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Colorwasher and FocalBlade: excellent plugins!


E

Erik

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I am preparing a complete review of two plugins: ColorWasher and Focalblade ( www.thepluginsite.com ).
I can tell you folks already that they are much better than I dared to imagine! If you read my chautauqua on sharpening (see these forums, tutorials section ), you know how I search for techniques that improve the Unsharp Mask tool. Well, Focalblade does all this, but much more. Ranging from automatic (and with good quality!) to an interface with more options than I knew were possible.
Colorwasher is also much more than a photographer's plugin.
Both are, and by far! my favourite plugins. Time-savers, but also offering quality that I can only compare with micro-surgery.
I'm still trying things out, but I can already say that they are more than worth the investment. Highly recommended!

An example tells more than a thousand words: this African gentleman is the father of the girlfriend of a friend of mine. The poor man joined his forefathers last year, and this washed out, unsharp pic is all she has. She asked me to try and make something out of it, and I saw in it a perfect chance to test these plugins in a rather difficult situation.
It took me less than twenty minutes to sharpen (complete with edgemask!!!) and colour correct the photograph (scanned at 200%, 300dpi for print from a 4x5inch original), and then one hour of cloning three hundred thousand and fifty four specks of dust, fingermarks and cracks. The printed result is even better than this jpg.

I am impressed!
 
Erik said:
An example tells more than a thousand words: this African gentleman is the father of the girlfriend of a friend of mine. The poor man joined his forefathers last year, and this washed out, unsharp pic is all she has. She asked me to try and make something out of it, and I saw in it a perfect chance to test these plugins in a rather difficult situation.
It took me less than twenty minutes to sharpen (complete with edgemask!!!) and colour correct the photograph (scanned at 200%, 300dpi for print from a 4x5inch original), and then one hour of cloning three hundred thousand and fifty four specks of dust, fingermarks and cracks. The printed result is even better than this jpg.
Click to expand...

Thanks for praising our plugins, Eric. But for the posted example I would use a bit different settings in ColorWasher. Your corrected image has too much contrast and saturation, doesn't reveal the dark leaves and turns the blue color cast more into slight red cast.

Here's what I did in ColorWasher to produce the image below: I used Auto 3 to make the skin color more natural by removing the blue color cast (you can also do that by creating a sample area), I set Auto Contrast and Exposure Fix to Intense and increased the shadows slider.

I didn't activate the Chroma check box, but that is an option if you want to keep the original saturation and avoid an increase in saturation that is produced by the necessary contrast adjustment that is done by ColorWasher.

Of course, it is more or less a question of taste if you like a stronger or weaker contrast or exposure better, but I think you did the contrast too extreme in your example.
 
I see and respect your point, but these leaves are more saturated, the skin is darker and the lines on the fabric are as good as black. Which is why I decided to "go for it". When I would print your version and present it to her, she would probably still prefer mine.

From a restorer's point of vierw, you are totally correct: what I did is interpret personally without real respect for the original artwork.

Ahh...this is always the big discussion: can I paint a new nose on that damaged painting, or should I fill the gap with a neutral tint?

This said, your example shows the power of the presets. Me, I still have to get used to using them as in Photoshop or whatever application, I never use anything that begins with "smart", "intelligent" or "auto".

More results soon.
And my enthusiasm stays at the same level.
:righton:
 
Colorwasher can't handle this alone as the bottom is clearly darker than the top.
Therefore, I copied the background and tried to do the top correctly, this time using a sample area on the background right of her (our view). The result still needed a bit of correction, but the sliders were there to do so.
Then a layer mask was needed to blend with the original (gradient from black to white, and a bit of painting), and a curves adjustment layer to enhance the whole.

The result comes very close to the original:
 
Erik, it's good to see that you kept all the details in the dark/light areas visible, well done. That shows again how important it is to calibrate your monitor to avoid making mistakes when you work with an image like this.
 
Indeed, John, that is the difficulty here. The bottom part easily becomes too dark when trying to do the correction in one go. The painting does have a Rembrandtesque golden glow over it, including the master's use of darks, but no painter would ever use the kind of blackness the single layer adaptation offers.
Is this a weak point of ColorWasher? In my opinion: no.
I could obtain the same results without the plugin, but it would be a lot more work, and as many tools would have to be used in sequence, I'd be forced to use several adjustment layers. In CW it's all there in one go, which makes this kind of adjustment easier and less time-consuming.
BTW: the manual includes a good overview on monitor calibration and general settings.
Indeed: the three quarter darks here contain many hues.
Plus, I usually work in AdobeRGB as I want to print this out. (the original is much larger). Converting to sRGB or no CM at all (it is for the web) also loses some intensity.
 
This is the result of ColorWasher in Sample Area mode, and FocalBlade standard (no tweaking, nothing).

Even my aversion against all things intelligent and automatic must be reviewed. For most "simple/normal" casts, this gives excellent results. To obtain something similar in Photoshop itself, I have to apply a lot of tweaks in series. Here I have all the tools on one interface, and, if wanted: far more and with better algorythms than PS has.

BTW: OlympusOM4Ti, Zuiko lens, Kodak Gold 100,
Pont Aven, Chapelle de tremalo, the yellow Christ Paul Gauguin painted
 
The following pic was taken in the Museum of Avignon. No flash allowed, difficult light situation, and a Kodak Gold 400 film set at 1600. Result: grain. But it's either that or no pic at all.

I did not sharpen here. Only CW with Sample Area.
I didn't even remember all this richess...
 
This is a difficult one. It was taken in the church of the Palais des Papes in Avignon by candle light and a few awkward spots. No tripod, the camera fixed on a chair with both hands.

Here, the auto buttons couldn't do the job. The Sample Area came close, but I had to switch to expert mode to get access to the refinement sliders. (lucky me, feeling needed) This is what I came up with. Again: I could obtain something acceptable in PS without CW, but is is a/quicker and b/more handy as all tools are there on one interface.
 
What can it not do? Remove flash area's. But herefore, we have the Median filter in PS.

What would I like to see changed? One extra button that allows people with faster puters and larger monitors to choose for a larger preview. Say 640x480.

Are these plugins worth their money? In my opinion: yes. These are no (solely) eye candy plugins. You can get effects with them (I'll try that out for you next) but for me I finally get the feeling that I will use these. Many plugins lose their attraction once you've seen their effects. But these add to the available tools, and make this kind of work easier and more fun. And it is difficult to get the same quality in PS without them.

Are they only for photographers? Well, no. Everyone who read my chautauqua on sharpening knows that the Unsharp Mask is very limited, and that there are other options. FocalBlade offers results that would ask much more time and a lot of tweaking in PS itself.
And the colour settings in ColorWasher are much better and offer more that ColorBalance, ChannelMixer and Hue/Sat in PS, even more than using curves on the separate channels.

For people who start with photoshop, they are a must have, most certainly when they want to use PS for photography. I know: one day they will have to learn curves (up to working with numbers), adjustment layers and many more commands, but if it is for correcting photographs they won't have to wait for six months of intensive use (or even more) to be able to start doing what they spent so much money on.
For people who do know how to work with PS to correct files (it does always stay a personal imterpretation as it is in the end an aesthetic experience, not a scientific one), it is, as said, an enormous time saver, and a pleasure to have so many tools available in one interface, many who surpass PS's own.

No doubt: these are my favourite plugins. I know that I will have to learn a lot as too much tweaking is tempting, but I can learn a lot from this duo. And that alone makes them worth their money.

Final verdict: Highly recommended.

(I will go on on some special effects)
 
This is very personal work. A professional photographer made this 4x5inch slide of my drawing Eurydike. I tried to get the colurs as exact as possible by scanning with Silverfast and adjusting everything in the scannersoft as this allowed for the necessary tweaking. I then saved as LAB 48 bit to be able to make further corrections in PS. I never got what I wanted.

This was scanned with all settings in the scanner soft set to off, RGB, 8bit.
Instead of hours of tweaking and frustration, I ran Colorwasher and sampled the white from the paper. Adjusting a few settings (mostly mild instead of normal, no more than that) I got the best result I ever got.

You cannot verify this as I have the original. But believe me: it is *very* close!
 
Erik, I've tried to correct several of your images and not one of them could be corrected with just one click using the default PS tools. Colorwasher is indeed a real timesaver! :righton:

FocalBlade is a very good tool, has a lot of options, but luckily it also has a novice setting. You mentioned FocalBlade a few times in this thread, but I assume that you go into more detail later on?

I always used highpass sharpening, but I wanted something quicker and now I'm very happy with FocusMagic, which does better sharpening than highpass in my opinion.

I'm looking forward to hear what your experiences are with FocalBlade and then above all the advanced options.
I've always been interested in that plugin.

Thanks for all the hard work and beautiful drawing btw!
 
It is a bit frustrating that everytime I open CW I already see such a good result. I want to do more myself!
Anyways: here is a pic of rocs at Ploumanac'h. The first one is the original scan (from a photograph, the negatives will follow later) and the default correction CW offers. The second one is a manipulation using LAB setting, heat map and glow in CW and then playing with the sliders of FB. This is only one of the options: I wanted to save every tweak.
 
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