# Dehaxe tool



## mcasan (Jun 18, 2015)

In the latest CC release LR got the Dehaze slider in the Details panel in the Develop module.  Between clarity, sharpening, and the dehaze adjustment, it is a little easier to get some nice sharp objects without the over sharpening halo or other bad effects.  

Give the Dehaze adjustment a try and see what you think.


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## Denis Pagé (Jun 18, 2015)

It's like magic. I just love it (when needed). Find it at the bottom of the develop panel...


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## pwp (Jun 20, 2015)

The Dehaze feature is amazing. I'm unlikely to use it in landscapes as I mostly shoot people in all sorts of situations from totally controlled technical lighting setups to on-the-fly situations at events using AL or diffused/bounced flash-on-camera. These rotten lighting situations can be quite high contrast and tricky to process satisfactory. Just processed a job where I pushed the shadows slider right up, gave the highlights slider a heave to the left and cut the contrast way down. The images looked awful until I pushed up the dehaze slider. Magic happens. The slight noise gain was well worth it.

I contend that the Dehaze filter is in the wrong place, buried right down in Effects panel. I'd like to see it far more accessible in the Basic panel, next to the Clarity slider in Presence. I'd predict that the uptake of Dehaze  will be so great that it will be moved "upstairs" in a near-future update.


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## HappyMartin (Jun 21, 2015)

Updated LR and PS last night and spent quite a lot of time experimenting.

i agree it would be useful to have the dehaze in the Basic Panel. I think it will get a lot of use. Too much I suspect. A bit like Clarity it is seductive and easy to jazz up a bad image so I expect to see some hideous usage of this tool.

It adds quite a lot of saturation and it helps to sometimes pull back on saturation after using dehaze. Poor colour balance quickly become obvious when using dehaze because of this saturation increase. Pay careful attention to WB before visiting dehaze. For some reason the WB sliders become very unresponsive after using dehaze so it's best to get this order correct from the beginning, WB then dehaze further downstream in the workflow. Perhaps this is a bug. Perhaps it's only on my machine. Some extra feedback would be useful here

It would be good to have dehaze as an option on the various filters and the adjustment brush. I have resorted to making two snapshots one with and one without dehaze then I export the file to PS as a smart object and then duplicate the layer using the New Smart Object via Copy command. Then add a layer mask to the top layer and choose the history state with the dehaze snapshot selected. That allows me to brush the dehaze in with the layer mask.

It is useful to be very comfortable with the detail panel before leaping in with the dehaze slider. Dehaze can add a lot of noise. It's seems almost required to visit the noise reduction sliders after using dehaze. As a little benefit try pushing dehaze to 100% then doing your dust removal. The dust really stands out with this setting and becomes super easy to see, then after return dehaze back to a more normal value.


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## johnbeardy (Jun 21, 2015)

You can make an argument either way for Dehaze being where it is or moving it to Basic, but there has to be a high bar on inclusion in Basic and I think the key is that people will use that panel's sliders on every type of photo. This Dehaze slider only directly benefits a fraction of photos, ie landscapes with haze, and on other types of subject it's just a special effect. The problem of it requiring further WB or saturation adjustments doesn't need to be addressed by Adobe moving the tool but by fine tuning its impact. I agree about local adjustment though.

As for the dust removal idea, I used to do something similar by whacking up clarity. But then Adobe let you press A when you're in the dust removal tool.

John


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## HappyMartin (Jun 21, 2015)

I have to disagree with you about how useful this tool will be or how frequently it will be used anyway. I think it is going to be used and over used a great deal. 

i don't use the A button when spotting. It doesn't pick up sensor marks when they are in detail heavy areas very effectively and neither does it show marks on sensors that are not simple specks very well. The type of marks that show up more than I wish they did on my medium format back. The types of marks that I only seem to notice after printing to my perpetual irritation. I prefer to use a system that shows the actual image while exaggerating marks that I can then evaluate by eye in a quick and easy way. For this I think the dehaze will become part of my workflow. I process hundreds of images a week and anything that helps with this is a winner for me.


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## tspear (Jun 21, 2015)

I like the dehaze slider where it is.
I took about 300 photos at Acadia National Park yesterday. I only used the dehaze tool on a half dozen or so of the sunset pictures. Otherwise, I do not think I will use it very much.
Now, if I lived in San Francisco I might use it on almost all photos...

What I would like to see, is the dehaze added to the gradient filter. Because on the sunset photos I took yesterday, I really only need the dehaze on the bottom half below the horizon.

Tim


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## larryis1 (Jun 21, 2015)

Can not find dehaze in my stand alone version of LR 6.1... Help.


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## clee01l (Jun 21, 2015)

larryis1 said:


> Can not find dehaze in my stand alone version of LR 6.1... Help.


The Dehaze tool is functionality only added for CC Subscribers.  Standalone purchasers will likely need to wait until there is a version 7 upgrade and pay the upgrade price to get access to the new functionality.  

I think this is intentional to make the subscription model more attractive.  The Dehaze functionality is present in your code, what is missing from your installation is the User Interface to implement it.  This feature of the UI has been turned of for the serial version of LR6 just like the LR Mobile features.


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## larryis1 (Jun 21, 2015)

That is disappointing


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## mcasan (Jun 21, 2015)

Take a photo and crank DeHaze to the left to add haze.   Now do a virtual copy with Dehaze cranked max to the right.   Take both images into Ps or other layer software and blend the in different ways depending on the image and the desired effect.   Great creative tool.


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## GregJ (Jun 24, 2015)

I don't think this tool is that useful.  I have been playing with it a lot and prefer using the other sliders to do the same thing.  It introduces noise of course.  10% is a useful limit.  But hey -- more LR tools are better, but this is not as good as a basic Levels adjustment in PS or certainly not as good as taking away daytime atmospheric haze with Curves in PS.  In LR it is an OK tool.  I was in a helicopter the day after Katrina and took hundreds of shots in hazy mid-day atmosphere.  I remember just hitting "Auto Color" 11 years ago in PS and it magically cleared them completely up.  Then I played with Levels and Curves for the good ones.  I need to go grab on of those and see what this slider will do.  But I could see right away that it was not as powerful as I thought it might be.


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## themoose (Jun 30, 2015)

larryis1 said:


> Can not find dehaze in my stand alone version of LR 6.1... Help.



There apparently is a work-around using free presets from here: http://prolost.com/store/dehaze
I haven't tried them yet since I'm using the LRCC trial version but hope to use them when I buy the serial no. for LR6 (and upgrade to 6.1)


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## davidedric (Jul 1, 2015)

I had a quick play with the free download, and compared it with the CC Dehaze slider.   So far as I can see, the results are pretty much identical.   In fact, the Preset actually moves the Dehaze slider, so I don't know if that means they really are identical.

There are nine different positive and nine negative dehaze presets on offer, and clicking the "Preset +22" for example, moves the Dehaze slider to +22.   As with the Lightroom slider, no other sliders move with the preset.   Of course, I have no idea what happens in LR6.1 without the Dehaze feature!

EDIT:  Having had a chance to look more at the Prolost presets site, I have learned that the way they are generally designed to be used is as a list with different intensities whose effect can be easily observed in the Navigator Panel.   Some move just one slider, e.g. WB, other a combination.   So far as I can tell from the Web site, the presets do physically move the relevant slider(s) when applied.

Dave


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## clee01l (Jul 1, 2015)

davidedric said:


> I had a quick play with the free download, and compared it with the CC Dehaze slider.   So far as I can see, the results are pretty much identical.   In fact, the Preset actually moves the Dehaze slider, so I don't know if that means they really are identical.
> 
> There are nine different positive and nine negative dehaze presets on offer, and clicking the "Preset +22" for example, moves the Dehaze slider to +22.   As with the Lightroom slider, no other sliders move with the preset.   Of course, I have no idea what happens in LR6.1 without the Dehaze feature!
> 
> Dave


The Dehaze function is completely functional on the .1 release.  For those folks with the Serial version (6.1), the control interface (the part with the slider) is disabled.  All the preset does is adjust the dehaze function value.like you would if the slider was available.


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## johnbeardy (Jul 1, 2015)

The results aren't "pretty much identical" - they are identical - and there are lots of other preset bundles which do the same job. I've also seen a couple of plugins which offer sliders and so allow you to set precise dehaze values. Their authors hide their identity though - I wonder why....


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## davidedric (Jul 1, 2015)

It's also interesting that other new features such as the local blacks and whites sliders, are blocked - they can't be set via the SDK (apologies, John, if I have mis-said that).

I wonder if this loophole, or "undocumented feature", might get closed in a future release?

Dave


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## johnbeardy (Jul 1, 2015)

davidedric said:


> It's also interesting that other new features such as the local blacks and whites sliders, are blocked - they can't be set via the SDK (apologies, John, if I have mis-said that).
> 
> I wonder if this loophole, or "undocumented feature", might get closed in a future release?



Maybe, or maybe not, Dave. Adobe seem to be OK about it. Only a minority will take advantage of the preset loophole, and perhaps it's good to keep the buzz going about dehaze? On the other hand, ite might be different if large numbers of people used plugins to really get around the 6/CC split, and for me that would be a shame. On a personal level, I would consider it wrong to distribute a tool specifically intended to get around the 6/CC split, but I would be annoyed if others' irresponsibility led to SDK restrictions. 

I'm pretty certain that the local blacks and whites values can be set by the SDK, but I think a dedicated tool would be more trouble than it's worth. It would have to provide some way to let the user choose which local adjustment pin would receive the slider values, so it would take time to code and be pretty ugly too.

John


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