ADP panel+Pro v2 by Aaron Dowling
This is a very intuitive and easy to use panel. The look is very clean and it is divided in three different tabs. The first one is for creating and tweaking the muminosity masks. You can restrict or expand the masks and create selections you can then apply with a brush, instantly create curves layers and even create masks based on color range. The second tab is for adjusting precisely your selections and the third tab is to control some of the most used Photoshop functionalities.
I was pleasantly surprised by this panel, and I can highly recommend to users of all skill levels. The panel is not quite as powerful as the TK Panel, but it will make it for most of us photographers. Aaron is constantly making new excellent training material you can find on his website not only for Luminosity masking but also on how to use his panel as a basic work flow tool..
I have read on another website a great tip to make the panel work much fasteby, keeping the properties window closed. As the panel runs through a bunch of adjustment layers during mask creation, it has to refresh the properties window each time which slows it down massively.
The extension is built with 3 different panels. The first one id dedicated to the luminosity masks creation. Once you have selected wich tones or color you want to select, you get a preview of the masks and it creates three adjustment layers. A curves layer, a levels layer, and a black & white conversion layer you can adjust anyway you want.. It also provides one click actions to create all the adjustment layers, and in the last part another set of available selection tools.
The Auto Adjust panel is a very interesting one as you can work directly on Darks, Highlights ot contrast of the image by using sliders. It is a very easy and intuitive way to visualize what you are doing on the image. It is great when you begin as it it way more intuitive than using the luminosity masks that can be a little intimidating when you start..
Note that each panel provides some direct help and description of each function.
The thirs panel is for the finishing touch of your image. You have a fantastic detail extractor with a tonal range selection. Next you have some cool effects such as Soft Glow, the Orton effect and the Frequency separation very useful for both portraits and landscapes photographers.. And finally the resizing and sharpening tools, perfect for exporting to social medias.
This is the final image after
1. Basic processing in Lightroom to get a neutral balanced image.
2. Applying a luminosity mask to get a right midtones selection and getting a curves layer to build up the contrast.
3. Adding one more Camera Raw layer to further enhance the contrast.
This is a very fast and easy process made even easier by creating selections using the ADP Panel from Aaron Dowling..
You can get the Panel by visiting Aaron’s website
Here is the image after the basic processing in Lightroom. I like to start with a neutral image that allows building up the light.
As the sky was very flat, I used a replacement sky. To place this new sky, I created a selection of the white sky, created a mak and placed the new one. I made a mistake as themask did not cover the bottom right part and I had to fix this by painting some white on the mask to reveal the missing part of the sky.
Then I clicked on “Create mask as curves” on the panel.
The next step was to draw a S curve to get the correct luminance for the shadows and highlights.
Final thoughts
Probably one of the best panels around.. I would say it comes on top alongside Greg Benz’s Lumenzia for both performance and price considering that once you bought it, you get unlimited free updates. I need to mention that Aaron Dowling provides an excellent support if you need. He also provides quite a lot of tutorials.
He is already announcing the version 3 of this panel and it will provide a lot of improvments both in speed and functionality. For sure a 5 stars product.
