Dehaze Slider in Lightroom CC and ACR CC

[davidedric]

After a bit of playing, I think this needs to be iterative. Wherever you start, you re likely to want to go back and redo, perhaps two or three times.

On the more general point, I understand that although the changes are parametric, they are also image adaptive. According to Jeff Schewe, that's the reason for the advice to work the slider from top to bottom, though I've never been able to see any difference myself.

Dave

[davidedric]

Here's another example. I did some image changes from a very low contrast and misty early morning scene, including dehaze. The first image is with the other changes made, but dehaze temporarily switched off in the panel. The second with it switched back on. Not intended as an exemplar of post processing, but it woudl have been hard work to get here without dehaze, at least for me.

Dave

[Dave Humphries]

I made those suggestions not being a user of ACR or LR for these purposes and I still haven't tried using the Dehaze slider. Your comments make sense to me.

Well you say that Mike, but for the reason David says, I think I may yet discover otherwise and that actually Dehaze, WB, Undo Dehaze and Re-do, may give different results, in fact there's even a chance of more than two results if re-applied successively.

e.g. a bit like Content Aware in PS CS/CC itself.

[DanK]

On the more general point, I understand that although the changes are parametric, they are also image adaptive. According to Jeff Schewe, that's the reason for the advice to work the slider from top to bottom, though I've never been able to see any difference myself.

Dave

I can't claim to know for certain, but I think that 'image adaptive' means that the parametric adjustments are sensitive to some characteristics of the base image, not that one edit depends on the prior sequence of edits. this issue has come up before, and my recollection is that we found documentation saying that the order applied doesn't matter. Perhaps someone who knows more can weigh in.

There are other reasons they recommend starting at the top. One is that tonality adjustments affect how most people do other steps. Another is that the lens corrections at the bottom are math-intensive, and it can slow things down to do them first (although I have never noticed this).

[DanK]

OK, here is a test. As far as I can see, the order of edits in LR, including the dehaze edit, makes no difference at all. These edits are just for a test, not to make a nice image.

Below I will post the original and two edited images. The edits were the following. In one of them, they were applied in the order listed. In the other, they were applied in exactly the opposite order. I see no difference.

WB 7000
Shadows -24
Highlights + 17
Clarity +12
Vibrance +17
Sharpening 75, 1.0, 25, 0
Enable automatic lens profile correct (Canon 24-105 f/4)
Dehaze +50

Original:



Order A:



Order B:

[Timar]

Hi!

No need to worry about the order in which you apply settings such as white balance and effects. It is part of Lightroom's/Camera Raw's core concept of nondestructive, deterministic editing that it does all processing in fixed order internally. That means that it will never, ever make any difference in what order you apply your settings. (To test this, crop out a part of the sky from an image and apply auto levels. The results willl be the same as for the uncropped image).

I've just registered here because this is an outstanding forum full of proficient photographers and I am eager to participate in it, but also with the specific intention to let you know that there is now a plugin available for Lightroom 6.1 that allows to access the dehaze effect almost as conveniently as from Lighroom CC. It is available here for free:

https://cutthruthefog.wordpress.com/lightroom-6-dehaze/

After following the instructions for installing the plugin you can access it via file/plugins/dehaze control. It brings up a window with a slider that allows fine adjustment of the dehaze effect, similar to the native slider in Lightroom CC.

To use the dehaze effect in Camera Raw 9.1/PS CS6, you have to create a set of xml files containing the following code:

<x:xmpmeta xmlns:x="adobe:ns:meta/" x:xmptk="Adobe XMP Core 5.6-c011 79.156380, 2014/05/21-23:38:37">
 <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#">
  <rdf:Description rdf:about=""
    xmlns:crs="http://ns.adobe.com/camera-raw-settings/1.0/"
   crs:Version="9.1"
   crs:Dehaze="20"
   crs:HasSettings="True"/>
 </rdf:RDF>
</x:xmpmeta>

This file would be named "Dehaze +20.xml" or similar (I created files for each increment of 5 from 0 to 30, for 40, 50, 75 and 100, to allow a sufficiently fine adjustment without needing to many files). I'd place the files in the user\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\CameraRaw\Settings folder or whereever the Camera Raw settings are stored on your computer. In Camera Raw, click on the small menu icon on the very right and select "Load settings...". Don't worry, it won't change any settings you've made except for dehaze.

As you may have surmised by now, I'm a big fan of this new feature and glad that Adobe left us non-subscribers a loophole to make use of it. I think that, applied at values between 5 and 20, it can improve contrast and apparent sharpness in many different situations. Here is an example where the dynamic of the scene was a bit too much for the budged zoom lens to take, resulting in a general loss of contrast not unlike that caused by atmospheric light scattering, which could have been corrected by manually adjusting the curves, but was much simpler and faster to correct by applying the dehaze effect:

All adjustments, except curves or effects:



All adjustments and dehaze set to +20:

[davidedric]

Welcome on board, sounds like you will be a handy chap to have around! Like you, I am an increasingly big fan, and I keep being surprised by the range of pictures it so readily improves.

Nice picture. Looks like an okapi? If it was shot in the wild I am insanely jealous

Regards, Dave

[Timar]

Thanks for the warm welcome!

No need to be jealous though, as it is a humble goat - although one with a funny, okapi-like pattern in the fur.

[Mike Buckley]

The following tip was delivered to my email from Victoria Bampton, the Lightroom Queen.

"Quick Tip - Solo Mode

If you're using the new Dehaze slider in Lightroom CC, you might find yourself bouncing back and forth between the Effects panel and the Basic panel. That can be a lot of scrolling! But have you discovered Solo Mode?

Solo Mode automatically closes a panel when you open another in the same panel group. To enable it, right-click on a panel header and select Solo Mode from the menu.

When you click on the Effects panel header, the Basic panel closes and the Effects panel opens. Click on the Basic panel header, and the Effects panel closes and the Basic panel opens.

It's not just limited to these two panels. It works with all of Lightroom's panels (in Lightroom 6 or CC) and it's particularly useful when working with a small screen. Give it a try!"

[rob211]

Folks might also wanna look at DxO Optics Pro's clearview dehazing tool. It's pretty amazing. There's a comparison here: http://www.cardinalphoto.com/content...dxos-clearview

I'd say my experience is similar. DxO seems to bring out some stuff in the sky better at times, but Lr's seems to work in more situations. But like HDR it can be overdone. Even Ansel Adams liked him some haze at times: http://www.artnet.com/artists/ansel-...yjwOts18XVSMQ2

And as already noted, he took lots of shots in the desert where the air was, and still often is, clearer. And if you frequent the areas where he did many of his iconic photos, you begin to realize from the light and snow that many were shot in times of year when it was (and still is) clearer. Planning for this is still a big part of getting good photos. If he ran the Mount Williamson photo through dehaze he would perhaps have lost the shafts of light between clouds. It would be an interesting experiment to run his RAW through that....

[Mike Buckley]

Welcome to the forum, Rob!

Though I started the thread, I also like haze at times. I prefer it when it is used as a background but there are other times I might like it in situations I haven't personally experienced.

As far as I can tell, the example you provided by Ansel Adams has the characteristics of mist (fog, clouds, or whatever the precise term should be) rather than haze. Certainly a gorgeous photo!

[Timar]

Here's an example of an image I gave up on back when I developed the set, as I couldn't get a satisfactory result out of all the haze in the image. I just rediscovered it in my catalogue and gave it another try, this time with the help of the dehaze filter:

SOOC with Lightroom standard setttings


Dehaze and other adjustments*


*dehaze: +50

highlights: -100
shadows: +100
whites: -25
blacks: -50
clarity: +100
vibrance: +10

graduated filter from bottom to top:
+100 highlights, +100 clarity, +10 saturation

[Mike Buckley]

A very promising exercise, Timar. Thanks for sharing it!

[rpcrowe]

The "soon to be released" upgrade for On-One Perfect Photo Suite, called On-One Photo 10 will have a dehaze slider.

[davidedric]

Here's an example of an image I gave up on back when I developed the set, as I couldn't get a satisfactory result out of all the haze in the image. I just rediscovered it in my catalogue and gave it another try, this time with the help of the dehaze filter:

Thanks, Timer. Very interesting to see a worked example, and especially helpful to see the settings used (which seem quite a bit larger than I would generally have used).

Richard, I think I will probably pre-purchase the new On1, but of course their dehaze won't be non-destructive. However, I assume it will be implemented through layers and masks so it should be much easier to apply selectively. Be interesting to compare.

Dave

[Timar]

Thanks, Timer. Very interesting to see a worked example, and especially helpful to see the settings used (which seem quite a bit larger than I would generally have used).

I absolutely agree. I usually follow the "less is more" approach in post-processing as well. I really don't like it when people indiscriminately boost clarity and vibrance in all of their images. It actually took me some time and experience with Lightroom to become daring enough to use the sliders to the maximum if an image really requires it (and to know the rare cases where it actually does). In such extreme cases, some settings actually seem counterintuitive. Why set shadows to +100 in an image that originally had so little contrast? Because lowering the blacks as much as possible (with dehaze and blacks slider) and then boosting the shadows brings more tonal differentiation than simply setting the blacks without considering touching the shadows. Normally, I use the clarity slider in the range of 0 to +20, rarely up to +50 and only in very rare cases at +100 like here. Even +100 didn't really cut it in this case, so I added a graduated mask to give +200(!) in the lower part of the image.

A general rule is: the lower the tonal range of the image, the further you need to go with the sliders.

As for knowing the limits of the dehaze filter: the sky is the limit. Literally. Dehaze is a phantastic filter for bringing out a dramatic sky, but using values above 50 will quickly turn it into an surreal looking over-saturated, over-contrasty sky. Although a graduated mask can help with that, it is a good indication that you have reached the maximum suitable for the image. I reached that point at +50 with the above image. Here's it is with +100 and other settings adjusted accordingly. It's not just that the sky has become too dominant but that the whole image now looks overprocessed:

[Mike Buckley]

Adobe has a promotion offering to Blurb customers a CC subscription that is 20% less than usual for the first year. So, I finally bit the bullet and subscribed. Heck, that 20% reduction will buy a very enjoyable bottle of red wine or close to two bottles of white wine.

On a separate note, I've spent three hours on the phone with two Adobe technicians that took control of my computer. The first one finally got Lightroom and Photoshop to open, but even the second one wasn't able to get Photoshop to open without crashing seconds later. Naturally, he is blaming my anti-virus/firewall software for the problem, despite that it doesn't affect any of my other software including Lightroom. I negotiated the promise that I would get a call from someone at an elevated level of attention within 48 hours down to the promise that it would be "only" 24 hours. At least for now I can use the dehaze slider in Lightroom to affect the entire image, but the only way to dehaze part of the image is by using ACR as a smart filter in Photoshop (not that I have the slightest idea how to do that).

[Mike Buckley]

Wow! I just now applied the Dehaze capability in the CC version of Lightroom to my wife's photo posted earlier in the thread that Manfred experimented with and I am completely blown away. It's very reassuring to see the positive reaction by so many other people but it's quite a different thing to actually experience using the tool myself. It's actually easier to use than I was expecting and my expectations were very high due to the raves by everyone.

[bnnrcn]

Welcome to the PS CC Club Mike

Wow! I just now applied the Dehaze capability in the CC version of Lightroom to my wife's photo posted earlier in the thread that Manfred experimented with and I am completely blown away. It's very reassuring to see the positive reaction by so many other people but it's quite a different thing to actually experience using the tool myself. It's actually easier to use than I was expecting and my expectations were very high due to the raves by everyone.

[Mike Buckley]

Dave just brought to my attention in another thread that Lightroom CC now provides the capability to selectively apply the Dehaze feature. Prior to this development, it could only be applied selectively using Photoshop CC's Smart Filters.