hello I'm Robin Whalley welcome to Lenscraft today we're taking a closer look
at the new weather filter in On1 photo RAW if you haven't seen the
weather filter it's a new release in On1 photo RAW 2020 now I'm going to
start this review with a disclaimer whilst I'm a big fan of On1 photo RAW
and upgraded immediately to the 2020 version I absolutely hate simulated
weather effects but before I explain why I hate these effects so much I'll start
by explaining how to use the filter to help I've created this image which is
totally black this is to help you see the effect of the controls more clearly
I'll start by adding a new weather filter
at the top of the filter we have three styles that allow you to quickly apply
creative weather effects there's also a drop-down list with a couple of
additional effects as well as the ability to save a new style
when I click the foghorn effect you can see the effect of the fog against the
black background notice that this gives a fog effect at the top and below this
is a stronger slightly lighter band after that it transitions to being clear
and you can see the black again in the filter the controls are arranged into
three sections which you can use to apply the adjustments in the top section
we've got the precipitation controls and these relate to the rain and snow
effects next there's transform and this controls the scale and orientation of
the effect on the image and at the bottom we have the fog section to
control the fog effects if I move the amount slider left and right you can see
the strength of the effect is adjusted moving the distance slider moves the
effect up and down
this allows you to better position and align the effect with your image the
rotation slider allows you to then rotate the angle of the fog as well
you can also use this position drop down and this contains different presets to
allow you to control the effects without using the other two sliders the distance
and the rotation the final slider here is transition and this controls the
transition zone between the clear area here where is black and the fog effect
here and if I move this over to the right you can see the transition gets
much larger move it to the left and the effect becomes much harder if I move it
to zero you can see we've got just a hard line no let's change the weather
style from foghorn to Blizzard in this style we've got a combination of
fog controlled by the fog section at the bottom and also the precipitation which
is controlled in the top section we can use the controls in the precipitation
section to refine the effect here we can use the opacity slider to either reduce
the effect and make it more transparent or we can increase it and make the
snowflakes more obvious we can also change the type of precipitation using
this drop-down list here we've got alpine or maybe we want one of the rain
effects instead
now that you know how the filter works let's see how it performs using an
actual image this first image is a simple sunset as shot recently in the
late district let's apply a weather filter
and we'll apply the foghorn adjustment as you can see the result isn't exactly
believable the same happens if I select the blizzard filter or the Seattle rain
filter
this illustrates one of the reasons why I don't like weather simulation filters
most of the images that people create with these don't appear believable this
is partly because the weather we're trying to simulate doesn't match the
lighting conditions in the image now if we change the style to something a
little different so let's try sticking
what we find is something that is actually a little bit more believable it
could really be snowing at sunset but there is another problem with this
effect I clearly shot the image using a
wide-angle lens but look at the snowflakes here they are shot with a
different focal length now there is a scale option here but it only makes the
problem worse
let's then try the filter on a different image that may suit it a little bit more
in this image we already have weather conditions that are foggy and frost day
know when I apply the fog horn style we create a more believable effect
we can also refine this effect to make it more believable using a luminosity
mask
combining the filter with a mask is a good idea it prevents the effect from
being uniform across the entire image and that makes it much more believable
no let's add a second weather filter to the image to simulate snow rather than
trying to apply both snow and fog together
and as before we can refine this by applying a mask to remove the snow from
the sky
if you compare this to the starting image
you can see that the new adjustment actually appears quite realistic
although it has lightened the entire image quite a lot I would say that the
filter is a useful addition providing you use it with care don't expect it to
convert any image and create a realistic and believable in fact it doesn't work
like that it's much better when you are enhancing an image that already has that
type of weather effect but you also need to apply it in a way that keeps the
effect realistic don't have a uniform adjustment across the entire image that
is unless you're trying to create a highly stylized image but I'll save that
for another video I'm Robin Whalley you've been watching Lenscraft I'll see you
next time for another video