Landscape Workflow Questions

[TheEyesHaveIt]

Hi all,

 

Running AP on an iPad Pro 10.5. Coming over from working with Lightroom and Photoshop with my Surface Pro. Mainly do landscape work and had some questions:

 

- I noticed that I get way more out of the RAW files (Sony) from Lightroom than AP's Develop module, especially for shadows and highlights recovery. Is that expected?

- Does AP's Develop auto-correct lens distortion based on lens profile?

- If I have a mask on a layer, is there a way for me to see the mask overlay (ruby overlay in Photoshop) so I can see if I missed any spots? I saw a tutorial using the Selection persona, but that doesn't seem to work if I have a mask layer selected.

- If I have a mask on a layer, is there a way for me to see the actual mask (black and white)?

- I have loaded some macros for luminosity masks - once I create a mask, is it possible for me to edit the mask using a levels adjustment while actually seeing the mask (black and white version)?

- Is there a way to easily copy a mask to another layer?

- Can I create a mask via a color range?

 

Cheers!

[TheEyesHaveIt]

Anybody? I really like AP and the iPad, but without some of these workflow things, it's very hard for me to post-process. Contemplating returning the iPad in that case.

[James Ritson]

Hey, thanks for posting, I do a lot of landscape photography so will chip in here:

• RAW files: on the surface, you would be forgiven for thinking there's not a lot of wiggle room for tonal manipulations. What I tend to do, however, is disable the automatic tone curve that's applied. Once you do this, developed RAW files appear slightly duller since only gamma correction is applied. From here, the Highlights slider is much more powerful, and you can use Curves and other adjustments to completely shape your image how you want tonally.
• Here's a video where I disable the tone curve option at the start and go on to develop the RAW file. I actually comment on the fact that there's a lot of workable dynamic range considering the camera (Panasonic GH2): 

 

• Lens corrections: the iPad version of Photo uses Apple Core Image RAW exclusively, and there's definitely automatic lens correction applied. If your images look corrected in Photos (or you know that your lens is supported by Core Image RAW), then you'll be good to go.
• Currently on the iPad version the mask preview support is lacking. On desktop, you can Option/Alt-click to isolate the mask but you can't do that yet on iPad unfortunately.
• Copying a mask to another layer: you can either
  • Select the mask, go to the Commands menu (three dots), Duplicate, then tap-drag the duplicated mask and drop it inside whichever layer you want.
  • Select the mask, go to the Channels studio. Select Mask Alpha, tap three dots then Create Spare Channel. You now have a spare alpha channel which you can "load" into any layer. E.g. you could load it into another pixel's alpha channel, or create a new mask and load it into that.
• Masks via colour ranges: Select the layer you want to base the colour range off. Either:
  • Tap the Selections Persona (lasso icon, top left). Now on the Commands menu (three dots) choose Select Hue Range and you can choose from reds/greens/blues.
  • Go to the Channels studio. Tap the three dots next to the layer name's Red/Green/Blue channels and choose Create Mask Layer.
  • Alternatively, you can also tap the three dots next to any composite channel (which is the channel makeup of the whole document) and choose Load To Pixel Selection, which will give you an active selection you can create a mask from.

Wall of text, sorry! The one thing I would also point out is that adjustments and live filters inherently have their own masks, so you needn't clip mask layers to them. For example, simply select the actual adjustment, then you can manipulate its mask straight away with the Paint Brush Tool, or by looking on the Channels studio (you can invert it, load other channels into it, etc).

 

Hope that helps!

[TheEyesHaveIt]

Thank you James! Immensely helpful!

 

How do you find AP's RAW processor compared to Lightroom mobile or Snapseed?

 

Also, is there a way to apply a levels adjustment to a mask? Especially useful for adjusting luminosity masks.

 

I guess my biggest feature request then would be mask preview support.

[MEB]

Hi TheEyesHaveIt,

 

37 minutes ago, TheEyesHaveIt said:

Also, is there a way to apply a levels adjustment to a mask? Especially useful for adjusting luminosity masks.

 

Select the mask layer in the Layers panel then add the Levels adjustment - it should be added as a child of the mask (if not drag it over the thumbnail of the mask to nest it there as a child) - then set the Channels dropdown on the Curves Adjustment dialog to Alpha (this also works with Levels Adjustment).

[TheEyesHaveIt]

11 hours ago, MEB said:

Hi TheEyesHaveIt,

 

 

Select the mask layer in the Layers panel then add the Levels adjustment - it should be added as a child of the mask (if not drag it over the thumbnail of the mask to nest it there as a child) - then set the Channels dropdown on the Curves Adjustment dialog to Alpha (this also works with Levels Adjustment).

 

Hi MEB - I've done this and I don't notice any difference to the masked area. Attaching screenshot. It does seem to work with a Curves adjustment as expected though, so thank you for the tip!

 

[TheEyesHaveIt]

Also, what is the best workflow for working with multiple RAW files that need to be stacked? I'd like to Develop the original RAW for each image before stacking. So far, the only option I've found is open each RAW one at a time as a new document, export as a TIFF into Files app, and then open all of the saved TIFFs in a new document as a Live Stack.