AfterShot Pro Highlights and Recovery

[afx]

When will this be fixed then, anyone? It is a major bug. Does it only affect Olympus Raw or every camera Raw?

It affects all cams but might be more or less pronounced depending on the camera.
No idea when the next update will be published.

cheers
afx

[maggus]

When will this be fixed then, anyone? It is a major bug. Does it only affect Olympus Raw or every camera Raw?

afx, thanks for replying.

Hi,
you can find similar effects with HR also on Canon 60D (and several others AFAIK). It´s "well known" from the Bibble days.
I found some workaround which may help on some images (not all) and maybe you´ll have to combine some of the steps:

• slightly modify the WB
• increase exposure to push the real overexposed parts to WHITE (or use the curve to do so)
• apply color correction (lower saturation) for this color
• en-/disable HR

and maybe some others which affect the "color" in the overexposed parts.

But as all of us I´m waiting for a good fix for this issue.

cheers
Markus

[Zarastro]

[RANT]
It's interesting - no, it's actually amazing how in RawTherapee they present nothing less than FOUR methods of dealing with HR: Luminance Recovery, CIELab blending, Color Propagation and Blend, and from my experience one of them will always able to do the job. Ah! RawTherapee is free as in freedom and beer. Meanwhile Bibble (and now AFPro) - which are paid products - can't get just ONE method of dealing correctly with HR.
[/RANT]

I've not quit AFPro yet because I believe the product will improve along the time; also, differently from other users the catalog has been working well for me and it's something that's still does not exist in RT. And AFPro is reasonably stable in my environment.

However, as of now my patience is dangerously low, and it's getting lower whenever I check for updates of AFPro and there are no news about it.

[tundraquad]

Hi Zarastro,
It's good that you are patient. I'm sure that Corel doesn't want to see their customers switching to LR4. Therefore they need to provide us with a quality product. Since HR is a real concern nowadays, they are probably working on this at the time we speak. Give them a little bit of time. I have the feeling that it will pay off at the end.
Look at RT. It was not built to the point it is right now in a single week.
Corel need your feedback, and I'm sure they'll make ASP better & better.

so long.

[KeithR]

"Give them a little bit of time"?

They've had - literally - years!

[AnandaSim]

[quote="maggus" you´ll have to combine some of the steps:

• slightly modify the WB
• increase exposure to push the real overexposed parts to WHITE (or use the curve to do so)
• apply color correction (lower saturation) for this color
• en-/disable HR

[/quote]

Thanks Markus. I posted to Corel Support and didn't like how they chase to close an open case. But they provided one tip.

[quote]
You might need to use your camera's color profile for your photos. To do this, check the 'Custom Input Profile' under 'Color Management then select your camera's ICC file.
[quote]

I didn't know there was a Colour Management adjustment OUTSIDE of the general options screen for the program.

I did that and then sometimes not and for subsequent photos from different sessions, I no longer had the problem.

I may have also done some of the points you described (just read your post now) and that may have affected the result.

The other day, I saw a tick box in one of the panels "set the recovery to monochrome" - haven't fiddled enough to say whether that improves or not.

Thanks for listening.

[ormdig]

[quoteYou might need to use your camera's color profile for your photos. To do this, check the 'Custom Input Profile' under 'Color Management then select your camera's ICC file.
][/quote]

Can anyone explain the how and especially the why of this? Are there benefits to doing it this way? Are there caveats? Thank you.

[WilsonC]

Don't know if it's mentioned here, but I usually tick the "Monochromatic" option under the Highlights slider in the Exposure panel when using highlight recovery. This usually removes the pink cast, but may not work for all images.

[afx]

You might need to use your camera's color profile for your photos. To do this, check the 'Custom Input Profile' under 'Color Management then select your camera's ICC file.

Sounds rather strange to me.
The option there is to load custom camera profiles. If you load the profile supplied with AS nothing will change.
If you have a profile for your cam from other sources, this might change things.

cheers
afx

[twinger]

I haven't had any of the old problems with weird colours when using highlight recovery since the latest update.

But I find that highlight recovery no longer does anything useful. It reduces the brightness of the highlights, making them muddy, but doesn't recover any detail. There also doesn't seem to be any range of adjustment available. A setting of just 3 shifts all the highlights to the left, and anything higher does nothing more. For me, HR was working much better in Bibble 5, and could sometimes do wonders. (Nikon D200 NEFs).

[klaxian]

That's strange that it doesn't recover details. I think it depends on your camera and your shots. HR works well for me on the Canon 5DIII and 7D. However, recovered highlights still can take on a pink, blue, or orange tint even with the latest version (although it's better than before). I do agree that HR seems to reduce contrast on all light colored areas (not just recovered). I offset that by increasing the contrast a bit. I think the latest HR is adequate, but I wish there was a way to stop the color tint of recovered highlights.

[grubernd]

twinger, you are seeing a mixture of various things:

the Nikon D200 is the first in the then new generation of sensors and electronics and it *significantly* improved the AD conversion in the camera. to this day nikon seems to be the only company to produce smooth highlight clipping already in the raw files (i havent checked the latest canon cameras 5D3, 1Dx but given the funky look i doubt it). i use nikons, canons and panasonics often side-by-side and see the difference in day-to-day usage. one of the reasons the nikons always gave less pink highlights than other cameras.

here comes the "but".. ASP has no tool/setting to deliver luminance based contrast enhancement (i am trying to talk spoilerhead into building a plugin for that). the result is that highlights get pulled down but they see no increase of distinction between those tones that are really close together. tweaking curves can help, as usage of USM (wavelet sharpen), but always with a tradeoff (whole picture effected) or lots of extra work (regional adjustments).

and while your highlights might look a little mushy.. from my tests i am pretty sure that ASP gives you the most data there is. it just falls short of making that extra data look better.

[Fraenzken]

I'm quite sure you're right Bernd. The 2012 engine of Lightroom e.g. seems to apply a kind of "tone-mapping" to recovered highlights (and brightened shadows as well, I'd say), thus enhancing the contrast locally in these aereas. I've done a few comparisons between LR3 and LR4 (as LR4 is said to do miracles when bringing back clipped highlights). To my eyes (and with my cameras), the difference between the two (and ASP as well) is more or less due to this local contrast enhancement.

[KeithR]

The 2012 engine of Lightroom e.g. seems to apply a kind of "tone-mapping" to recovered highlights (and brightened shadows as well, I'd say), thus enhancing the contrast locally in these areas.

That's an understatement, Frank.

These links give an insight into what you get with Lr these days:

http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal ... lters.html
http://people.csail.mit.edu/sparis/publi/2011/siggraph/

Lr 4 also has automatic content-aware highlight and shadow adjustment (which is what I think you're seeing) which makes a hell of a difference: and of course, Lr highlight recovery processing actually works.

[tomsi42]

The 2012 engine of Lightroom e.g. seems to apply a kind of "tone-mapping" to recovered highlights (and brightened shadows as well, I'd say), thus enhancing the contrast locally in these areas.

That's an understatement, Frank.

These links give an insight into what you get with Lr these days:

http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal ... lters.html
http://people.csail.mit.edu/sparis/publi/2011/siggraph/

Lr 4 also has automatic content-aware highlight and shadow adjustment (which is what I think you're seeing) which makes a hell of a difference: and of course, Lr highlight recovery processing actually works.

Well, I have been trying out LR4 and LR4.1 and I am not impressed. Frankly, I can't see what the big deal is. I have tried out LR4 and ASP 1.0.1 on a few problem files that I have and the HR on ASP was just as good/bad as LR4. This was on files from Panasonic GH2 and Olympus E-P1; that might have something to do with it.