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Detail nodes

Sharpening, smoothing, texture and grain, the layer effects, and the tools that read the scene's depth.

Detail (heeler.detail)

Texture, clarity and dehaze, with per-band and per-channel weights. Adjustments' Detail section. Off and out of the graph until switched on; its node sits right after Color.

  • Ports: rgb in, mask in, rgb out.
  • Texture fine local contrast; Clarity mid-scale local contrast; Dehaze cuts or adds the veil, in luminance and color.
  • Weights scale each effect per tonal band (shadows, midtones, highlights) and per channel, 100 being full.

Mask it to keep clarity off skin. A graph saved before this node existed carried these dials on Color; it is split on load.

Sharpen (heeler.sharpen)

Local contrast at the fine scale: the unsharp mask. Detail's Unsharp, Radius and Threshold rows build it on the first move.

  • Ports: rgb in, mask in, rgb out.
  • Amount, Radius in pixels, Threshold below which flat areas are left alone.

The free-tier sharpening. The Sharpening section is a fuller treatment of its own, the heeler.sharpening node below.

Denoise (heeler.denoise)

Smooth sensor noise with one strength. Detail's Smoothing row builds it on the first move.

  • Ports: rgb in, mask in, rgb out.
  • Strength.

For brightness and color treated apart, use the Noise Reduction section or build the split yourself: see Example networks.

Detail Denoise (heeler.nlm_denoise)

Similarity-weighted smoothing that spares edges.

  • Ports: rgb in, mask in, rgb out.
  • Strength; Mode KNN (fast) or NLM (thorough).

Hot Pixels (heeler.hot_pixel)

Remove stuck photosites and touch nothing else.

  • Ports: rgb in, mask in, rgb out.
  • Sensitivity.

Blur (heeler.blur)

Gaussian, box or motion softening, radius in pixels.

  • Ports: rgb in, mask in, rgb out.
  • Radius, Kind, Angle for motion.

A building block: the Sharpening and Skin Softening nodes below do its work inside themselves.

High Pass (heeler.high_pass)

Only what is sharper than the radius, over mid grey.

  • Ports: rgb in, mask in, rgb out.
  • Radius.

Blend it in Overlay or Soft Light over the picture for frequency-separation sharpening.

Sharpening (heeler.sharpening)

The Develop sharpening recipe as one node, so it can ride a layer behind its mask.

  • Ports: rgb in, mask in, rgb out.
  • Radius, Intensity, and the Mode: vivid (inverted blur laid back through Vivid Light, then Overlay) or hipass (a desaturated high pass through Overlay).

Renders exactly what the recipe's chain of To Display, Invert, Blur, High Pass, Blend and To Scene nodes rendered.

Skin Softening (heeler.skin_soften)

Smooths skin texture and brings detail back, as one node behind a mask.

  • Ports: rgb in, mask in, rgb out.
  • Softening (the high pass radius), Detail back (the blur radius), Strength.

Grain (heeler.grain)

Film grain by tone and channel. Adjustments' Grain section.

  • Ports: rgb in, mask in, rgb out.
  • Intensity, Size, Pattern (fine, standard, coarse, cinema), Color grain, and gains per band and per channel.

Add it last, after any blur, or the blur eats it.

Grain Field (heeler.noise)

The grain itself, as a picture: size, stock, seed. Add it to a picture with Blend Mode.

  • Ports: rgb in, rgb out.
  • Size, Pattern, Color grain, Seed.

Vignette (heeler.vignette)

An elliptical falloff from the centre: a look, not the lens fix.

  • Ports: rgb in, mask in, rgb out.
  • Amount (negative darkens), Midpoint, Softness.

Inpaint (heeler.inpaint)

The model fills the hole a mask describes, computed locally on demand.

  • Ports: rgb in, mask in (the hole), rgb out.
  • Hole from the wire or from the layer; the fill and model ids are managed by the app.

The Remove tool builds one; wire any mask as the hole to use it by hand.

Fog (heeler.fog)

Atmosphere by distance, from the depth model. Adjustments' Fog section.

  • Ports: rgb in, mask in, rgb out.
  • Density, Start, Falloff, fog Level, Hue and Saturation, Desaturate the far scene, and a Texture with size and shift.

Needs the depth model; on a machine that has not computed depth it is an identity.

Depth Lighting (heeler.key_light)

Synthetic lights, suns and lamps, over the scene's depth.

  • Ports: rgb in, mask in, rgb out.
  • Strength, Azimuth, Elevation, Ambient, Relief, Invert the depth, and a list of Lights.

The rig has its own gizmo in the viewport.

Depth of Field (heeler.dof)

Focus falls off with distance from a chosen plane.

  • Ports: rgb in, mask in, rgb out.
  • Aperture, Focus distance, Blades and Blade curve for the bokeh shape, Fringe, Field curve, Glow, and the disc's character: Bubble, Squeeze, Swirl.

It is optics, so it sits with the depth tools before the profile; a blur after grading would smear the grain.

Lens Flare (heeler.flare)

The lens's flare for the Depth Lighting rig's flaring lights: source glow, diffraction rays, aperture ghosts down the axis through the frame's centre, the anamorphic streak with its color ribbon, and the veil. Added in scene-linear light after Depth of Field.

  • Ports: rgb in, mask in, rgb out.
  • Intensity, Temp, the Source, Rays, Ghosts, Anamorphic and Veil groups, Occlusion amount and softness, and the mirrored Lights rig with each light's flare switch and strength.

Occlusion reads the depth plane two ways: the share of the source hidden by nearer scene dims the whole flare, and the core, rays and streak are cut per pixel where the scene is nearer than the light. Ghosts and veil form inside the lens and are not cut.

Halation (heeler.halation)

Highlights bleed a colored mist into their dark surroundings, the film's own glow.

  • Ports: rgb in, mask in, rgb out.
  • Threshold, Background gain, By depth; Radius, Diffusion and the film Format; Hue, Saturation, Blue compensation; Amount and Mix; a secondary Bloom with its radius.

Scene-linear, after the flare and before the profile. Its isolated-regions view renders the gated source instead of the frame.

Layer effects

Each is a function of a layer's alpha, so they work on any node that carries transparency, not only in Finish.

  • Shadow (heeler.fx_shadow): drop or inner shadow cast from the layer's own shape.
  • Glow (heeler.fx_glow): outer or inner glow, with no offset to fall by.
  • Color Overlay (heeler.fx_color_overlay): a flat color kept inside the layer's alpha, with opacity.
  • Gradient Overlay (heeler.fx_gradient_overlay): a gradient kept inside the layer's alpha: two colors, angle, shape, midpoint, or a list of stops.
  • Bevel / Emboss (heeler.fx_bevel): light the layer as though its alpha were a hill: size, depth, angle, opacity, highlight and shadow colors.