![]() Being shaped both by the available programs and technology but also the needs of the users, these conventions pretty much determine the applications we see today and anything that strays from them is either fantastic or incredibly useless. Of course, there will always be offshoots such as the pixel drawing applications and word processors specifically designed for writers, but these are a refinement of the paradigm, not a new one. Because of this, Applications such as LightZone stand out like a sore thumb the question is: are they better or worse? When it comes to image editing, applications such as PhotoShop are the de-facto standard and nearly all other applications work on the same principles. LightZone is an application specifically tailored for the editing of digital photos. Unlike PhotoShop or any other similar application, LightZone makes use of traditional darkroom techniques and concepts to offer a workflow and tools that you won't see in other places. Touching up photos in LightZone consists of two phases, locating the photo and making the actual adjustments. While normally locating images is a simple step, not a phase, the application has its own browsing interface which you can use to parse through the contents of your drives and locate the images you are interested in. Unfortunately, the ever expanding list paradigm is a bad choice and navigating using LightZone's Browse interface is arduously slow. Instead, you are far better off just using the standard open command and using the Finder's interface to select the image you want. Once you have selected the subject, it is time to start experimenting and LightZone offers plenty to play with. Unlike other applications, this application has its own tools that it uses and that you won't likely see in other places, both the Relight and Zone Mapper being good examples. The relight tool essentially makes your photo look as if the lighting had been different when you took it. It does this by altering large scale contrast and at the same time tweaking local contrast. The program focuses a lot on the behaviors of the human visual system and gets great results. ![]() Similarly, the Zone Mapper tool works very differently from the way Photoshop and other applications do things. LightZone breaks the photo down into 16 grayscale zones, each differing by 50% brightness or half an f-stop from the next. This makes it easy to visualize the exact highlights, midtones and shadows of the image, and each and every area can be tweaked individually.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |