In article 2014081108430694198-savageduck1@REMOVESPAMmecom, Savageduck wrote:

Sandman:
Here's an example of a feature I'm missing in Lightroom.

I use curves extensively, it's the holy grail of exposure editing.
If you're not using it, start using it!

So here it is in Apertu

http://sandman.net/files/aperture_curves.png

On a slightly (deliberately) overexposed image from Gotland. See
the "Range:" popup? It can be set to "extended", and it looks like
this:

http://sandman.net/files/aperture_extended.png

It shows a larger spectrum of image data than can be displayed on
your monitor, i.e. a higher dynamic range. This is only populated
if you're shooting with RAW files of course. You then have more
bits of image data than JPG or your display can show. Using this,
I can move the qhite point *up*:

I am not going to get into a major Aperture vs. Lightroom argument
here, but why on earth would you want to move the white point "up"?
All that is going to do is clip the data on the right.

Uhm, what I meant was to move the white point to the right, i.e. increase
it, to span a greater range, hence the "up". Might have been a bit ambigous
yes, but the screenshots showed what I meant.

Sandman:
http://sandman.net/files/apterture_extended2.png

And you can instantly see the result. You suddenly have more image
data in the monitor-visible spectrum! Amazing, isn't it? Now, this
may have been a poor image to show this with since we don't have
all that much *useful* data in the upper range either way. But
it's super useful for a lot of bright images to get more data from
the file.

I can see that this might be beneficial in an image with deep
shadows and you might want to artificially stretch the DR, but with
the example you have used all you achieve is clipping. There is no
additional image data visible to me, and I would guess anybody else.

Huh? Look again, when moving the whitepoint to the right, I get *more* data
into the visible range, and you see the horizon, which was blocked out in
the earlier image. More data, not blocked. The opposite of blocked.

Sandman:
Unfortunately, Lightroom doesn't seem to support this. Default it
shows you a poor-mans version of curves:

http://sandman.net/files/lightroom_poorcurves.png

And at first I wondered what the hell this curve was on about, it
had these stupid limits and regions. So you have to click the
bottom right icon to get to the real curves:

http://sandman.net/files/lightroom_curves.png

But, alas, no extended range here (or with the poorer version of
curves) so no way - as far as I can make out - to actually access
all that glorious image data from within Lightroom.

Anyone knows if I've missed something?

From what I can see you are calling the Lightroom implementation of
a Tone Curves adjustment a "poorer version of curves" because it
doesn't have this extended feature.

No, limited feature, where it sets limit on how much you can edit the
curve. It's like a "Curve for beginners" with safe limits so you won't
ruin your image too much.

However, it doesn't really do what you claim on the right of the
histogram where it leads to clipping. It can help in the shadows and
mid-tones, but for the most part there are other tools which can deal
with those issues. They are two apps with similar goals, but different
implementation, don't expect them to mirror each other in every way. They
won't.

All I am saying is that Aperture has a way to access image data that is
outside the 8 bit scope of your monitor, like any HDR tool also can.

The Sony A7 has 11 bit color depth information in the raw file, which your
monitor can't show, so compressing that dynamic range down to 8 bit allows
for that, which Aperture supports in its Curbes implementation, but as far
as I can make out, Lightroom has no way for me to access that data.


--
Sandman[.net]