Man from Mars Slider

[leeharper_admin]

This came to me last night - I thought that I'd throw it out there to see whether anyone else thinks that this would be a nice way to implement the Man from Mars technique within CM...

In Lab, underneath the 'Saturation' slider, add another slider called 'Color Variation' (or 'Man from Mars', though color variation will make more sense to users unfamiliar with Dan Margulis). The slider will be greyed out until the user applies a new type of pin - a color variation 'pivot' point.

When the user applies a pivot pin to the image, behind the scenes the application is doing the following:

• A mask based upon the hue of the pixel beneath the pin is calculated (along the lines of Photoshop's

Select > Color Range command. This mask might not be perfect, so in the UI give the user the option of whether to use it via an 'Auto Mask' checkbox next to the 'Color Variation' slider.

The application builds a Man from Mars curve based on the pivot point. If the a value is positive, the highlight end of the a curve will be moved until the negative half of the curve snaps to the base of the curve window (and vica versa). Ditto for the b curve. This automatic curve should be aggressive.

The 'Color Variation' slider is actually an opacity slider used to control the application of the 'Man from Mars' curve that the application automatically builds when a pivot pin is applied to the image. This slider means that users don't need to use the No Black GCR K mask trick, and speeds the workflow up.

This approach will speed up the application of 'Man from Mars' within CM enormously. The added bonus is that because the application calculates a MfM curve in the background, the curves within the UI can be used to further tune results. Also, because the background curve is created based on the position of the 'pivot' pin, users could go 'Color Variation' shopping, by dragging this pin around the image.

What do you think?

If my explanation is too fuzzy I'd be happy to mock up some UI to make it more obvious...

Best regards,
Lee.

[ggroess]

These are good suggestions...Thanks Lee.

Lee I have been thinking about this one...you can do this yourself...there are a couple of different ways...

1) set a neutral this creates a pivot point....
2) using the saturation slider Crank it up to as high of a level as you want..
3) using the K channel as a mask in CM rotate the curve to a horizontal line this creates a neutral mask at 50%  If you grab the ends of the curve line by Ctrl-clicking on them you can use the up and down key to move the curve line as a slider.
3A) you can also curve this Mask if you like to allow the saturation to effect the image by tonal range...not as easy but it can be done.

Or...

You can create a LAB pin an CM and set the mode to Brightness only.  This pins the value to the L channel and ignores the color information.  You should be able to rotate the curves that way.   Use the saturation slider to do the heavy lifting and to keep the change uniform. you tweak it form there...and still use a K channel mask as needed

Let me know what you think...

[leeharper_admin]

Hi Greg,

I think that the problem with pivoting around a neutral is that the real benefit of the Man from Mars technique is that it mimics simultaneous contrast in areas of similar colour (foliage, canyons, faces, etc) - and to maximise this effect you'd want the curve to be rotating around a representative colour (an average green for example). Whilst rotating the curves around a neutral will steepen the appropriate colours, rotating around a representative colour will push similar colours (that you have identified as being important) further away from each other - which would maximise the effect of simultaneous contrast.

I also think that unless you are working on a very monochromatic image, it is unlikely that you would want to differentiate the colours of everything within the image to the same degree. Say for example that our theoretical shot is of a family having a picnic in a national park - we'd want to use Man from Mars on the trees in the background, but probably not (or at least, not to the same extent) on the people eating lunch. You could of course use Select > Color Range to create a channel for protecting the family from the effect, but the idea of identifying the colours that you want to enhance with a pivot pin allows for Mike to automatically build a mask to accomplish the same ends (which would be more pleasant for users).

I know that implementing this may take a significant amount of time, so lets say that Mike has other priorities and decides against doing this. In that case he should definitely turn the horizontal mask curve into an opacity slider. Whilst that technique works, its a very irritating kludge - I'd sooner that method was consigned to history ;).

Thanks for the feedback - I'll try the Lightness pin method, that sounds really interesting.

All the best,
Lee.

[ggroess]

I'm unsure of the programming that would definitely be Mike's forte.
I understand what you are looking for.  I was trying to give you something that works today...

The image I shared with you is along those lines...More on that later as the details emerge...

Greg

[-default]

Well, I like this idea, and would actually like to fly this sort of idea by Dan to see what he thinks about implementing MFM, or PPW (Picture Postcard Workflow) for that matter, in Curvemeister or a similar program.  Also, what about the idea of a separate program to do PPW.

Usual disclaimer: at the moment, until I have 64 bit squared away, I'm not in a strong positon to talk about adding new features...

[leeharper_admin]

Why do you think the PPW would work better as a separate program, rather than a CM feature? Are the things you would want to implement too off topic for CM?

My two cents - CM should be an app in its own right, and an app where there is room to implement features other than curves. The way I see it CM should be the premium color correction tool on the market. Its foundation would be curves, but really its purpose should be the control and manipulation of color for color correction and enhancement, so it doesn't need to be limited to curves.

I think that the target market for CM would be interested in PPW, and would happily pay a premium for that ability.

Maybe you should change the name to ColorMeister ;)

Lee.

[ggroess]

Wow...Jumped into the deep water...  I think I'll hang on the edge of the pool a while....

Greg