Dehaze Slider in Lightroom CC and ACR CC

[Mike Buckley]

Scenes of distant mountains with no haze help make landscape images by Ansel Adams and other master photographers of his time and before him so attractive. That's partly because we experience so much more haze throughout the world now than the earlier photographers experienced. The haze not only partly obscures the distant scenery but also reduces the contrast and dynamic range.

I have specific post-processing techniques that reduce or eliminate haze but I have no way to accomplish the dramatic results displayed in this demonstration of the new Dehaze Slider that is only in Lightroom CC and ACR CC. The slider works incredibly well in the city scene. If it works equally well when eliminating haze in distant landscapes, that would be reason enough by itself for me to subscribe to Adobe's CC program.

[bnnrcn]

Hi Mike . I have PS CC 2015 but no dehaze slider in ACR Are you sure it exists in ACR ? It looks like heaven to have such a slider

[Mike Buckley]

The video accessed at the link I provided says it's in ACR. The text of the article accompanying the video says it's in Photoshop. The terms are often used inaccurately, so perhaps it's in Photoshop rather than ACR.

[davidedric]

Hi Mike . I have PS CC 2015 but no dehaze slider in ACR Are you sure it exists in ACR ? It looks like heaven to have such a slider

Hi Binnur,

You do have to install the latest updates. I read a post "somwhere" that said it is a two stage process. I don't use Photoshop CC so I can't help more.

Dave

[DanK]

It's there, in the most recent version. Open the file in ACR, or just apply the raw filter if the photo is open in Photoshop. in the right panel, the fx button brings up the sliders for grain, post-crop vignetting, and dehaze.

[Manfred M]

Binnur - it appears to be a 2-stage setup.

The first step is to install Photoshop CC 2015. Once this is running, the Creative Cloud update screen will notify you that there is another update to Photoshop CC 2015 and if you look, that is the update to ACR 9.1. Dehaze is the first item on the Effects tab.

Here are is an example I did (just a few seconds of work, not really up to my normal standards... This is a shot I took last November at the park boundary of Chitwan National Park in Nepal on a very foggy morning.





Here is the SOOC jpeg

[Mike Buckley]

That's very impressive, Manfred. If you don't have a distant landscape scene with lots of haze, I wonder if you would be open to me sending one to you.

[Manfred M]

Go ahead Mike.

[bnnrcn]

Aaah, yes it is there in the fx part, thanks everybody ! I must have been careless while looking for it, silly me I have just tried it, it is fantastic

[rpcrowe]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq4YaTfpJ_I

Another way is to use a CPL to get the best original image. Given the correct angle of the sun, a CPL filter will minimize the reflections off both the moisture droplets and the solid particulates in fog and smog. This can go a long way "cutting through" haze and obtaining a better image SOOC...

Some of the best work in haze/smog removal during PP is done by the Chinese. It is pretty necessary when shooting in China unless you have unlimited time to wait for a clear day. I was lucky during my trip to Beijing because winds out of Manchuria cleared the atmosphere.



However, a day or two earlier, those same winds brought a sand storm making good imagery pretty nearly impossible.

Image credit to China News Agency

[Mike Buckley]

Manfred and anyone,

Please apply the Dehaze Slider to this Nikon raw file and post it here in the thread.

The image was captured by my wife. The haze was so bad that I left my camera in the car. I was able to produce an attractive image using my typical techniques to minimize the haze. Even so, I am very interested in seeing the results produced by anyone and all using Adobe's new Dehaze slider.

[Mike Buckley]

Given the correct angle of the sun, a CPL filter will minimize the reflections off both the moisture droplets and the solid particulates in fog and smog.

Yes, but that works only if the sun is at the ideal angle. If the sun is back lighting the haze, the polarizer will have no effect and that is when the appearance of haze is at its worst.

[Manfred M]

Manfred and anyone,

Please apply the Dehaze Slider to this Nikon raw file and post it here in the thread.

The image was captured by my wife. The haze was so bad that I left my camera in the car. I was able to produce an attractive image using my typical techniques to minimize the haze. Even so, I am very interested in seeing the results produced by anyone and all using Adobe's new Dehaze slider.

Need to clean up the colour cast, but it certainly is a lot less hazy than the original.

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks, Manfred!

I'm very impressed with the results you obtained, especially with such relatively little effort and absolutely minimal experience with using the tool.

For comparison purposes, my rendition is shown below. I'm sure I went to a LOT more time and effort to produce my version. I used ten edit steps including several local adjustments of the tone curve, one adjustment that affected the color balance and another one that affected the saturation.

[Manfred M]

What you see with the dehaze tool took all of 2 seconds (click on the effects tab on ACR and crank the slider back and forth a bit).

FRankly, I'm quite impressed with it so far too.

[Mike Buckley]

Two seconds?! Wow! Double wow!

[bnnrcn]

WOW! After seeing the results in a landscape image, I think this slider will help Adobe a lot to gain new customers

[gregj1763]

I used it in an image this afternoon I posted. I'm stunned the difference it makes, a real winner in my books

[Manfred M]

This is right up there with the "content aware" functionality in terms of a "killer" function. It is going to take things down from hours of work to get something looking decent to mere minutes; which is exactly what the content aware functionality did.

[Mike Buckley]

This capability isn't one that I will regularly use in my workflow. Instead, it's one that will be extremely important the few times I use it.

Far more important, knowing the capability is available will provide me the luxury of capturing images I would not have otherwise captured. I can even imagine looking for street scenes with steam that might be more appealing with the mood and effects provided by a minimal amount of steam after being reduced during post-processing rather than the larger amount that is present in the physical scene.