Is there a good shadow/highlight plugin for Vegas?

PeterDuke wrote on 8/1/2009, 7:31 PM

I am looking for a shadow/highlight plugin for Vegas comparable to Adobe's product in Premiere etc. The Fill-Light plugin from Radiance/VelvetMatter/VASST now included in version 9 and the Shadows and Highlights plugin fron NewBlue are both disappointing in that the lifted shadows have poor contrast. Alternatively, is there any way to make Adobe's plugin (After Effects type) work in Vegas?

My workaround is to load the clip needing treatment into Premiere Elements, fix the shadows and highlights, export as an AVI file and load into Vegas. All rather tedious, to say the least.

There are several good products available for processing still image files, but there seems to be nothing else for video.

Comments

Steve_Rhoden wrote on 8/1/2009, 7:51 PM

Have you tried Vegas Color Curves filter...It does a good job with the
proper tweaking.
BTW, Which particular highlighting plugin are you referring to that you use
in premiere pro and which one in after effects?

rs170a wrote on 8/1/2009, 8:12 PM

Peter, you asked the same question in the lightening backlit subjects thread almost 2 years ago and it doesn't sound like there's anything new out there yet.

Mike

Grazie wrote on 8/1/2009, 11:19 PM

My workaround is to load the clip needing treatment into Premiere Elements, fix the shadows and highlights, export as an AVI file and load into Vegas. Try using Satish's FrameServer [FS]? This allows me to pipe "non-rendered" files to another app. When I say non-rendered, I mean that FS frame-serves each FRAME to another app - neato!

Grazie

PeterDuke wrote on 8/2/2009, 6:43 AM

Thanks for the replies. I failed to find anything satisfactory despite a recent and fairly long web search, so as you say Mike, it looks like there is nothing new yet. :(

Grazie, I'll try the frame server approach: it may be a little less tedious.

Steve, the effect is called "shadow/highlight" in premiere and I believe also in After Effects although I have not used that program. The plugin file name has .AEX extension, indicating that it is an After Effects type plugin.

Fiddling with a global nonlinear mapping of pixel brightnesses is not going to be satisfactory for my purposes. The shadow (highlight) region needs to be identified first, and a feathered (tapered) edge to the mask (matte) applied in such a way that haloes are minimal when the region is lightened (darkened) as a whole regardless of individual pixel brightness. If this is not done the fine detail in the shadow (highlight) will be degraded or lost.

I use the plugin LightMachine for still images a lot. If you look at the controls it and Shadow/Highlight have you will see what I mean.

Tonemapping is sometimes used to display high dynamic range images on normal displays, and the global (as distinct from local) methods suffer from the same problem. Also, it is nice to retain the deeper shadows for naturalness, but tonemapping tends to remove them all.