nickdaum

According to DPReview DxO acquires Nik Collection from Google and will continue to offer it for free... for now but doesn't say if they got it for free and how long exactly the collection will remain free. I tried the HDR Efex program but I was underwhelmed. I am a DxO user and I hope they'll improve the products and make them compatible with DOP. Nick

OK. I'll give it a try. :) Nick

Thanks. :) I had a look at the video but that's a manual, time consuming type of job. It's the kind of correction I hardly ever need to do. I usually don't correct reality. Shiny reflections from flashes and lights are artifacts and, unlike wrinkles and blemishes, are pretty standard in colors, well… they are practically white, and therefore can or should be treated automatically and replaced by the adjacent tone. car123's tip does the job well. Nick

The result is pretty good :) (considering the original pic ;) ). I am still a dummy about layers so I'll have to work on them. As a starter I did a test directly without a layer. It worked quite well too, then I exported so the original is still intact. This seems to be the exact tool I was looking for and obviously it's quite simple to use. The next step will be to select the areas to treat. For example jewels need to remain shiny, don't they? I suppose layers allow that. Thanks for the excellent tip. :) Nick

1. On the first point As I said they were shot in JPG format and I was asked to create a presentation with them. I use DxO OpticsPro as a RAW converter but even with it I doubt I could get a satisfying result because those highlights are totally clipped and there is little if any to recover in these areas. Anyway on the lips for example I don't want it to become clearer, I want it to become the same color as the rest of the lipstick . Under the eye I want it to become skin color, probably a little clearer. I did the job manually with APh's Impainting tool on the lips, the eyes, the right eye caruncula lacrimalis that looked very bad, the nose and her left cheek. It was very easy but it's time consuming and it's perfectible. I'm not going to do that a zillion times on each pic. Isn't it an issue for studio photographers using artificial lights and for wedding photographers who have to use a flash? Or do they have the time to correct it manually in post? Or do their staff have the time? Wouldn't it be a handy tool to get rid automatically and smartly of those highlights? Flash and lights reflections on the cornea are very distracting. 2. What's the “frequency separation approach”? Nick

I am afraid the photos are not mine and represent people I don't know. I hardly ever use a flash and when I do I bounce. Yet I found a picture on Wikipedia that can give you a clue: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/Nasolabial_fold.jpg?uselang=fr (1) On her lips and around her right eye there are a number of tiny reflections. On her hair it's very mild. Even her cheeks and nose tip have highlights. Not this one but some women use very glossy lipstick, make-up and/or hair lacquer. On this picture highlights are rather soft but on the pics I was given in some cases there are many more and they are much more glossy. The correction I need could be done with the Impaint tool but it would be an extremely long process (there are tens of pictures with tens of highlights)and it's not part of my assignment. I would like a tool with which I could select an area and tell it to kill all highlights. Nic 1) Don't care about the oval, it's not mine.

Hi all I am a newbie so please forgive me if the question is trivial and/or has already been asked and answered. As an assignment to make a presentation I have been given a bunch of JPGs taken indoor with a flash. There aren't red eyes, probably automatically corrected, but there are many of those tiny reflections especially on women's lipstick, eyelashes, hair, and so on. They are fully clipped so a regular highlight correction is useless. It would rather need an impainting technology. I can't imagine myself correcting each of those highlights with the Impainting Tool. I am not supposed to do any correction and it's a pro bono job. Is there a way to do it all at once, a tool giving the order: “impaint all highlights in that area”? TIA Regards Nick

I concur. XMP is a public domain standard, thanks to Adobe. So it should be quite feasible, if not simple, to implement the compatibility. I also have a bunch of legacy RAW files with settings done in ACR. As a matter of fact I switched to DxO OP which does a far superior job than ACR while being much more convenient. I add 2 suggestions: It would be nice to have the option to display the picture in either status: original and tweaked in ACR. A button would make it possible to toggle from on to the other. Why not be able to write XMP files too? Nick

I concur, well… so much that I created a thread about it: How to fill or impaint transparent gaps? ;) Please add your support to it. :) It doesn't seem to be in the pipe. There is such a tool in the Panorama Persona but it's only for panoramas you just did with AP. You can't even reopen a finished one and complete the job. Nick

Hi It looks nice but I have no sound whether with Firefox or Safari. I tried to follow just with the image but I missed something about the layer so it doesn't work. It looks exciting though. Nick

Hi MEB Thanks for your quick answer. I do my panoramas with Hugin. I tried AP's persona but it's way behind the specialist. I created a thread some time ago on this forum about the issue but no one found the solution. You can't import an already done panorama in the persona and ajust the corners. Anyway the need for “de-cropping“ arises also with pictures that were just leveled like in the example in DPR and after tweaking the perspective or the geometry in general. It happens often to me. Would such a feature be a difficult thing to program? Nick

Hi all I have been dreaming of that for ages : Content-aware cropping coming soon to Adobe Photoshop CC. Actually I would call that de-cropping. Not only I am a lousy framer but I often do panoramas that often leave blank edges. Any thought? Nick

Hi MEB OK, so it's useless as far as my needs are concerned. I'll continue using it as a stand-alone app and I'll be waiting for the future HDR tool promised for AP. Nick

Hi MEB I had installed the Nik Collection before I read this thread so I didn't do the plugin part of the install. I don't have Aperture and I have PSE 6 (very old). In the Collection I intend to use HDR Efex Pro only so what do you mean by working partially as a plugin in AP? As a matter of fact I am not enthused by its job as a stand-alone app. Is there any benefit from using it as a plugin? So is it worth the deinstallation + installation process? TIA Nick

I think there is a need for a tool dedicated to flares. I have some shots of people dressed in Renaissance, damask outfits… with a few flares on them. I tried different tools (impainting, clone, etc.) and none could reproduce correctly the underlying pattern. And yet the pattern is visible, it's just too pale. With flares you don't need to replace something like you do with wires or signs by using the impainting tool. You need to enhance and generally darken the tone to match the surrounding. OK guys, I know, one should keep his lens clean and shouldn't have flares in the first place. It serves me right. ;-) Nick