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

I did some programming in the past but not in the image processing technology. Yet I suppose the technology I suggest would be simpler to implement than the current program which is very smart. The core idea is to make what's to be removed simpler to identify by the program and simpler and faster to point out by the user. It would make the tool much more efficient for certain objects on top of being faster. It would also make possible the removal of stuff like a large crane running across a building or a chicken wire around a garden. In some cases I didn't even try. Such a tool, or set of tools, would be a fabulous marketing argument for Affinity. Nick

Well, I explained that at length in my posts. In short, it seems to me my suggestions would significantly improve the productivity of the tool. By identifying exactly what's to remove the user wouldn't need in many situations to work stretch by stretch and struggle. When a wire passes in front of a rather homogeneous and/or simple, random background (sky, clouds, grass, foliage, etc.) it's a breeze. But when it comes to structured stuff with a mixture of trees, building facade, etc., it's time-consuming. It's even worse for latticed or meshed objects that are made of many very thin parts while being very large as a whole. Read more carefully my explanations. Moreover if you don't find it useful to you it doesn't mean it's useless for others. Nick

That's why it should rather use a library of typical objects such as road signs and patterns such as lattice or mesh stuff. Nick

Well, Kirk, if you have new suggestions you'd better create your own thread. It would give your propositions more visibility and it would allow this one focusing on its initial topic. BTW, tell me what you think about my ideas? Nick

Hi all, that's me again I have yet another addition to my suggestions, #1.7, for something else that spoils so many otherwise nice landscapes: 1.7 Fences, chicken wire, mesh, railings. Pretty much like lattice objects the overall size of such an object can be very large whereas its actual surface is comparatively very small and very see-through. It leaves plenty of the background to be seen that's therefore easy to restore. You can't imagine using the Impainting brush along all the wires. I am sure a smart tool could parse a given area and, once provided with the right clues, determine what's to remove in a breeze. I shot recently an interesting building that has at mid-level a terrace with an additional high fence (probably to protect children). Terrible but impossible to impaint manually. My 2cts. Nick

Great job, Jeff, thanks for the effort! So now there is an AF User Guide! Yet, is there a pdf version, or is it possible to make one? I find it more convenient than the iBook format. How did you do it? Nick

For that purpose the program would follow a procedure rather similar to panoramas with the difference that, instead of putting images side by side, it would superimpose them on top of each other and most of all correct the perspective. Here how I see things: Choose the master image, the one that was shot from the best spot with the best angle of view. Choose the slave image(s), the one(s) that contain the parts missing in the master and shot from an imperfect spot. Draw selection polygons around the stuff blocking the view and to be removed in each image. If necessary draw a selection polygon around the part(s) to be restored. Launch the stitching. In Hugin, on each pic, the program identifies so-called matching Control Points by spotting characteristic features (angles, points of a roof or of a window for example). Yet it sometimes messes them up and anyway lets the user choose them by a click (1). This would help to do a very precise job especially if there is a strong perspective effect in the slave shots. As you say it would be a killer because it could be very fast to apply and in case of a complicated and sophisticated background (like paintings, sculptures, etc.) the result would be perfectly genuine. It would allow to remove large objects like cars or trees for example or artifacts like reflexions you can't prevent (a light or the photograph in a glass). I didn't try but I guess this could be done manually as well with layers and the perspective tool but one would need some patience to get a good result. I'll give it a try. Hey, the Affinity guys, what do you think? Nick 1) BTW this feature should be implemented in the Panorama Persona.

Thanks. I'll reply there to your comments. Nick

You didn't get my point. In order for the program to restore the part that's masked by the line, the post, the sign or whatever, instead of trying to make an educated guess about what to remove and what to imitate, the program would be able to identify exactly which thing to remove according to specific pattern. I had once to struggle removing a line that was passing in front of a couple of trees that were in front of a building with parts across the sky. There is no way you can pass the brush all along. For each stretch you need to apply a different strategy with different brush sizes. That's because the app has to guess for each and every pixel what to do. If it knew in advance: where to start and where to end. the curve of the line. its average width. its color(s). it wouldn't need to make an educated guess but to follow a precise pattern. I have no doubt the algorithms currently used are pretty complicated. Once I wanted to remove a one-way sign and got at first a kind of squashed strawberry stain. The second try was the right one. If there was a one-way sign tool in a library of signs, a simple click would allow the program to exactly identify the size, shape and color to treat. On could add new types of signs to the library. It would prove perfect for latticed objects such a pylons, cranes, etc., which can be large but with a lot of air in the middle. I think identifying stuff according to a library would be simpler than the current program (which would still be pertinent in many cases). Nick

I agree, AP has a great value. However I didn't use all its features so far. I tried SnapHeal from the AppStore and it's a joke. Erasing wires from a plain blue sky leaves ugly traces. I develop my RAWs with DxO OpticsPro which has a dust tool. It's OK for small dust spots but it's awfully slow, needs to recalculate the job each time and with stuff like wires does the same as SnapHeal. This dust tool is just useless. But it's not DOP's core business. What do you think of my suggestions? Nick