Set White Point, Photoshop-style

[JDW]

Where is the Set White Point in Affinity Photo (AP)?

 

Please note that I've been using the AP beta and recently I purchased the app via MAS.  I am trying to transition from Photoshop but I am faced with a learning curve.

 

In Photoshop, I hit CMD-M to bring up the Curves dialog and then click the rightmost dropper icon ("Sample in image to set white point") and click on the light parts of my image.  That adjusts the white balance and the white point beautifully.  I use this all the time on the white parts of scanned images to make sure white is 100% white.

 

I want to do the same thing in AP, but no such feature exists in the AP Curves dialog that I can see.  And when I type "Set White Point" or even "white point" in the Help menu Search field, nothing relevant appears.

 

How do I accomplish this in AP?  Again, I want a drop tool (or similar) that allows me to click on light areas of the image and set those parts to pure white.

 

If there is such a feature in AP, please note that Photoshop allows me to press the Option key after I click the White Point dropper to see areas that are still dark.  That is very convenient to allow me to see where else I should click the dropper to make sure all the white areas are pure white, not leaving any light gray patches anywhere.  Does AP have this?

 

Thanks.

[MelG]

Hey  JDW. I know it is not the same, but you can find the white point chooser in Photo persona as a white balance picker (bottom right). You can pick multiple area for white point or drag to choose. If you are in Develop persona, there is a white point and black point slider. 

 

Hope that helps.

[JDW]

Hey  JDW. I know it is not the same, but you can find the white point chooser in Photo persona as a white balance picker (bottom right). You can pick multiple area for white point or drag to choose. If you are in Develop persona, there is a white point and black point slider. 

 

I believe you mean "bottom tool on the left toolbar in the Develop Persona," right?  That tool has the tooltip "White Balance Tool" and looks like a CD with a line through it.  (The "bottom right" corner of the Photo Persona shows me "Navigator, Transform, History and Channels.")

 

But again, that "White Balance Tool" does not set the White Point akin to the White Point dropper tool in Photoshop's Curves dialog. 

 

Why is this important?  Take a document of mostly text printed on white paper and scan it.  Open the scanned file in Photoshop or Affinity Photo and note the whites are not pure white.  They are a tad grayish.  And the gray splotches are not 100% consistent if your paper was wrinkled.  

 

To fix that scan in Photoshop is easy.  Open Curves, choose the White Point dropper tool, click on a light gray part of your scan and watch as it immediately becomes pure white!  (The white balance is affected at the same time, although that is technically a separate feature.)  Now press the OPTION key and you will then be shown a display of those areas that are not yet pure white.  That allows you to find those parts and click the dropper on them to whiten-out all the areas that should be pure white.  The end result is you can make your scan to match the original -- the paper is pure white and the text is black.

 

That is what I seek in Affinity Photo.

 

Thanks.

[MelG]

I believe you mean "bottom tool on the left toolbar in the Develop Persona," right?  That tool has the tooltip "White Balance Tool" and looks like a CD with a line through it.  (The "bottom right" corner of the Photo Persona shows me "Navigator, Transform, History and Channels.")

 

 

No, I was describing (poorly, obviously) the Adjustment Layer called "White Balance Adjustment" in the Photo Persona.The picker is in that window on the bottom left.

 

I'm not familiar with how the White Balance Tool in Develop Persona works. On the right side of the screen in the DP under the menu Basic>Exposure you can chose the blackpoint. I was wrong in saying you could chose white point here... It's brightness.  

 

 

 

Why is this important?  Take a document of mostly text printed on white paper and scan it.  Open the scanned file in Photoshop or Affinity Photo and note the whites are not pure white.  They are a tad grayish.  And the gray splotches are not 100% consistent if your paper was wrinkled.  

 

 

I understand what you are trying to do. I believe the Adjustment layer method will turn the gray to white, BUT I'm not sure how you can do the second part of what you want to do. I know you can multiple click in different areas but that will give you the average, not another white point. Maybe someone on staff can help us answer this. :huh:

[JDW]

I was describing the Adjustment Layer called "White Balance Adjustment" in the Photo Persona. The picker is in that window on the bottom left.

 

Yes, I am aware of that Picker button inside the White Balance dialog (chosen via the Adjustment tab of Photo Persona).  That picker tool seems to have the same effect as the White Balance Tool in Develop Persona.  (Which of course does not make light gray areas pure white, which is what I seek).

 

I believe the Adjustment layer method will turn the gray to white, BUT I'm not sure how you can do the second part of what you want to do. I know you can multiple click in different areas but that will give you the average, not another white point. Maybe someone on staff can help us answer this. :huh:

 

I can achieve the same "whitening" effect on a scanned document using a combination of Adjustment layers and a fair amount of time.  But that same exact effect is achieved in Photoshop's Curves dialog, via the White Point dropper, in all of 1 second. That's why I added dialog on this point in the Feature Requests section.  It would be a useful feature addition.

[DonatoF]

Hi JDW-

 

Can't you achieve that quickly by moving the upper right point in the curves to the left? (see attached screenshot)

 

[JDW]

Can't you achieve that quickly by moving the upper right point in the curves to the left? (see attached screenshot)

 

Yes it could.  But the same can be said of Photoshop's Curves feature.  And yet Photoshop has the White Point dropper tool.   :)

[cekuhnen]

I have to agree.

 

I am blown away that AP does not offer white and black eye dropper and cannot adjust / move the mid gray tone.

 

I work alot with sketches and scann them in and it seems AP is one of the worst tools here because it is more labor intensive.

[Jakerlund]

+1 For a picker to set Black/White Point :wub:

It's very useful to be able to decide exactly what i want to be black/white in an image.

[paulzabphoto]

Hi,

 

Being able to set your white, mid and black points using ink values (by the numbers), gives you the most accurate way of controlling how much ink hits the page. Important when supplying images for use in CMYK printing and you don't want to let pre-press software automatically make decisions about these matters. Please see attached PDF.

 

It would be great to see this essential feature in Affinity Photo.

 

Cheers,

Paul Zab

by the numbers.pdf

[860lacov]

Are there white and black pickers now?

[kaffeeundsalz]

Are there white and black pickers now?

 

The whitepoint and blackpoint eyedroppers seem to have not made it into Photo yet. I believe that the team is working on them since the topic has already come up a couple of times here, and the feature roadmap for Photo still lists "Levels improvements" as well as "Curves improvements" (it has been so for quite some time now, but the roadmap got updated after the 1.5 release).

 

Right now, DonatoFs method works best for me, and the histogram gives me a fairly precise sense about where the highlights of the image are. Just as a side note, Photoshop's levels adjustment also has a greypoint picker that can be used for white balance corrections, but I wouldn't find this particularly useful in AP because we already have the (very good) white balance adjustment for this.

[Thomahawk]

Hi. Looking for the same here. Now in 2019. I don't see a white point picker anywhere. Or is it hidden somewhere?

Thom

[Robert Cailliau]

And same here:  this is a tool I use(d) a lot in Photoshop.  It's not perfect and it's not "professional", but it is so effective and efficient:  you scan a document or make a photo, the want to print it and the quickest way to get rid of the greyish parts is to use the white picker.  Saves a lot of ink.

[Murfee]

53 minutes ago, Robert Cailliau said:

And same here:  this is a tool I use(d) a lot in Photoshop.  It's not perfect and it's not "professional", but it is so effective and efficient:  you scan a document or make a photo, the want to print it and the quickest way to get rid of the greyish parts is to use the white picker.  Saves a lot of ink.

Hi Robert, if you hold the Alt/Option key while adjusting the black or white sliders in the Levels adjustment layer you will see clipping warnings, this method is not the same as the pickers in Photoshop but can be used to the same effect. 

[JDW]

1 hour ago, Murfee said:

Hi Robert, if you hold the Alt/Option key while adjusting the black or white sliders in the Levels adjustment layer you will see clipping warnings, this method is not the same as the pickers in Photoshop but can be used to the same effect. 

I started this thread 3 years ago.  It has been supported by numerous people as you can easily see.  And yet, not a single thing has been done by Serif to add the dropper icon akin to what's in Photoshop.  I've made numerous other suggestions in this forum through the years -- nearly all of which have fallen on deaf ears.  I want to know why.  (And please don't give me "no time due to work on Affinity Publisher" as an excuse.)

At the end of the day, it's not the fiddly workarounds people flock to but rather the familiar.  

Serif, please add the dropper tool to Affinity Photo today.  Adding more helps like that to Photoshop users is the fast track to getting more of them to switch to Affinity Photo.  Three years is already much too long to wait.  Do it to humor me.  Do it to show you actually care about customer feedback.  Do it for your own reasons.  Just do it. Do it today.

[Murfee]

8 minutes ago, JDW said:

At the end of the day, it's not the fiddly workarounds people flock to but rather the familiar.  

Serif, please add the dropper tool to Affinity Photo today.  Adding more helps like that to Photoshop users is the fast track to getting more of them to switch to Affinity Photo.  Three years is already much too long to wait.  Do it to humor me.  Do it to show you actually care about customer feedback.  Do it for your own reasons.  Just do it. Do it today.

At the end of the day we are talking about Affinity Photo, not Photoshop on the cheap! People need to have a realistic view about the software, it is in the early days of development more functionality will come in time. Too many users seem to want a complete clone of Photoshop now!! That should not happen in this software, the potential for this software is huge but patience is needed.

The developers do read the feedback and do implement user requests, just not necessarily the requests that some users consider to be the most important to them. Serif will have an implementation plan that fits with the way they see the software going, we don't know that plan, as in all businesses plans change. Things will be implemented but not necessarily the same as in Photoshop, they will just be different, they will more than likely be better.

As for fiddly workarounds, no they are just a different way to achieve the same result. I was a Photoshop user for many years, I got sick of it and was very glad to find Affinity Photo. After a couple of months figuring out how to achieve the results I needed, I found using Photoshop a complete nightmare.

I use Affinity Photo to process images that go to high end printers then to galleries for sale, the end results are excellent, but you do need to take the time to fully understand the software.

 

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, JDW said:

I started this thread 3 years ago.  It has been supported by numerous people as you can easily see.  And yet, not a single thing has been done by Serif to add the dropper icon akin to what's in Photoshop.  I've made numerous other suggestions in this forum through the years -- nearly all of which have fallen on deaf ears.  I want to know why.

To begin with, you posted this topic to the Questions forum, but since it is a feature request, it should be posted to the appropriate Suggestions, Discussions & Feature Requests forum. Do that (or look for an existing topic there to add your comments to) & it will not fall on deaf ears -- the staff have explained multiple times that the developers read & consider everything posted there but generally do not have time to do that in this forum, too.

Next, as has also been explained multiple times, the number of users requesting a particular feature does play a part in determining when or if that feature will be added, but it is only one of several factors that goes into that decision. Among the others are the amount of code work needed to implement it, if it would cause any problems with existing features or ones they are already planning on adding, if it should be something exclusive to one specific Affinity app or available in any of the others (& how best to implement that), & so on.

[JDW]

12 hours ago, Murfee said:

At the end of the day we are talking about Affinity Photo, not Photoshop on the cheap! People need to have a realistic view about the software, it is in the early days of development more functionality will come in time. Too many users seem to want a complete clone of Photoshop now!! That should not happen in this software, the potential for this software is huge but patience is needed.

I read your reply but my eyes glazed over when I read your "more patience needed" quip in light of the 3 years it's been since I opened this thread.  Sorry, but three years is long enough (even for Serif staff to discover this thread).   But more than that, Affinity Photo really is "PS on the cheap" insofar as it contains many similar features and is cheaper.  That truth really isn't debatable.  It's factual reality.  There are more similarities with PS than not.  It's just that some of us prefer AP to become even more similar.  The eye dropper is a part of that.  So rather than just defend the status quo (which has remained unchanged these last 3 years), please join us and jump on the bandwagon of feature requests that would help others even when you yourself are not helped by them.

10 hours ago, R C-R said:

To begin with, you posted this topic to the Questions forum, but since it is a feature request, it should be posted to the appropriate Suggestions, Discussions & Feature Requests forum. Do that (or look for an existing topic there to add your comments to) & it will not fall on deaf ears

In that case, please use the string-pulling power of your 3,095 reputation to get this thread MOVED to the appropriate place in the Feature Requests forum, rather than tell me to make a new post 3 years later, which as you full well know would eliminate all the important posts in this thread.  Moving the thread is better than starting a new one from scratch.  Moving threads has been possible in other forums for years, so I must assume it's possible in this forum too.  Thank you in advance for your kind assistance in doing that.

 

[Ulysses]

4 hours ago, JDW said:

please join us and jump on the bandwagon of feature requests that would help others even when you yourself are not helped by them.

I’ve been using Affinity Photo for over three years now, and for approx two years on a regular basis without Photoshop. What’s amazed me is that the developers have read my feature requests as well as my bug reports, and I’ve seen some of these suggestions and reports result in core fixes. I’m glad to see that I’m heard, and that functionality — at least for the features which I need to access most ten during my workflow — are being proved with each version.

Of course, this may also mean that the priorities of other artists may get passed over for a time. Or perhaps Serif believes they already have a better way of helping you reach your end goal besides wishing for a mere clone of a Photoshop feature.

I do hope you invest the small effort to drop your thoughts into the appropriate section of this forum so that it’s given closer consideration. 

[JDW]

Done!

 

[Robert Cailliau]

JDW has a point.

I've reported a number of "bugs":   "a rose, by any other name, smells as sweet", so call them what you will (some bugs/features/workarounds/… usually stink.)  But they do not get corrected in a new version or an update.  I do not need new features:  they came in avalanches in Illustrator but never the desired ones.  I'm much happier with Designer than with Illustrator, and happy with Photo, except for that missing white point tool.

For Designer I have reported, without reasonable response, that

• on a machine with two screens, a new document appears first on the second screen (where obviously I do not want it)
• documents do not always open in the same location and view as when they were closed
• the interface colours now do use my preferred highlight, but the text on the selection is not the inverse (I get white on light yellow…)
• the tab order in the transform panel is wrong

and I just now found that adding a style from a selection does not work if the stroke colour is pure black (rgb 0,0,0) but it does work if it is even just very slightly different (e.g. rgb 0,1,0).  That is a BUG.

I will report those issues again on the corresponding forums and feature request lists.

As to the white point request:  I fully support JDW.  It's not about "photoshop on the cheap".  I do realise that professional users will rarely or perhaps never use this tool.  However, I'm using Affinity Photo mostly for touching up scans of documents, and in those cases almost always the first thing I want to do is to get rid of the light greyish background, turning it into simple flat white (not the Australian coffee).

I'll be happy with a "macro" if it does exactly that.  But I get the impression from the responses that there is no easy workaround at all, and that some even find the question annoying.  This is not a place for a flame-war.  We are here to collaborate to find working solutions.

If there is no white point tool available and there is no simple workaround, then we should simply admit that, put in a strong request in the feature requests list.  Not waffle around.

I'll go and do that now.

[eobet]

I also came to this forum looking for this feature. I used it a lot in Photoshop, because we export depth maps from 3D renders, so it's nice to be able to just do two clicks inside the actual render to set the range we want.

[Fixx]

While white eyedropper is ok method for setting white point I would much prefer to use auto-button to set both black and white points automatically. 

[Sideshowlol]

Tools to enable the setting of “black”, “white” and “mid-grey” points for an image are hugely important for so many reasons.

In PS it is possible to preset the colour values for each of these points and then a single targeted click on the image being corrected for each point will remap all the colour values. 

Some people use the tool in PS to simply set 100% white and black values, and to remove a colour cast from an image by choosing a mid-grey for the gamma. But it is very much more powerful than that and a fantastically useful tool in the PS tool set.

Has AF any tool to match PS in this department yet? If so, please can someone tell me where it is? I have to keep my copy of PS 7 on an older Mac to allow me to do this one thing for my images.

I appreciate very much what Serif have created with their suite of apps for designers. However, there are certain tools still missing from AF and AD that make a huge difference to my workflow. An easy way to remap colours in an image through an “eye-dropper” type of tool would be tremendously helpful.

PS had this ability since at least version 2, when I first used it, and so I find it hard to understand why something similar hasn’t yet been implemented in AF, especially considering the other fancy things it can do. It’s mid-2020 now. I am hoping that this will be the year of the white-point, black-point & gamma setting tool!