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The Shadows/Highlights Filter has changed (poorly)


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The Shadows/Highlights Filter has been rewritten and I find its new version far less satisfactory than the previous version (incidentally, I hardly understand how such a filter may run without the Radius glider)

I enclose below an example of comparison. Increasing the correction intensity in 1.7 would lead to a picture even more grayish

comparaison_tons_clairs.thumb.jpg.22e4f3ffefc0e2b8b9bf7669ba96644b.jpg

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I had such high hopes for the "Highlights and Shadow" for 1.7.
I wanted it to be just as good as Lightroom, Photoshop or Capture One.
But the result is still washed out like earlier versions.
I hope they give this some dev time since it's not good enough.

From a RAW file

1. APH: Does not recover highlights or shadows good, it just looks washed out.
I can't even get it near the others even if i develop and then use the live filter.
2. Capture One Pro 12: Recover both highlights and shadows beautifully.
3. Lightroom Classic: Recover both highlights and shadows beautifully.

shad-highl.thumb.jpg.1de8617fff69660b2f4b76280e531fea.jpg

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I agree,

 

For me, Capture One has always been the gold standard for shadow/highlight recovery.

To be fair, the OP appears to be working on an 8bit file, which tends to bring out the milky look when recovering shadows/highlights. But fwiw, Affinity Photo has the same symptoms when working directly on a RAW file as demonstrated here.

I'd love a better shadow/highlight tool in Affinity Photo.

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17 hours ago, ch22 said:

The Shadows/Highlights Filter has been rewritten and I find its new version far less satisfactory than the previous version (incidentally, I hardly understand how such a filter may run without the Radius glider)

 

Maybe this is a strange bug, because the radius glider is back when I open files from the previous 1.6.* which has the Shadow/Higlight Setting.

You can copy this old Shadow/Higlight layer from old files in a new 1.7 document. Curious but it works!

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It seems obvious there is some room for improvement here; in the interim, consider using a curves adjustment as a work-around?  It might take a bit longer to set one up, but on the other side of it a curves adjustment should give you much more control over what is happening than any of these shadow/highlight filters would.

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5 hours ago, m-b said:

Maybe this is a strange bug, because the radius glider is back when I open files from the previous 1.6.* which has the Shadow/Higlight Setting.

You can copy this old Shadow/Higlight layer from old files in a new 1.7 document. Curious but it works!

Tried this and can report the same on Windows. Weird.

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I still get excited when I see any mention of the Shadow/Highligts filter been "updated"; then I try it and see its mostly the same...

I've noticed these bad results since the Affinity Photo Beta times...  They do have improved it a LITTLE bit in these years but it still pretty much unsable.

I still shoot in JPG in my camera (for practical reasons) so this is what I do my tests with... 

Adobe Photohop's Camera Raw Filter( Lightroom) and On1's Photo Raw do a pretty good job of "rescuing" the image...

but try the same in Affinity Photo (any version from 1 through 1.7 )  and you mostly get a grey mess using the Shadow/ Highlights Filters (in all the areas of the software where it's used)

picture-comparison.thumb.jpg.f078701a609d8eeaf099df88ca28c66d.jpg

 

P.D. I still like (and use) Affinity Photo and the 1.7 update but hopefully the developers will pay more attention to the Shadow/Highlights fillters ... 

 

------------------------

Fernando Velarde

www.velarde.com

Instagram.com/soyfervelarde

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11 hours ago, fde101 said:

It seems obvious there is some room for improvement here; in the interim, consider using a curves adjustment as a work-around?  It might take a bit longer to set one up, but on the other side of it a curves adjustment should give you much more control over what is happening than any of these shadow/highlight filters would.

Thanks for the tip fde101,

Yes, you are correct.

Playing with the Curves filter improves the images MUCH more than the shadow/highlights option in the image I used for the test... 

I guess Adobe "spoiled" us with adjusting images with sliders and we don't  do it the old fashioned way now... ja

------------------------

Fernando Velarde

www.velarde.com

Instagram.com/soyfervelarde

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  • Staff

Hi everyone,

Two things here - firstly please make sure you are using the S&H *filter* - not the adjustment. The adjustment is a simple algorithm which is only included for backward compatibility.

Secondly, we are aware of an issue with the new S&H filter on 1.7 which affects highlights - we will get this fixed this week and provide a new build :)

Thanks and sorry for the inconvenience!

Andy.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I confirm we are speaking of the new S&H filter. Below is a picture showing the effect on a gray chart, with the original and the modified chart together with the histogram of the modified chart (this histogram comes from Photoshop). The ray widening  is characteristic of the action of S&H filters.

charte21gris_mod.thumb.jpg.a07d224def443232ba3ae00eb86eecbc.jpg

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I think it would be a very good idea if Serif would let users know that the shadows highlights adjustment should not be used as Andy states above.  Would save some users frustration.  thanks.

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  • 5 months later...
On 6/23/2019 at 7:53 PM, hanshab said:

I think it would be a very good idea if Serif would let users know that the shadows highlights adjustment should not be used as Andy states above.  Would save some users frustration.  thanks.

Bump - smarter solution needed now. Better usability. Backward compatibility is sometimes great but it is all too easy to access the old extremely poor shadow lightlight adjustment. I assume most novices will access it accidentially fx here:

image.png.e03d7efa2a62fbe8368e93f526bf4e7a.png

image.png.abc2f318d1738198de3123150928aae4.png

Why not implement the GUI like this - and then update the adjustment to use the better algorithms by default:

image.png.622e47a727fd0fbdd4579035ac59b54f.png

 

  • "The user interface is supposed to work for me - I am not supposed to work for the user interface."
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  • Not an Affinity user og forum user anymore. The software continued to disappoint and not deliver.
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On 6/23/2019 at 1:53 PM, hanshab said:

I think it would be a very good idea if Serif would let users know that the shadows highlights adjustment should not be used as Andy states above.

Could just add "(legacy)" after the name of the adjustment in the menus?

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  • 1 year later...

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