • meanwhile
    Thanks Jimmy, an old-school burn layer does work where the image is simple enough or lends itself to it, unfortunately it rarely is/does. ☹️
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  • SFA
    You could try the Lightness setting in the Advanced color editor. It has the benefit of being available for adjustment layers.

    I can get it to deliver something that seems to be in line with your outline description (making dark areas darker without, presumably, affecting light areas) but whether that is all you really need is not so easy to judge!



    Grant
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  • meanwhile
    Thanks Grant! That's not bad at all. Pretty convoluted, but seems to do the job for now.

    Thanks!
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  • meanwhile
    Eh, not quite. That causes some weirdness in the midtones, and I can't quite seem to get it to limit the adjustment to the complete lower end of the colour spectrum (that is, shadows). It's likely I'm just doing it wrong.
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  • Edward Caruso
    I hate to be the one to bring up Photoshop - but its pretty easy to do this there.
    Make a curve adjustment layer, darken as you like and then adjust the blend if sliders in the layer styles dialogue.

    Otherwise I can get decent results with C1P's color editor tools but for precise work - that's done in PS.
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  • SFA
    [quote="meanwhile" wrote:
    Eh, not quite. That causes some weirdness in the midtones, and I can't quite seem to get it to limit the adjustment to the complete lower end of the colour spectrum (that is, shadows). It's likely I'm just doing it wrong.


    Difficult to be specific without working to a common reference point but it should be possible to limit the selection using the advanced features - if necessary selecting several colours and adjusting each but most of the time I doubt that would be necessary to get the change you want.

    If you select somewhere in the dark areas (Using Advanced Colour) I would expect you to see a colour "slice" with the selected point represented by a dot in the slice somewhere. Moving the dot changes the effective sample "point". You can also adjust the selected range - both colour (by grabbing a corner point and going full circle if required) and range by extending inwards to lighter areas or outwards to darker. You could refine things by selecting the same colour point and tweaking darker on way and lighter the other.

    Yes it is somewhat convoluted but offers a number of creative possibilities that seem to be applied within the context of the image.

    I use another application that provides extended controls over everything and can do things that C1 cannot - although whether you want those things is a matter of personal opinion. However it does mostly leave you to do your worst with the tools and in most cases C1 more easily produces successful images no matter what one might be trying to do with the shot.

    That said I think I understand what you would like to have available as a simple, no frills, selective adjustment and I can see your point. Maybe the next extension of which tools can be used in adjustment layers will partly address that though to be honest I think a dedicate tool might make more sense.


    HTH.


    Grant
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  • VirtualRain
    [quote="meanwhile" wrote:
    (Anyone?)

    In Irident Developer, there is an adjustment called "Brightness Shadows" (and also the corresponding Brightness Highlights and Brightness Midtones). It can be used to raise or lower (what I'm more interested in) the brightness of just the shadows.

    In other apps a similar feature is called "Blacks", at least as far as I can surmise.

    Now raising the brightness of the shadows is easy in C18 (HDR > Shadows).
    How about lowering just them?


    (Aperture, for example, also lets (or perhaps that should be "let") you brush masks into different tonal ranges (Highlights/Midtones/Shadows). That would be very handy in C1.)


    I would do this with NIK Viveza... their control point one-click tonal mask is a gift from god for doing any kind of local adjustments. NIK Viveza changed me forever.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdcBY7gO6hc

    Capture One now supports round-tripping to NIK.
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  • meanwhile
    Thanks all.

    There are lots of great ways to do it outside of the RAW workflow, I was hoping to do it without using TIFFs or outside programs. Can't have everything I guess.
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