Hi all,
just made my first Bibble 5 plugin and thought I should release it too you.
So here it is.

The plugin is only available for Windows systems.

The functions are:
Slider for change the "midtones" of the image.

Equalizer for change different "light" bands of the image.

The plugin is freeware and if you wish to make a linux or Macintosh version of it and have a system with the tools, send me a mail and I will send you the source code.

Their is only limited support from me and only here or by e-mail.

If you have suggestions for other plugin, you can contact me too.

Thanks !!! It is very cool indeed !!

I just tested it on an image that had the skin tone highlights almost blown away and was going to delete it and a bunch of images similar. In 30 sec I had a very usable Image .. The adjustments for Midtones, shadows etc are very useful. To try and do this on the curves tool would be so hard to even try and do!

Very nice .... Ian

This is amazing! Truly amazing! I was trying to find the time to learn the whole plug-in programming thing in order just to write exactly this plug-in, or something very close to it. It looks like you've saved me the trouble. I've only had a quick play with it, but I have to say that it looks very promising, although I was getting some strange lags in the histogram being updated. I will play some more.

I was going to write something with only four bands (plus a separate mid-tone controller), but was also going to allow the widths of each of these bands to be adjusted. This would provide something like the control of the LR tone controls. Have you considered including controls to allow adjustment of the band widths?

Thanks again. You have really, really made my day!!!!!!!!!

F_P

feel free to send me the source as pm. I will compile it for linux then.

Andreas

Clearly I was excited yesterday, and have now calmed down a little. Having played with this a little more, I am puzzled about the mathematics behind each of the 5 sliders for the bands. They all seem to do the same thing, but with differing centre points for the histogram adjustment. I.e., It's like they're all mid-tone or "brightness" sliders, but centred around different points. So there is quite a lot of overlap between them. For example, the shadows slider has a fairly strong impact on the highlights and the highlights has quite a strong impact on the shadows.

I'd given a little thought to this in preparation for attempting to write my own plug-in. What I wanted to avoid was the situation in Sean's "Ansel" plug-in, where if you lighten or darken one of the 10 "zones", most of the other 9 zones are also affected. I found that using Ansel required an iterative series of adjustments as each one required others to compensate. MB Equaliser seems similar.

In Lightroom with its 4 bands, changing one band affects only the upper part of the band below it and the lower part of the band above it, which I found easier to use.

Had you give much thought to whether the limit the extent to which changes to one band affects the other bands?

Related to this, I'm not sure what the difference is between the midtones slider and the medium light slider.

Sorry for all the questions and comments, but I'm still rather excited.

F_P

Hi,

I didn't try this plugin, but I already wrote something similar - you can set the highlights, midtones and shadows in SallyPro, too (for individual colors, too ).

I had these issues with this equalizer part, too (i.e. one slider changes the other bands); I know it's harder than it seems.

Anyway, if you send me the source code by PM, I can look at it, to correct it or give you some ideas.

Cheers!

Hi to all,
I see some of you whant a tool which only manipulate a small band without the change of the rest.
No problem, the code is already finished. It was my first attempt for the Equalizer.
I found the manipulating of only Highlights without the rest usefull, but for midtones and shadows the manipulating of a small band without touching the other band cause banding.
I wiil look if I could made this Equalizer version ready and publish it here too.

@Markus: If the plug-in darkens or lightens one band then those pixels have to go somewhere in the histogram, or else you'll get a very strange image. I wasn't suggesting no effect at all on other bands. I was suggesting less effect that there now is. I was also suggesting the ability either (i) to control how far into other bands the pixels were pushed; or (ii) to control where one band stopped and another started. Option (i) could be used to control banding / posterisation.

@Kbarni: I did have a look at SallyPro. It was I who found all those problems with the mislabelled controls. I agree that you were successful in limiting the extent to which changes in shadows affected highlights etc. I was looking for something else because (a) I wanted more bands; (b) +100 and -100 on the luminosity controls wasn't strong enough; (c) I wanted to be able to control the splits between the bands; and (d) luminosity controls wouldn't work on images that had been processed by Harry, so Harry and SallyPro would not suffice for B&W work.

F_P

Hi,
here comes version 2.0.

Differenceses from version 1.0 are:
+ Total rewritten Equalizer band function.
+ Control of the band width from 100 (Narrow band) too 0 (width band)

Give it a try.

If you post comments or send me a mail, please post the version which is show if you press the help button.

Markus

Can I say thank you very much for this new version. At a very quick first look this is very promising. Can you please explain how the "range" parameter works. For example, if I change the range of the "medium light" band from 95 to 50 what does this do to this band, and does it have any effect on the width of the other bands?

F_P

The new control for the with of the band makes this much more versatile.

With regards to Ferdinands question, could you answer that by putting in some ballon help in the plugin (no idea if the API has support for that yet...)

cheers
afx

Hi,
I will try to explain the band and the Range value.

First the plugin did not work in your Working space it works in the linear camera color space.
So the bands did not correspondent to the histogram in a linear way.

The bands are:
shadow = 128
low light = 256
medium light = 1024
light = 8192
highlight = 65535

In linear camera color space!

The Range value is a little more complicated.
Lets take the medium light band, which is 1024. The Range of the band is from 0 to 2048. If you set the Range to 100 all values from 0 to 2048 get a sinus like amplitude of the medium light band value. Values out of that range got nothing. If you set the Range value to 95, all values from 0 to 2048 get 95% of the sinus like amplitude range the values outside the interval get 5% of the amplitude value.
It is non linear, so the description is not easy to understand. But simplified a value which is closer to the band value will get more amplitude than a value which is farther away.

So I think I could but as balloon help:
Wide of the band (100 = narrow, 0 = wide)

Hi,
just a bug fix.
Version 2.0 did not use the luminance values for the band.
Fixed in 2.0a, download is updated on first post.

Thanks again - for both the update and the explanation. I'll continue to experiment with it.

F_P

Very happy with this plugin ... Images I am playing with can have rich deep blacks and nice mids & highlights. I know it's subjective, but the images almost take on a film type look if setting's are done well.

Very clever use of space for the additional controls !!!

Will try and put a sample up tomorrow ... Ian