Remove highlight burn in post?

[Morbid Angel]

Nice, glad you found a solution. Its really beyond me why flagship software like photoshop can't work with 32 bit. Its as if autocad could not work in miles or km

[stevesideas]

Nice, glad you found a solution. Its really beyond me why flagship software like photoshop can't work with 32 bit. Its as if autocad could not work in miles or km

Agreed. It seems very odd that proper 32bit editing hasn't been implemented yet.

[Morne]

Agreed. It seems very odd that proper 32bit editing hasn't been implemented yet.

Which is why I love Affinity Photo. Everything you can do in 8 bit you can do in 32bit and MORE features than PS. Also, saving to jpg is a simple export, no need to 1st go down to 8bit. Finally LOADS of 32bit editing happening on high res images

[Oleg_Budeanu]

Which is why I love Affinity Photo. Everything you can do in 8 bit you can do in 32bit and MORE features than PS. Also, saving to jpg is a simple export, no need to 1st go down to 8bit. Finally LOADS of 32bit editing happening on high res images

Do you know if it has any automation stuff like macros ? What about plugins ?

[piotrus3333]

I suggest that you jus use the highlight compression from VFB in photoshop. 32 not 16 bit exrs needed for that to work better: save cube file from VFB color corrections with full highlight compression and load it in ps.

[Morne]

Do you know if it has any automation stuff like macros ? What about plugins ?

Jip they have basic macros, and working on getting more functions ready for it (still beta)
There is a PS plugins section inside and seems a lot of PS plugins work in it. Sign up for the free beta and join their forums. The guys are quick to respond just like here. Some of the top guys from here are also on there (join and you'll see which ones I mean)

[Deflaminis]

The only plugin for photoshop I've found that can do a decent tone map and keep the image in 32 bit (and I've tried many different tone mappers) is something called 32float. You can work on highlights in that and still end up with a 32bit image but obviously with some clamping if you're knocking the highlights down a bit. Demo works for a while free, worth a shot.

[^Lele^]

I consider Photoshop a lost cause, as far as HDR editing is concerned.
Nuke's been out ten years, fusion 20, and PS still likes to think an alpha in an EXR is surely a cutout (but if you're REALLY sure you don't want it to cut out you can tell it so at EACH file opening.).
It was born for different goals, and those it achieves quite well.
Besides price considerations, i'd be using fusion without a second thought: free, and dead easy to use (if 4k is a limit, and one grand to buy the full version another, i'm sure you can find ways around it through proxying, cropping, and reassembly elsewhere).
I see NO future in which Ps finally becomes a FP editing application, but hey, what do i know?

Edit: in fact, Affinity started RIGHT away in the correct way. PS would likely need a complete rewrite to achieve a fraction of what Affinity can already do.

[Morne]

Besides price considerations, i'd be using fusion without a second thought: free, and dead easy to use (if 4k is a limit, and one grand to buy the full version another, i'm sure you can find ways around it through proxying, cropping, and reassembly elsewhere).

All we need now is VRay for Fusion! Who's with me?

[sherridge101]

Photoshop's 'Camera Raw Filter' would be perfect, if the filter didn't make an initial tone adjustment to the overall image (a little like 'local adaptation', in spreading out the HDR brackets).

Would be cool to be able to tweak the highlights only.

Can you save out an exr with VFB's exposure (Highlight Burn) settings burnt in?

[theedge]

You can save your correction as a LUT and then apply it in photoshop.

[sherridge101]

Just tried saving out a LUT and loading in photoshop, but the .cube file doesn't seem to store the exposure (Highlight burn etc.) settings.

[Morne]

VFB exposure "highlight burn" correction sucks. It not only affects the highlights but the entire range leaving you with a dull grey washed image.
Affinity's highlight/shadow adjustment works much better for me in that it does what you would expect

Affinity has some quirks to get use to, but it works much better than Photoshop especially with 32bit images

[Crayox13]

Also agree that VFB highlights adjustment washes out my render. Camera raw adjustment gives such nice feel, only problem is it changes a render a bit in 32 bit when you open it.

I just tried Affinity to try adjusting a render like in Camera raw, and highlights immediately gave me much different result of the outside stone
Then tried its tone mapper, it was better with highlights (although I couldn't reduce them as much as PS does for some reason), but it's clarity then produced strong black edges around my highlighted areas. Maybe I'm using it wrong. Not sure.

Here's what they look like when I just apply highlights/shadows modifier with highlights -200% (see outside stone)
And the other one is with Develop
Finally the PS version.

[sherridge101]

I've been switching to HSV exponential color mapping on a few jobs, and this clamps the highlights well - not suitable for all jobs, I'm sure.

Also using ArionFX, but mainly for creating small glares to drop over the top of the image.

There's a cool photoshop setup too, where you duplicate merge all Render Elements and set this Layer to Divide and then clip to this, a white Additive layer. Drop these 2 layers in a folder and tweak the folders opacity - this will pull in the highlights.