Tone Mapping 37Smooth Compressor
The previous two methods produce an eye catching images, but they can also increase banding noise
in smooth flat areas. This may become too visible in indoor images (on walls) or on sky with no clouds.
The Smooth Compressor method helps you to create balanced and noise free (no added noise)
images.
The parameters are:
Brightness - sets the overall brightness of the image
Lighten Shadows - lighten (dodge) shadow areas. Moving the slider too much to the right may create
a negative effect of "glowing" shadows
Darken Highlights - darkens (burn) bright areas. This has usually more subtle effect
Saturation - saturation of the color
Radius - sets the radius of the filter, larger radius create a more visible halo.
Note: As you move the Lighten slider, the image tries to keep its overall brightness constant (by
darkening the whole image). That means after certain point when too many places are lightened up,
the image may actually become darker than before.
A typical process would be:
(1) Initially set both Darken Highlights and Lighten Shadow to zero and adjust the Brightness so there
are no overblown highlights in the image and it has enough details in light areas. At this moment the
image may look dark.
(2) Add Lighten Shadows to balance the image by dodging the dark areas.
(3) After that you may try to add Darken Highlights to burn the light areas (this has less severe effect
than the Lighten Shadows slider)
This process usually takes longer to calculate than any of the other methods.