Highlight Recovery needs improvement.

I've just been fiddling with the trial version of Capture One 4, and one thing shines when compared to Lightroom. The result form the highlight recovery tool is far,far more natural looking that what can be achieved by Lightroom.
So, the request is obvious.

Lightroom's highlight recovery slider does not only reconstruct the colors, but also affects the tone curve. It 'pulls in' the highlights, so to speak.
I can understand the reasoning behind this: simplicity. If you have a photo that is otherwise well exposed, but has blown highlights, increasing the highlight recovery compresses the highlights and reconstructs blown-out channels at the same time.
Unfortunately, this means that a 'pure' highlight recovery (reconstruction) *without* highlight compression is not available. For better control, I would have preferred to control these functions separately.

Similar Messages

Highlight recovery unusable - improvement request

The shadow recovery tool works brilliantly, but the highlight recovery tool is terrible. It does not take advantage of the extra lattitude of RAW files. In RAW images with blown highlights, highlight recovery simply darkens areas that are not blown out, but it does not recover detail in blown out areas, even when that detail is available in the RAW file. Rather than using the highlight recovery tool, I am forced to reduce overall exposure to recover blown highlights. Then I have to use shadow recovery and levels to lighten shadows and midtones to their original luminance. Please, Apple, give us a highlight recovery tool that actually recovers blown highlights from RAW files.

As I understand it, neither the Shadow nor the Highlight tool recover anything that was not there before. The Shadow tool will give you the impression of recovering detail because it lifts the really dark areas (the [2 2 2]s etc.) up into to a range where you can actually see them.
Most monitors are calibrated (or mis-calibrated) in such a way that anything below a certain threshold (eg, [10 10 10]) looks the same as black as [0 0 0]. Check your monitor at:
http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/Calibration/monitor_black.htm
(It uses an animated image, if the animation has stopped, you might have to reload the page.)
Judging from a quick check with one my photos, stock iMacs tested at an Apple reseller did not show any detail below estimated [25 25 25], stock Cinema displays faired better with maybe [15 15 15]. My Huey-calibrated screen starts at between [1 1 1] and [5 5 5] depending on ambient light (although the Huey should compensate for that fully).
So, the Shadow tool probably simply lifts detail that was at eg [2 2 2] to [10 10 10] where you are able to see it. Real shadow or highlight recovery can only be achieved via the Exposure control as you rightly observed. And using Exposure to recover highlights requires extensive corrections with Levels to get the rest of the image back to where it was before, and usually I do not manage to get it back exactly.
Interestingly, prints at my lab suffer from a similar problem as the un-calibrated screens do. Everything below roughly [15 15 15] appears as black, loosing the details. Even though illuminating the print from the back shows all shadow detail, looking at it in the normal way, some shadow detail is lost.

Lightroom 4: Played with it for two hours - I am already impressed (highlight recovery)

Great job, Adobe developers. Only the new highlight recovery is worth the upgrade, at least when dealing with Panasonic GH2 raw files. You can get an impression about it, with my post to German Systemkamera Forum. I post the link here, unfortunately, the content is in German, but the included screenshots tell enougjh, you don't need the text:
http://www.systemkamera-forum.de/raw-converter/29051-lightroom-4-beta1.html#post238652
Kind regards
Thomas
P.S.: I posted this originally in the Lightroom 3 forum, before I noticed that a Lightroom 4 beta forum has been established. Sorry for that, but I thought that it is apppropriate to share my very good first impression of LR 4 beta also here. In the future I try to confine my LR4 feedback to here.

Ok, here are the screenshots:
Problems solved:
double contours and highlight revovery
double contours, highlight revovery, detail
blue sky color
Sorry for vthe inconvenience.
Kind regards
Thomas

Lihgtroom 4: Played with it for two hours - I am already impressed (highlight recovery)

Great job, Adobe developers. Only the new highlight recovery is worth the upgrade, at least when dealing with Panasonic GH2 raw files. You can get an impression about it, with my post to German Systemkamera Forum. I post the link here, unfortunately, the content is in German, but the included screenshots tell enougjh, you don't need the text:
http://www.systemkamera-forum.de/raw-converter/29051-lightroom-4-beta1.html#post238652
Kind regards
Thomas

Ok, here are the screenshots:
Problems solved:
double contours and highlight revovery
double contours, highlight revovery, detail
blue sky color
Sorry for vthe inconvenience.
Kind regards
Thomas

Highlight recovery comparison

While folks have complained about the noise in Aperture conversions I've seen no comparison of highlight recovery between Aperture and Adobe Camera Raw.
Here's my own.
http://homepage.mac.com/frankpryor/Aperturepix/PhotoAlbum97.html
The highlight in both cases is compensation with the "Exposure" control in both AP and ACR of a factor of -2.
fp

Gary,
I'd read a post where someone had said Aperture's
conversions compared favorably with ACR's. I realized
that I had done a comparison of shadow noise under
various conditions, but that was in 1.01 and I'd
never compared highlight recovery myself. I thought
the results were interesting so I shared them.
We all want this app to fly. I sure as **** wish I'd
waited to see results before I bought it. If posting
results as I find them helps others to make up their
minds about the application and it's suitability for
their needs that's a good thing.
I do agree. But I have to say that from my perspective it was starting to feel a bit obsessive, what with the videos and writing in to macintouch and all. I think you can probably appreciate that people might get riled up when you continue to describe as bugs things that are certainly debatable. But whatever, really. I'd say that Aperture would benefit from someone like you, for whom compositing and layering is a big part of their workflow, being on the beta team.
The first comparison you posted doesn't really
compare highlight recovery because the highlights
aren't blown in the original .
True, but I didn't have much to choose from lying around on the powerbook
Your second example is more useful and quite
interesting. What camera are you using?
20D.
gary

Automatic highlight recovery - a double-edged sword.

The more I use Lr4b1, the more I love the automatic highlight recovery, and the more I hate it.
It's really not feasible to undo it using the tone curve, and local correction is also *very* challenging.
It's single-handedly responsible for some marked improvements to some of my photos, and just rubbing all the highlight pizazz out of others - no way to win it back using the whites slider.
I really wish I had the option to control it.
Rob

To try and elaborate a tad more:
It's not in the develop module, thus the term "auto" - there is no option to turn it on, off, or otherwise throttle it - it's always on.
It's what's responsible for more detail in your highlights now than you had before - have you noticed that?
Likewise, there is a similar effect at the left end for opening the deepest shadow tones - have you noticed that?
You can see it in your photos when you convert to PV2012 if you have tones at or near the clipping point, and you can also see it in the histogram.
Also, if you turn on the highlight clipping indicator you'll notice a difference in the clipped regions.
It's also noticable when you adjust tones even if highlights were not originally near the clipping point:
Select PV2010, and increase exposure - watch the right end of the histogram. Repeat using PV2012. eh?
The highlights may be a little flatter, but they'll have more detail - usually a good thing. And, yes, as I've said before, and continue to say, I too appreciate the work Eric has done to bring us this improvement. Hopefully that message has not gotten lost in the interest of providing more critical feedback.
The purpose of this thread was to express that in the interest of recovering this detail, there can be a little flattening at the upper end, and this is not a good thing when the sorta glowy unadulterated look is preferred over maximum detail.
If you've never encountered this in your own photos, then you probably won't appreciate it in mine...
And sorry folks, but one can not accomplish the same thing with the whites slider - not even close.
Cheers,
Rob

In the next iTunes version I think the following are needed improvements:

Don't get me wrong, iTunes is the best and is totally awesome, but of course every program needs improvements from user feedback.
-iTunes automatically changes the EQ bases on the song that's playings Genre to make a better listening experience
-iTunes should automatically merge same albums together. Ex some of my albums are the same band name and album name and they have the same artwork (YES they are spellt the same too!) Also on my ipod touch some sync twice with some upper and some lower case.
Thanks I think this is much needed improvements
Also is there a way to overclock a 1st gen touch with IOS 3.1.3?
The processor is capable of 620MHZ but its pre clocked at 412MHZ
I would love it to be overclocked!

atnerzig wrote:
user feedback ...
... should be sent to _*iTunes feedback*_
JGG

Highlight Recovery: Two Flavors

This is not about the present hue and saturation issues with highlight recovery, but rather about two flavors I'd like to see:
1. Same as now: Which basically compresses the upper tonal range. This is good for taking the edge off of overly highlighty images, or dulling images that benefit from a dull look - I have some foggy beach scenes where highlight recovery really helps the mood... This algorithm tends to compress the highlights though, which doesn't necessarily enhance detail (it can, since it can literally recover blown-out highlights that would otherwise be 255,255,255, or just bring highlights into the "prime visibility" zone of the histogram, thus more apparent detail despite being more compressed).
2. Highlight Detail Enhancement: This algorithm would reduce the luminosity of the lower highlight tones more than the upper highlight tones. This would compress the upper midtones more instead of the highest highlights. This would essentially be the equivalent of a masked contrast reduction, which doesn't effect the contrast of the low tones - its effect being limited to the high tones. The idea being to separate the highlight tones, rather than to subdue them.
Also, consider adding this to the locals, since the method number 2 would compress upper midtones more which may not be desirable in some areas of the photos. Actually, I wouldn't mind seeing algorithm 1 added to the locals either, now that I think about it...
This would basically simplify what I find myself doing over and over with a lot of photos:
Local contrast reduction of the highlights to enhance detail without supressing overall contrast, and other stuff - see below:
Summary:
- Present algorithm essentially reduces the range of the histogram, by pushing leftward from the right of the histogram, so to speak, compressing all tones, highest tones the most. Good for recovering blown-out highlights and/or or dulling an image for effect.
- Proposed algorithm addition: Separate highlight tones to bring out highlight detail - does not compress highlight tones, but would compress upper midtones instead - the equivalent of global contrast reduction combined with a luminosity mask that limits its effect to the highest tones most.
PS - I assume this is one of the aspects of the Active D-Lighting and other intellgent contrast handling algorithms that aim at enhancing (or maybe I should say preserving) highlight detail without overall contrast reduction. The motivation for this FR comes from the countless hours I spend using local contrast reduction (and other techniques, e.g. tone curve and trying to strike a good balance with exposure, brightness, and contrast) to recover highlight detail (which is already present straight out of the gate when using NX2 in combination with Active D-Lighting).
PS - I'm not trying to claim Active D-Lighting, or other like algorithms are panaceas - they have their own problems, limitations, tradeoffs, artefacts... My proposal is for Adobe to do something even better, whereas what's been done so far in Lightroom, highlight-detail-preservation-wise, is not so good...
PS - I can easily see a little local contrast, aka highlight targeted 'Clarity' being tossed into the mix.
PS - This notion could be adapted for the left end of the histogram as well, although the present fill algorithm is pretty good compared to the present highlight algorithm.
I consider this the single biggest missing "core feature" in Lightroom today.
Adobe: I hope you will consider this for Lr4.
Rob

As I understand it, neither the Shadow nor the Highlight tool recover anything that was not there before. The Shadow tool will give you the impression of recovering detail because it lifts the really dark areas (the [2 2 2]s etc.) up into to a range where you can actually see them.
Most monitors are calibrated (or mis-calibrated) in such a way that anything below a certain threshold (eg, [10 10 10]) looks the same as black as [0 0 0]. Check your monitor at:
http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/Calibration/monitor_black.htm
(It uses an animated image, if the animation has stopped, you might have to reload the page.)
Judging from a quick check with one my photos, stock iMacs tested at an Apple reseller did not show any detail below estimated [25 25 25], stock Cinema displays faired better with maybe [15 15 15]. My Huey-calibrated screen starts at between [1 1 1] and [5 5 5] depending on ambient light (although the Huey should compensate for that fully).
So, the Shadow tool probably simply lifts detail that was at eg [2 2 2] to [10 10 10] where you are able to see it. Real shadow or highlight recovery can only be achieved via the Exposure control as you rightly observed. And using Exposure to recover highlights requires extensive corrections with Levels to get the rest of the image back to where it was before, and usually I do not manage to get it back exactly.
Interestingly, prints at my lab suffer from a similar problem as the un-calibrated screens do. Everything below roughly [15 15 15] appears as black, loosing the details. Even though illuminating the print from the back shows all shadow detail, looking at it in the normal way, some shadow detail is lost.

Photo Highlight Recovery Tutorial

Hello,
A week or so ago there was a thread of HDR and more specifically about using
one raw image as the source for an HDR image to recovery highlights, etc. I
promised that I would post a tutorial for my technique on using a single raw
file for highlight recovery. Well here it is:
http://www.screencast.com/users/PC-Review_Online/folders/Tutorials/media/b1e365d8-b94b-497 f-8df6-c7fe21a4894c
Robert

Well, I just did some playing around and I have some major issues with the
Control+Clicking on the RGB channel. It doesn't just select the highlights,
it seems to select nearly all of the image. Take a look at these samples
here. One is from using the color range and one from control clicking on the
RGB channel. The RGB channel option is not acceptable for what my technique
is supposed to do. I have better results using the color range, saving it to
an alpha channel and then applying a small amount of blur to take care of
the hard edges. I am going to play some more and work on refining the
technique but I don't see myself recommending the control clicking method
because it selects way more than just the highlights.
http://www.sonic.net/keesha/channels.jpg
Channels method
http://www.sonic.net/keesha/color_range.jpg
Color Range method
Any thoughts?
Robert

Highlight Recovery in LR2/3

I've been using LR2 on raw images from my Canon 20d for quite a while. I recently got a Canon 7d. Raw images from the 7d with almost any blown highlights can not be recovered - unless I'd like a magenta/green tint in the recovered area. The 20d images could be recovered. I'm only talking about areas that are 1/2 stop or so overexposed here. I note that using Canon's DPP does not result in any strange tints. Using DXO does result in the same tints as LR2. While not overexposing anything is the obvious solution, it seems strange that LR doesn't work as well with the 7d as it did with the 20d. I'm running LR2.7 on a PowerPC Mac OSX10.5.8 but I had a chance to try this on LR3Beta and got the same results. Given that Canon's software doesn't have the problem, it would not appear to be a problem per se with my camera. I also saw an earlier discussion but that was before the 'final' profiles for the 7d were available. Here's an example of what happens(The Highlight recovery slider is 45, exposure: -.33):

From what I understand, the odd colour shifts and banding are a known problem of LR's highlight recovery feature, and the LR team is aware of this. Hopefully it will be corrected in the release version of LR 3.

Disable highlight recovery

I do a lot of work on white seamless, i.e. the background is supposed to be 100% white. However, the auto highlight recovery (as described here http://www.dpreview.com/articles/7481161037/lightroom-4-public-beta-whats-new/2 ) kicks in and pulls down my white to something like 99%. How can I disable the highlight recovery?
Thanks
Oliver

I hear ya olilo123 - Although Lr4's new shadow/highlight recovery is awesome for 95% of my photos, it takes a fair amount of work to undo it in the cases where it's effect is not optimal. In my photography, I find the case comes up more often with the shadows than highlights, when I want them nice 'n black.
As you've noted, simply using the blacks or whites slider is not enough, one also has to fiddle with a few other settings...
Eric: I'm not complaining - the new PV2012 is wonderful! But *if* there were a way to allow even some of us users the ability to selectively shut down the shadow and/or highlight recovery, it would be a nice touch.
Dunno if anyone's given thought to an "Enable Advanced Settings" preference, so beginning users are not troubled with the more esoteric settings...
And please don't recommend just using PV2010 - its like recommending someone walk when they don't like the song that's playing in the car... ;-}
Rob

Highlight recovery questions

1. What actually happens (from an algorithmic point of view) when one goes from 0 to 100? Is any information lost? Is there a con to always going to 100?
2. Sometimes when I do recovery I notice that the original has only a small spot that's "blown" but the moment I move the recovery slider to from 0 to 1 a lot more area get highlighted as blown. I'm not sure why that would be. Any ideas?
Thanks,
Nick

Here's a paragraph from Bruce Fraser's Camera Raw Book:
"The first stage of highlight recovery is to use any headroom the camera leaves by default, which varies considerably from vendor to vendor, with some leaving no headroom at all. The next stage uses Camera Raw's highlight recovery logic to build color informatiom from the data in one of the two unclipped channels. Next, the amount of highlight compression introduced by the Brightness slider is reduced, stretching the available highlight data over a wider tonal range. The final stage is application of a curve to map the midtones and shadows."
Hope that helps. I just chock it up to magic.

Restrictions Really needs improvement for Business use

Hi
We have written an app and are replacing our industry standard barcode scanning devices with over 100 iPod Touches worldwide using a third party barcode sled accessory. This is much cheaper (Around $800 vs $1500) and offers a much richer and less confusing user interface to the end-user. However our end-users are often low paid seasonal workers employed by our clients, so when it comes to the restriction settings in iOS we try to lock the devices down as much as possible.
I think more and more people are treating the iPod/iPhone/iPad in commerical environments and so the ability to secure and maintain these devices really needs to be improved. Our situation aside you can use your iPhone as a point of sale with a credit card swipe, if you have a retail chain with several of these devices for use by employees you don't want them to be messing around on them or making choices that you don't want them to purposfully or accidently.
For instance:
iOS6 upgrade seems to download automatically and prompt the user if they want to install. There is no way to turn updates off, and not even a password is required to do it. In my scenario if someone gets the upgrade push and then clicks ok they then can't work for 30 minutes, not good if there is a long line of people waiting to be served.
WiFi/VPN connections can be changed
Passcode lock can be turned on/off/changed
Date/Time / Keyboard / International / Accessibility settings can all be played with
Weather app always available
Stocks app always available
Maps can be used (location can be disabled at least!)
etc..
If I (as a developer) tell our deployment manager to tell our client's manager to tell their scanning manager to tell their temporary workers to not mess around with things like the above....someones not going to listen, and our IT department is just going to have to check each device and clean up.
I know that apple's portable devices are aimed more at consumers, but I personlly think it's about time that we have some more attention to more business scenarios.
I don't want to come accross negative so i'll finish by saying that a lot of the restrictions in place are very useful. Being able to disable the store, iTunes and safari are very big wins, without those we wouldn't have switched to iOS devices.
Anyone else have a similar need for more administrative ability?
Thanks for reading.

One of these might be good for a POS (assuming you need touch screen), but those are terrible for graphic artists to use. All-in-ones are to be put bluntly, over-priced pieces of junk with crappy power supplies and worthless integrated video cards. They will run too hot most likely and need maintenance more often than larger well-ventilated desktop towers. Your graphic artists staff will hate the small low resolution monitors as well as the lack of decent GPU acceleration. The only good thing about them is the small form factor, a sacrifice well worth looking past IMHO.
Graphic artists should be using high-end monitors, IPS panels for accurate colors and high resolution displays of 2560x1600 pixels. I strongly recommend looking at Dell's Ultra Sharp models (particularly the 30"). If you end up getting three Dell Ultra Sharps then you might as well get the whole system from them as well and develop some sort of professional relationship and support system like most businesses.
*The monitor should be the most expensive component by far and it is the most important for work productivity, do not skimp out here, you run a graphic design firm after all!
Look for reasonably priced desktops with 4-8GB RAM, Intel or AMD quad core processors. Stay away from discrete graphics, Photoshop uses GPU acceleration found on higher end video cards and it is useful. Larger hard drives perform better than smaller ones because of areal density, so buy larger hard drives than needed (1-2TB drives with 500GB or larger platters) and run them in RAID1 for redundancy, because I doubt you have a storage area network.

Sync on two different computers - long overdue...and itunes needs improvement

Complaint #1)
I cannot understand why apple at this point STILL will not allow the same ipad/ipod to sync with two computers. I have a pc at work, a mac at home - why am i unable to sync with the apps in both places? It is 2012, and the copyright argument just does not fly, especially if i authorize both machines which apple seems to allow one apple ID to authorize up to 5 machines.
But what is the point of authorizing a computer if you cannot sync to it? I realize this is a help forum and not a place for rants, but am at a loss to understand why apple is clinging to this awkward and very annoying/frustrating setup.
Complaint #2)
About itunes itself, this serves as the main gateway for all music/apps/movies/books. etc., and BADLY needs an upgrade in aesthetics as well as function.
Since it is now the primary conduit for all apps and other items, why is it even called "itunes"? But more to the point, it is an awkward and difficult app to use, and it is surprising that it even comes from apple.
Mind you, I've been using apple computers since the IIe, so i go back a ways with the company, but itunes is a train wreck IMHO, and a better platform with far more flexible features and improved functionality is long overdue.
You have a world-class tablet in the ipad 3, why did they not introduce a conduit platform on which to move/transfer documents/files etc that is equally superb?

Regarding #1, see this post.
tt2

Help! Data recovery needed after lapse of thought... Suggestions please

All was going well with my Mini Server, but apart from the boot partition, I had no back-up plan in place which made me uncomfortable. So in seek of a performance upgrade and a back-up solution I ordered a larger 750GB HDD for bay 1 and a SSD for bay 2 along with 8GB RAM and an enclosure for the two existing drives to provide my core back-up solution for bay 1.
Installing the RAM and drives was sweet, but alas I had a lapse of thought at least twice. In my wisdom I decided that as the internal drives would form a core part of my back-up solution, I didn't need to back-up them up before the upgrade as I would clone across afterwards. In hindsight, I should have cloned them first and then put them in.
Anyway, my key oversight was putting the drives straight into a raid enclosure set for JBOD/Span and plugging the drive in. I did not initialize the disk when the window popped up, I chose ignore and then ejected from disk utility. I removed the drives and put them in individual enclosures, but alas simply turning on the drives in the raid enclosure did something to the file system as now they both flag up the initialize window when connecting.
I then purchased Data Rescue 3 in the hope it would recover the files. Unfortunately, on the first drive, whilst the software thought it had recovered most of the data, none of the files will open, with messages warning the file may be corrupt or it is an unrecognised format.
So, has anyone got any suggestions of how to reverse whatever the enclosure did when I switched the drives on? Or any other data recovery solutions I can try?

Good news, after a little more research and switching Data Rescue to expert mode and tweaking the allocation block layout, I managed to recover all bar one small partition for which I have a copy of the files elsewhere I believe the data could be retrieved if I spent time trying to get the file offset, but given I have the files elsewhere I am not going to spend time on it!
So thanks to Data Rescue I managed to recover 450GB of iTunes and another 50GB of other important data. What a life saver as 90%+ of my cd collection is in storage in another country, which would have been somewhat inconvenient!
Something else to learn from this experience though is partitioning a drive means the allocation block layout can be different across the drive, as the partitions can use different layouts. That was what caused me the most issues on one of the drives and why I failed in my initial recovery, as I was just using the base settings in Data Rescue.
I hope no one else needs this info, but someone may have a similar lapse in judgement and it may save some time if you know you may need to tweak the allocation block layout.

Highlight Recovery needs improvement.

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for