After Curvemeister 3---Features for the future?

[mikemeister_admin]

No release is ever really ready to ship.  There are always bugs, and the documentation always needs more work, but much more seductive, there are always features that would only take a little time....and it's so cool!  Well, those features aren't going to make it in--this needs to ship soon. 

So, before all the great Beta energy moves on--what features would you like to see either in the Curvemeister 3 upgrades, or in the distant Curvemeister 4 project?  What features do you think are a good start in Curvemeister 3 but need to be extended or the interface changed or whatever?

Mike will probably not respond to this for a while, because he needs to focus on now, not the future. 

Here are a couple of starting items.
            Exporting photo statistics to .txt
            Derek's multiple-level undo

More ideas?

[ggroess]

The "Pin from Here" function where you can set a point on the curve and pin the curve above or below that point.

[roy]

great idea Ann. 

Here are some thoughts, firstly ideas for making it easier to learn curvemeister:
* more wizards.  no doubt we all have 'recipies' we often follow in CM.... perhaps a selection of wizards could replicate these recipies for newcomers.  e.g. a hot candidate now would be the double-pin and rotate.
* "professors" - like wizards but they guide you through the sequence rather than doing it for you (I guess there's a proper term for this?)
* OR - a link in each wizard to instructions on "how to do this without the wizard's help".  that might make for an easier way to learn than ploughing through a manual


Features:
* custom mask based on double-pinning.  When I enhance contrast with double-pin and rotate, I might want to isolate that change to a particular area.  E.g. enhancing contrast and lightening a tree in the foreground.... but not wanting to compress the contrast or lighten the background.  So I want to mask out the area not between the double-pins.
* mask blurring slider instead of buttons - when I first tried masking, I wanted to select the trunk of a tree, masking out leaves, sky etc.  The blurring I needed was between two of the settings - would be great to have a slider.
* I'll second the idea of multiple undo
* is there any way to save mask in CM as a mask in PS (opening up the possibility of manual adjustment of it)?
* is it possible to change the mask higlight colour?  (I'm not at PS pc so can't check right now)
* "dynamic colour clock" - curve adjustment through moving the "hand" of the clock


..... but let's face it, CM3 is already a pretty astonishing product in its ability to work with curves and colours!

[-default]

After the initial Curvemeister 3 release, I'd like to add the ability to compare the effect of all the masks at once.  This would be a composite version of the Mask Carte, with the composite color image duplicated once for each mask.  The Mask Carte would be underneath, acting as a normal mask, with a single mask curve modifying all of the masks at the same time.

[mikemeister_admin]

I would like to be able to take the adjusted preview (image and/or mask) into PS as an adjustment layer, with a built in mask for editing and without the added file size I get when making my adjustments on a background layer and adding a mask in PS. I never ask for much!

At that point, PS would be more of a plug-in for Curvemeister  :)

I like the idea of comparing mask effects, though I get great satisfaction working through this process myself, for some reason--I guess it's the satisfaction some people get in finding an answer in a crossword puzzle.

...some people...(okay, I really like crossword  puzzles.)

[-default]

Hi Gloria,

Have you tried out Smart Filters yet?  That gives you the functionality that you are describing - Curvemeister on an adjustment layer.  There is probably a file size penalty.

[mikemeister_admin]

I haven't used Smart Filters with Curvemeister--because I don't have CS3 on this machine yet. I have it on my laptop (mac). Does this enable one to go back into CM and change settings (like ACR settings?) ?! That in a way is even cooler--but yes, a big hit as to file size. More than doubles.

[mikemeister_admin]

Did you ever see this, Mike? From the My Curves thread in LL?


Mark Segal:

Now, if Guillermo can program a 32,768 one-step-at-a-time Curve adjustor by this afternoon he's on his way to becoming a multi-multi-millionaire in digital imaging. Wouldn't that be nice for Guillermo!  biggrin.gif

Guillermo:

I don't understand this: why should you be happy with a 32,768 one-step-at-a-time Curve adjustor, when you can have it in 65,536 one-step-at-a-time? biggrin.gif biggrin.gif

To tell you the truth, I have thought many times about developing a super zoom curve editor. What I find disappointing in PS, apart from the low step precision, is the kind of curve available: always polynomial. Sometimes when you set curve point very close to others, the curve performs strange shapes very difficult to control. In addition to this, if curve is made of three points: A, B and C, the segment B-C is afected by the location of A.
A curve editor allowing straight linear segments would be much better in some high precision cases-

I would like to have a curve editor with:
- More resolution (input-output pairs in the 0..65535 range)
- Different kind of segment behaviours (polynomial, straight lines, stairs)
- Different input-output variable transfer functions:

Classical RGB:
R=f(R )
G=f(G )
B=f(B )

Constrast with Hue and Saturation preservation (B=Bright):
B=f(B )

Saturation control according to Hue:

This is really interesting, you could oversaturate/desaturate only certain tones. It's an extension of a PS's Saturation layer but more precise and flexible

Saturation according to Bright: to saturate more dark areas and desaturate light ones.
S=f(B )

...

Combinations are endless. Not all interesting, but some can be really worth to experiment with.
This is an idea for the future. Requires a good control of the screen display to make it easy for the user to move in the whole curve plane, add/delete/edit points, show effect in real time,... This is a task for real programmers and I am not.

Mark Segal:

Ya, but jokes aside, I thought of 65000 and then said to myself there must be a limit to the ability of human visual perception to see the difference in small changes below a certain amount. I can definitely see quite important changes the way they have it now, which is well in excess of 70 levels per cursor movement. If it could be brought to 8 levels per cursor push I think that would be more than adequate, which means a curve adjustor with 4096 adjustable levels covering a 32768 level range. So this is now a proposition ready for the Adobe Feature Request list?

[-default]

Hee hee - thanks - a nice article.  A couple of these are very close to what CM3 has right now.

Masking with the Hue channel actually does turn out to be an interesting way to deal with skies, and Curvemeister uses floating point internally for its curves, so it's more accurate than Photoshop.

[mikemeister_admin]

Mike, tonight I sat down and decided to really compare the work I do on PS's curves with Curvemeister's curve. I figured I would see some differences, but imagined it would be subtle, and image-dependent. I am actually quite stunned. I really see a difference. When I work on an image in CM, and then go back to PS, the curve just feels like it isn't quite responding--kind of like wading through water. ( except there's no water, and it's a curve. :))

I took an image that I had long ago developed in ACR, and then PS, and a few weeks ago with one of Dan's methods. His method brought out a substantial level of missing detail. I then brought it into CM, and used the HSB Saturation curve, and brought out even more, while controlling the more saturated neighboring areas beautifully.

Just wanted you to know--I am absolutely tickled to death. And grateful!

Masking with the Hue channel actually does turn out to be an interesting way to deal with skies,

Can you tell me a little bit about masking with noisy channels? How you would use blur,(or how much) for example? This is one thing I was going to suggest--there isn't much info on blurring in your Wiki mask article.

Gloria