How to edit images (photography)

Talk about Pixelmator Pro, share tips & tricks, tutorials, and other resources.
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2022-11-17 22:08:55

Ok so I must be doing something wrong because I'm experiencing a discrepancy while editing. For testing purposes I clicked the ML Enhance button on the RAW Layer and I got a result that was pleasing and would allow me to build off of that with ease.

I undid that action back to the original.

I remember reading that it is best to create an adjustment layer and work from that rather than the actual RAW image. So I grabbed a Color Adjustment layer and clicked the ML Enhance button.

I got a totally different result with totally different numbers in all of the adjustment settings.

Why is this happening?

Below are the images showing the settings and the results of those settings.

Adjustment settings on RAW Layer:
Image

What those settings reflect:
Image

Color Adjustment Layer:
Image

What those settings reflect:
Image

So why is there so much of a difference?
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2022-11-18 15:23:00

That is actually a great question! To explain this, we first need to clearly define what regular color adjustments and color adjustments layers are.

Color adjustments let you change the colors of layers directly. Although still nondestructive, color adjustments become part of the layers they are applied to and affect their content directly.

Color adjustments layers, on the other hand, are completely separate elements in a composition. These layers keep all the edits separate from the layers to which they are applied.

Both color adjustments and color adjustments layers work the same when applied to regular image layers but RAW layers are a little different. With RAW layers comes an extra level of color information, the so-called extended dynamic range. At the moment, this additional color information is tied exclusively to the RAW layers and can’t be carried over to other layers. This means that color adjustments layers cannot access, edit, or store any of this extra color information separately from the RAW layers. The color adjustments layers will still affect the colors of RAW layers, only without taking the extended color range into consideration.

You can combine color adjustments layers with masks to edit some specific parts of a RAW photo, as local adjustments can’t be applied to RAW layers any other way. Other than that, edits that affect the entire photo should be applied to the RAW layer itself using regular color adjustments which let you work with all the levels of information within a layer.

We have plans to improve this behavior in the future but that’s the gist of how things work at the moment. Let me know if you have any questions!
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2022-11-18 17:24:05

Thank you Aurelija!

That got technical, but after reading it slowly and turning off my music so that I could focus on what you typed, I understand it perfectly.

So with editing images of portraits, landscapes, food, what ever...would you recommend to always FIRST edit the RAW file to bring out most of the details and colors, and then bring in adjustment layers to further improve on it?
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2022-11-23 13:12:34

Happy to help! And yes, since most of the color adjustments will be applied to the RAW layer directly (keeping the maximum quality), this workflow should definitely work. :ok_hand:
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2022-12-02 00:34:25

by Aurelija Happy to help! And yes, since most of the color adjustments will be applied to the RAW layer directly (keeping the maximum quality), this workflow should definitely work. :ok_hand:
Thank you!