The Fader, Lightroom plugin API and Camera RAW settings

Someone asked what values exactly is The Fader scaling, and what’s not being faded from preset into another.

In short, all the Lightroom’s numeric sliders I could think of are linearly interpolated between the current image settings and the chosen preset, but only if the preset sets new values for that value. This way, you can apply e.g. sharpening preset and still keep your cross-processing look the same.

What is not applied:

  • Point curve (maybe later)
  • Graduated filters (maybe later)
  • Red-eye removal
  • Dust removal
  • Adjustment brush
  • Process version
  • Color profile type
  • Color/Black&White Mix toggle
  • All attributes that select process or enable Auto-something, e.g. Defringe, vignette style, constrain crop, auto-exposure….

All values are interpolated linearly, except RAW white balance, which is (since v0.2) interpolated using 4 linear functions. This combination was figured out by dorfl68, the author of Paddy – thanks!

Outside 0-100% weight, it is still using the same linear interpolation, but as the value can go outside the proper range, clamping function kicks in. Without clamping, Camera RAW would just forget that the value is set at all.

After all the necessary values are interpolated, The Fader creates a “plugin develop preset”, which is then applied on the image. Every time a preset is applied, a new history entry will be visible on the image. Unfortunately, there is no way for me to prevent this, it’s part of the plugin API.

Here is the long list of Camera RAW internal develop settings which the plugin is using. If you notice anything missing, or values that have incorrect values, please get back to me!

Setting Name Minimum Default value Maximum
BlueHue -100 0 100
BlueSaturation -100 0 100
Brightness -150 0 150
ChromaticAberrationB -100 0 100
ChromaticAberrationR -100 0 100
Clarity -100 0 100
ColorNoiseReduction 0 25 100
ColorNoiseReductionDetail 0 50 100
Contrast -50 0 100
ExperimentalSharpenHaloLimit 0 25 100
Exposure -4 0 4
FillLight 0 0 100
GrainAmount 0 0 100
GrainFrequency 0 50 100
GrainSize 0 50 100
GreenHue -100 0 100
GreenSaturation -100 0 100
HighlightRecovery 0 0 100
HueAdjustmentAqua -100 0 100
HueAdjustmentBlue -100 0 100
HueAdjustmentGreen -100 0 100
HueAdjustmentMagenta -100 0 100
HueAdjustmentOrange -100 0 100
HueAdjustmentPurple -100 0 100
HueAdjustmentRed -100 0 100
HueAdjustmentYellow -100 0 100
LensManualDistortionAmount -100 0 100
LuminanceAdjustmentAqua -100 0 100
LuminanceAdjustmentBlue -100 0 100
LuminanceAdjustmentGreen -100 0 100
LuminanceAdjustmentMagenta -100 0 100
LuminanceAdjustmentOrange -100 0 100
LuminanceAdjustmentPurple -100 0 100
LuminanceAdjustmentRed -100 0 100
LuminanceAdjustmentYellow -100 0 100
LuminanceNoiseReductionDetail 0 0 100
LuminanceNoiseReductionContrast 0 0 100
LuminanceSmoothing 0 0 100
ParametricDarks -100 0 100
ParametricHighlightSplit -100 75 100
ParametricHighlights -100 0 100
ParametricLights -100 0 100
ParametricMidtoneSplit -100 50 100
ParametricShadowSplit -100 25 100
ParametricShadows -100 0 100
PerspectiveHorizontal -100 0 100
PerspectiveRotate -10 0 10
PerspectiveScale 50 100 150
PerspectiveVertical -100 0 100
PostCropVignetteAmount -100 0 100
PostCropVignetteFeather 0 50 100
PostCropVignetteHighlightContrast 0 0 100
PostCropVignetteMidpoint 0 50 100
PostCropVignetteRoundness -100 0 100
RedHue -100 0 100
RedSaturation -100 0 100
Saturation -100 0 100
SaturationAdjustmentAqua -100 0 100
SaturationAdjustmentBlue -100 0 100
SaturationAdjustmentGreen -100 0 100
SaturationAdjustmentMagenta -100 0 100
SaturationAdjustmentOrange -100 0 100
SaturationAdjustmentPurple -100 0 100
SaturationAdjustmentRed -100 0 100
SaturationAdjustmentYellow -100 0 100
ShadowTint -100 0 100
Shadows 0 0 100
SharpenDetail 0 25 100
SharpenEdgeMasking 0 0 100
SharpenRadius 0.5 1 3
Sharpness 0 25 150
SplitToningBalance -100 0 100
SplitToningHighlightHue 0 0 360
SplitToningHighlightSaturation -100 0 100
SplitToningShadowHue 0 0 360
SplitToningShadowSaturation -100 0 100
Vibrance -100 0 100
VignetteAmount -100 0 100
VignetteMidpoint 0 50 100
Temperature 2000 50000
IncrementalTemperature -100 0 100
IncrementalTint -100 0 100
Tint -150 150

Comments

comments

11 thoughts on “The Fader, Lightroom plugin API and Camera RAW settings

  1. Yep.. liking this..

    Of course, if I could get stuff like flagging, autosync, copy/paste settings/previous added for the buttons, I’d be delighted….

    I’ll do some photos and blog it later.

  2. I don’t have a MIDI device (yet), so I can’t try this out myself. Is it possible to do any of the following:

    1. Program buttons for (a) next picture, and (b) previous picture
    2. Program buttons for (c) undo, and (d) redo
    3. Program a button so that, when held down, the sensitivity of a slider/knob is reduced for fine adjustments
    4. Program a button to reset a tool/setting to the default setting
    5. Program a slider/knob to adjust the amount of “tilt” in the Crop tool for leveling horizons? I notice that in the list above you have both “Perspective Rotate” and “Perspective Horizontal”. Could either of these be used to achieve the same effect? It would be great to be able to level a picture just by twirling a knob, for example!
    6. Program a knob to flip through a predefined selection of presets? For example, I have presets for the following:

    White Balance: As shot / daylight / flash / cloudy / fluorescent / etc.
    Camera Profile: Standard / Neutral / Portrait / Landscape / etc.
    Black and White Conversion: Various presets for B&W conversions

    It would be EXCEPTIONALLY useful to be able to assign a group of presets to a knob, for example, and then be able to flip between them by turning the knob. So I would have one know for my white balance presets, another for my camera profiles, etc. I use the presets to quickly find a good starting point (e.g., White Balance) for developing a RAW file or converting to B&W. I assume this is not possible?

    Thanks for all of your work on this! I can’t wait to get my MIDI device!

    Best,
    Adam

    1. Knobroom’s next release will have 1, 2 (copy paste settings), 4 (restore).

      I’m not totally convinced with the sensitivity setting (3), especially since you can also adjust the sensitivity of most controllers.

      Crop tool (5) is not supported by plugin API. PerspectiveRotate allows some rotating support, especially if you use “constrain crop”.

      I’m already plannning (6), but there is not yet support for incremental controllers which would be almost necessary for this. Also, it’ll need some kind of interface, for the moment I’m thinking of just making a preset folder for it. So, maybe in 0.3 release…

  3. Oh, and one more: is it possible to program buttons to switch to different modules? E.g., have one button take you to the Library module, another for the Develop module, etc.?

    Best regards,
    Adam

    1. It’s not in the plugin API, but I’ll add it to list in case I choose to implement event based features some day 🙂

  4. With regard to (2), I would personally find “Undo” and “Redo” buttons more useful than “Copy” and “Paste” (though I note that Sean indicated a different preference above). The reason is that sometimes I adjust a setting only to realize that I actually liked the original setting better. Under those circumstances, it would be useful to be able to undo my changes without either (a) resetting the controls for the entire picture, or (b) undoing a previous change to the same control knob. For example, if the default contrast setting is +25, and I change it to +12, then modify several other items, then come back to the contrast setting and change it to +37, I would like to be able to hit a button to go back to the +12 setting, rather than hitting a reset that would take contrast back to the +25 default (and possibly reset all other controls to their defaults as well). Also, I frequently switch back and forth between “Undo” and “Redo” as a way of testing whether I like a change.

    With regard to (6), I assume that by “Incremental controllers” you mean something that would yield provide output values of 1, 2, 3, instead of 1.16, 1.17, 1.18, etc. is that right? Is there any way to do this via rounding up or down to the nearest integer? Also, would we really need an interface? For my purposes I wouldn’t want to adjust the presets, I would just want to flip back and forth between various presets in their default state to find a good starting point before making further changes at normal.

    So if I had a knob mapped to the various white balance presets, I would turn the knob until I found a preset that was closest to what I want, then turn the knob assigned to either temperature or tint to fine tune the setting.

    Similarly, if I had a knob mapped to various B&W presets, I would just flip through them to get a good B&W starting point, then adjust the picture as usual using exposure, contrast, etc.

    Please forgive me if (as I suspect) I have misunderstood what you meant by something.

    Best regards,
    Adam

    1. Ok, how about “Revert”, which would revert the changes made to that same picture and save revert status everytime you move between photos?

      Undo/redo is not really suitable for knobs, as it is continuous, there is not two values of +12 and +37, but when you adjust it goes smoothly between those. The undo does not really know you wanted +36, +35 or +12.

      Most infinite knob MIDI controllers (Novation, Behringer…) support incremental mode, where the knob only sends how fast and to which direction it was turned. With this mode, I could just step through the presets (maybe inside a specified preset folder?).

  5. Good luck, thanks for the shout-out! I get lots of feedback in the direction of “why does Paddy not work for Mac”, to which I say “because I don’t have one”.

    Knobroom is cool, cross platform and seems more professional than our hacking of the windows API. I point it out whenever I can. Keep in touch, maybe the two can work together.

    Dorfl

  6. Hi Jarnoh,

    I think the must be a small bug on Knobroom. I have problems with VignetteAmount and SplitToning.

    VignetteAmount only recognizes MIDI values between 0 and 100, when I increase the fader bigger then 100 (it goes to 127), the Lens Vignetting control in LR goes to zero. I cannot set it to a negative value… I think MIDI values must be converted to:

    0 to 127 => -100 to 100

    The same occurs on Split Toning Hue controls. With knobs I can go from 0 to 100 into LR – I cannot go to value 360 using knob.

    Thank you so much!

    Just a question: do you plan turn Knobroom onto a commercial product? (after dec, 31th?) I have to many photographers in Brazil wich can be interested on this solution.

    Regards.

    1. You are absolutely right, the current version has bugs with some of the value ranges. Next release will have those fixed – it will have the same ranges as this table I made for “The Fader” plugin.

      Currently there are no commercial plans, the time limit is there just to force people to upgrade (and force me to deliver new versions). Next release will expire on May 31st.

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