Winsor Crosby wrote:
> One of the tools that cause Nikon owners to pop for Capture NX is control
> points. Like Photoshop it uses adjustment layers and masks. Unlike Photoshop
> those things are completely hidden, unless you want to see them. Instead it
> allows you to place a control point in your picture on something that needs
> adjustment, a face in the shadow, for instance. The point has pop out tools
> for the size of area of influence and sliders for brightness, contrast, and
> saturation. The
> selection takes brightness range and color into effect. So for the example of
> the face you could lighten it and tweak the contrast a bit and only the face
> would be affected.
>
I read about this control point approach in NX before, and it sounded
interesting. I viewed some of the videos on the Nik site, downloaded the
trial version and tried it out.
What I found is that the simple examples are slightly disingenuous. In
order to be simple, smooth and artifact free, the selections are very
soft edged unless the color/brightness difference is great. The highly
magnified detail of selection of the red areas in "Precise Selections &
Enhancements" seems to me particularly misleading. Without control over
control point (CP) shape or color range, this becomes a smushy tool that
will undoubtedly work great for some images and be poor for others.
You can see the effect in their PS example for "Adding Depth to an
Image". When he sets the parameters for the first CP, then expands it,
the brownish part of the background above the right side of the head is
affected as well. Once he has scattered control points around the
background to bring it down, he clicks preview on and off. You can see
the point above the head pop up along with the intended body parts.
Here's the first image I tried it on:
<http://www.moosemystic.net/Gallery/tech/Process/Vivenza/Viv_386.htm>
0 - Original
1 - The effective mask from a CP on the womans's face. Diameter is just
about the distance from hairline to chin. Notice how much dark speckling
there is on face , indicating areas that will be less or unaffected by
the adjustments and how broad beyond the face the mask feathers.
2 - Moving the CP slightly. Notice how greatly this changes the areas
of the face included.
3 - A second CP. The woman's top is visually pretty much one color, and
quite distinct from anything around it. Yet the selection mask picks up
less of the color as it moves out from center and picks up part of her
arm and a lot of the chair back.
4 - The effect of Vivenza. Although it's done a decent job on the face,
and would be better with practice with the controls, I don't like the
hot spot effect. I either hae to live with the hot spot or have the
effects spill further out than I would like.
I intentionally went overboard with the shirt adjustments, to see what
would happen. It clearly shows the uneven color selection, the effect on
the chair back and the odd effect around the hair. These problems
wouldn't be readily apparent, perhaps not at all, with a more subtle
adjustment. I was trying to learn how it works when pressed. I want to
know how a tool really works so I can find how best to use it.
> If you have ever dealt with Photoshop's shadow control and gritted your teeth
> after doing a judicious lightening of the foreground when you discover the
> translucency artifact of trees on the skyline you will like a control point's
> lack of ugly artifacts.
>
I don't grit my teeth, I click on a mask, and paint out the effect in
the areas where I don't want it. Or I may have selected an area and
created a mask more carefully beforehand. Whether that is easier than
Vivenza will, I think, depend on practice and the nature of the image.
The mask approach will give much more control. You can, of course, add a
mask to a Vivenza layer, but that just seems to me to add complexity
unnecessarily, at least for me.
> Nik Software wrote the software for Nikon and they now have their own version
> as a plug in for Photoshop, Elements and Aperture. It is pricey, $250, but is
> a very nice tool.
Wildly overpriced, IMO, at least in this Ver. 1 release. Add the ability
to control shape (grab and pull shape would be great) and feathering
tightness of the control area, add control over color breadth selected
and add a decent LCE effect to the controls, price it at $60, and you
have a tool I might buy.
A. Testy Moose
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