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Author Topic: smart colour  (Read 5674 times)
DavidC
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« on: August 22, 2015, 12:17:57 PM »

I to and fro between Lightroom and Qimage. However I keep being pleasantly surprised at how well Qimage does with my photos without any additional adjustments for RAW. Lightroom has a new 'dehaze' feature that looks quite useful - but actually, Qimage does a pretty good job of reducing haze anyway. I will try and post some comparisons.

Anyway - my question, when I import a photo smart colour is applied. Once imported I can edit it using the Sel.Color tab. At this point I can seem to apply smart color again by clicking on the colored globe and it will come up with some suggested adjustments. These settings are all 1 to begin with giving the impression smart color has not been applied on import. I assume it has been applied - could someone confirm that to be the case? If so, it would be useful to see what values were applied on import in the Sel.Color tab as that would form a useful basis to make further adjustments.

Thanks

David
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Fred A
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« Reply #1 on: August 22, 2015, 12:48:40 PM »

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I to and fro between Lightroom and Qimage. However I keep being pleasantly surprised at how well Qimage does with my photos without any additional adjustments for RAW. Lightroom has a new 'dehaze' feature that looks quite useful - but actually, Qimage does a pretty good job of reducing haze anyway. I will try and post some comparisons.

Anyway - my question, when I import a photo smart colour is applied. Once imported I can edit it using the Sel.Color tab. At this point I can seem to apply smart color again by clicking on the colored globe and it will come up with some suggested adjustments. These settings are all 1 to begin with giving the impression smart color has not been applied on import. I assume it has been applied - could someone confirm that to be the case? If so, it would be useful to see what values were applied on import in the Sel.Color tab as that would form a useful basis to make further adjustments.

Thanks

David

Tough to answer, David, because the application of color boost is so  subjective.
best I give you an example of how I apply Smart Color.

1) See screen snap 209: I turn off the automatic SC in RAW.
My reason has to do with possible shadow noise with my camera, and boosting sometimes exacerbates the background noise.

2)  DeHAZE is certainly the same as the old Clarifier in Photo Shop....
See screen snap 210... Mike broke this down for us years ago.
Try these settings to "DEHAZE"     High Radius and small Strength, (make sure as in screen snap) that slider is at MIN

3)Smart Color....
The 1.0 that appears initially, is a multiplier...     That means if you had a shade that contained RGB.... values  the output is multiplied by 1... which is no change....  50,60,100  comes out the same.

When you apply SC automatically, Qimage reads the colors and decides how much boost the image can handle without blowing out colors.
See screen snaps 211,,, where my object was to just brighten the blue sky. (It was early morning and the sky was still waking up)
I eye dropper checked the sky color (Blue, sometimes Cyan, and sometimes both).
So selectively, I ticked the BLUE up from 1.0 to 1.4
See Snap 212
The rest depends on the image and if the image needs boost, and how much if any. Totally up to the image and your objective.

Hope some of this helps.

Fred
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Terry-M
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« Reply #2 on: August 24, 2015, 10:36:09 AM »

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I turn off the automatic SC in RAW
I work a little differently and have SC set as default in Raw Refine. However I now swith it on and off quickly to compare the effect and will leave it off if the image looks better.
I do use Smart Colour in the editor as follows:
1. If it was on in Raw Refine and there's a blue sky, I'll sometimes lower the Cyan and blue levels a little to darken the sky.
2. I will apply SC globally, particularly if it's a low contrast "dull" image to liven it up. I may then reduce some values, like the sky colours and others to get a balance I like.
3. Adjust individual levels as I think fit.
4. In all cases, keep an eye on RGB values in critical areas of the  image.

Terry
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DavidC
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« Reply #3 on: August 24, 2015, 11:48:05 AM »

Thanks Fred/Terry, most useful. In general it does the right thing and I can now see that sometimes additional tweaks might be useful in Sel.Color. It was perplexing originally because even though smart colour was applied on import the Sel.Color tab showed no indication of it being applied.

David
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Fred A
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« Reply #4 on: August 24, 2015, 12:04:12 PM »

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Thanks Fred/Terry, most useful. In general it does the right thing and I can now see that sometimes additional tweaks might be useful in Sel.Color. It was perplexing originally because even though smart colour was applied on import the Sel.Color tab showed no indication of it being applied.

David

David,
The point you make is exactly what we try to explain...
The SC (from the editor) is to be used to enhance the image...
The best example is Terry darkening his blue sky a bit to enhance the white puffy clouds. He does this by (down arrow) lowering the multiplier to less than one.
My example was a shot that was taken before the sun really made any difference (early morning)....  I needed to lighten the blue of the sky because in *THAT* shot is was muddy.
So I clicked the little arrow up to 1.4 on the blue/cyan.

Try to use the tools judiciously,   ( I get emails that say things like, I applied the SC in the Editor, and it still looks "funny")

They think the globe button is a vitamin pill for any image.

Thanks,
Fred
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