Vibrance Adjustment HSV-HS Masks... ... PWP 8.0 v8.0.136 & later

[den]

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Definitions:

A Post by Elizabeth Halford [ https://digital-photography-school.com/ ... n-English/ ]

Saturation is a uniform bumping up the intensity of all colors in your shot, regardless of the starting point of the colors. This can result in clipping (over saturation of certain colors which results in loss of detail in those areas) and over saturation of skin tones leaving them looking too orange and unnatural.

Vibrance is a smart-tool which cleverly increases the intensity of the more muted colors and leaves the already well-saturated colors alone. It’s sort of like fill light, but for colors. Vibrance also prevents skin tones from becoming overly saturated and unnatural.

Related Message Board Post: https://www.dl-c.com/forums/viewtopic.p ... 507#p10507

See also PWP8 Transformations.pdf for the Saturation transform and the Saturation transform's program Help [?] when the dialog is active in the browser.

The folowing Vibrance HSV-HS masks are suggested to find Skin HSV-HS color image areas and/or HSV-HS Low and High saturation range image areas.

The Vibrance Adjustment HSV-HS Masks:

Screenshot (1) text 1000px v2.jpg (67.82 KiB) Viewed 16996 times

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Annotated <*.masks> and <*.mask> files are attached. Copy/Paste the Extract-ed files to PWP8's Settings folders for Masks and Mask files according to their extension.

The masks are easiest used with the Saturation transform, HSV color space, preserve Neither with mask White adjusted to preference [usually less than +30], and then adjust mask Black to preference [usually less than +10 and sometimes -5].

The suggested masks can be used with other transforms when color is adjusted.

Illustration: Mask1 and portrait

Mask1 Portrait mask example.jpg (123.93 KiB) Viewed 16996 times

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Mask1 could also be used with a skin smoothing workflow, the differing tonality making the changes varied to different skin image areas for nuance. It is also good for nuance brightning [increasing HSV-V] of faces in shadow.

Illustration: Mask4 and portrait.

Mask4 Portrait mask example.jpg (155.35 KiB) Viewed 16996 times

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[den]

Post 2 of 2 continued...

Illustration: Mask4 and a landscape [not just for portraits]

Mask4 Landscape -- ByrceCanyon Hoodoos.jpg (165.31 KiB) Viewed 16995 times

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Notice the high degree of tones (detail) in the masks. This tonality can provide nuance HSV-HS changes so image areas acquire more detail by increasing and/or softening color contrasts.

Experiment also using a Vibrance mask when changing HSV-V or HSL-L or RGB Luminance as sometimes rather dramatic effects can be achieved.

...den...

[jsachs]

"Saturation is a uniform bumping up the intensity of all colors in your shot, regardless of the starting point of the colors. This can result in clipping (over saturation of certain colors which results in loss of detail in those areas) and over saturation of skin tones leaving them looking too orange and unnatural."

It is important to note that this quote refers to the Saturation slider in Lightroom and Photoshop and is not true for PWP's Saturation transformation (or its other tools that adjust saturation) as long as Preserve is set to Low and High. When using Color Curves to adjust saturation, you have full control over the shape of the saturation correction curve.

[den]

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The ColorWheel with Mask3 HSV-HS regions shown in Black:

Color Wheel showing Mask3 HSV-HS image areas in black 400px v1.jpg (25.37 KiB) Viewed 16974 times

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Granted the Saturation transform with Preserve Low and High Saturation's protects those regions of the ColorWheel but what prevents the Low-Mid Saturation's/Red-Orange Hue's [SKIN] ColorWheel region from possibly becoming too strong when increasing to preference Mid-Saturation's of the other Hues?

I believe that Mask1 would still be needed in this case as well with ColorCurves for aggressive increases to Mid-Saturation's, if preference.

...den...

[tomczak]

That may be oversimplistic, but how about using Saturation transformation/preserve Low and High + Hue and Saturation mask within it, clicking on skin sample and adjusting mask Weight and Brightness to protect skin colours and not much else, then adjusting black half of the Saturation slider to bring up, what I suppose is referred to as, vibrance?

[den]

Maciej...

Your suggestion forms the basis for Mask1. Using 1 sample point will make the mask image specific. Mask1 has 11 sampling points and hopefully more generic so that by saving the resulting <*.mask> file to the Mask PWP8 settings folder, it is easily loaded as a mask for whatever transform or tool is being used to adjust saturations... ...and yes, the mapping of these HSV-HS SKIN colors so that they can be adjusted separately from other Hue's/Saturation's seems to be the main emphasis for Vibrance as well as protecting Low and High saturations.

Mask1 HSV-HS control points [Note: the bottom row are Dark and Light Skin patches from the MacBeth ColorChecker.]

Mask1 HSV-HS 11 control points.jpg (83.23 KiB) Viewed 16963 times

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...den...

[tomczak]

Thanks, Den - your method is more refined and probably more universal. Just to add to the previous post, I tried Mask Colour Range tool to separate skin tones from the rest of the image instead of Hue and Saturation range - click on the skin, contract, then keep shift-clicking or dragging on other skin areas to cover the variety of skins and lightings. It seems to work fine and may separate skin better than Hue and Saturation as it also uses brightness to distinguish colours.

[tomczak]

That may be oversimplistic, but how about using Saturation transformation/preserve Low and High + Hue and Saturation mask within it, clicking on skin sample and adjusting mask Weight and Brightness to protect skin colours and not much else, then adjusting black half of the Saturation slider to bring up, what I suppose is referred to as, vibrance?

I just noticed that the technique above is not as easy to implement as I thought. Adjustment to Control Points, Brightness Slider, and Weight Slider in Mask/Hue and Saturation tool don't affect the mask on the output image until it is 'committed' (red running man), and once it is, the Mak/Hue and Saturation control box closes.

I think that makes sense normally, but make it difficult to interactively adjust the Saturation + Mask Transformation. I tried to make make the changes to to be displayed in the output preview image, but I failed, but maybe there is a way?

[jsachs]

The Mask Hue/Saturation tool does update the mask immediately but not the output image. If it updated the output image as well, it would be unresponsive for large images. If you want to change it after finalizing the mask, just click the Mask Undo button.