The plugin was born from my personal need. I wanted to tone down some presets that I had created, but adjusting 100+ sliders was really complicated, even though I am fairly proficient with Lightroom. The Fader hides all the complexity of different sliders under single, easily understable slider interface.

Over the years, it has gained a lot of more features. The current version also adjusts strength of gradient filters, radial filters and smoothly blends between different RGB Tone Curves!

So, let’s celebrate the anniversary with some special announcements!

Firstly, there is a new release available with version number 1.0. After 160 releases, I guess it is time to call it a complete piece of work. And don’t worry, I’m not stopping development!

Secondly, the new release finally has a fix for Lightroom GPU issue, where the large photo view would not update when tone curves were applied. It is a bug in Lightroom, but I have managed to workaround it.

Thirdly, the registration to full version is now only $4.99 until end of October! (-50% off from regular price of $10.00). You can register the plugin after installing in LR Plugin Manager, the Paypal transaction ID in your receipt is the registration code). The registration is valid for life, for all upcoming updates.

Download

Get The Fader

This release contains new preference for defaulting to “zeroed” preset, this allows you to
rapidly fade out too excessive presets. It is also shown first time for new users until the
first preset is selected. I hope this helps you if you are starting with The Fader.

Additionally, there is now support for LR6.1 features, such as fading crop settings and dehaze slider value.

Download

Download thefader_r1122.zip

NOTE: Lightroom 6.x has issues when GPU rendering is enabled. If preset contains tone curves, the develop photo view does not update properly (smaller navigator windows does update). The work around is to click slider second time.

Changes in version 0.8.1122

• On first run, autoselects Zeroed preset (plus preferences option)
• LR6: Added support for Dehaze slider (new in LR 2015.1 release)
• LR6: Added ability to fade Crop settings

Luckily, LR6 also seems to support new API features, but these are currently not documented. I took the time to figure out some of the new API and using this new API fixed the LR6 GPU issue and additionally it is slightly faster.

Download

Download thefader_r1071.zip

NOTE: Lightroom 6.x has issues with GPU rendering enabled. If preset contains tone curves, the develop photo view does not update properly (smaller navigator windows does update). The work around is to click slider second time.

Changes in version 0.8.1071

• Workaround for LR6 API issues with multiple settings not updating in loupe correctly
• Workaround for LR6 API issues with different process versions
• Using new API provided by Lightroom 6

Download

Download thefader_r1028.zip

Changes in version 0.8.1028

• Ability to override local adjustments from photo to allow layering gradients
• Bugfixes for fading gradients and radial filters
• Added more fields (e.g. defringe) to Lens Corrections enable toggle

There are also some other minor improvements, e.g. the sections which do not affect current photo are dimmed (in registered version only).

Download

Download thefader_r985.zip

Changes in version 0.8.985

• Fixed fading Tone Curves with linear knees
• Disable section checkboxes with same settings as current
• Enabled fading in preset gradients even if photo has no gradients
• Improved Process Version handing by always using preset process version
  when Camera Calibration is enabled

Additionally, the preset cache is back by user request. I tried several workarounds in order to get Lightroom to load presets faster, but none of them really worked. Now the plugin simply tells you to restart when it detects a missing preset.

There are also some tiny changes here and there, most visible is perhaps the warning sign for incompatible process versions. Earlier this warning sign was displayed only if you were e.g. trying to fade between photo with Process Version 2003 and preset with Process Versions 2012. Now it also displays when trying to fade color image into B&W treatment. For reasons beyond my comprehension, the color sliders in them produce different results, so it is not possible to fade between HSL and B&W mixer sliders. Of course, it is only a warning which you can freely ignore it, if you are interested in some other section values, such as Split Toning.

Download

Download thefader_r918.zip

Changes in version 0.7.918

• Fixed fading Black & White mix sliders (oops!)
• Preset caching is back, with preference to disable it and cache flush
  when preset is not found.
• Added process version warning when fading between color and B&W treatment
• Added menu keyboard shortcut for Windows (practically useless, but it is there)
• Workaround for disappearing ampersand characters in pulldown menus

Starting with section checkboxes, they now indicate which sections of the preset are being faded. If the section checkbox is disabled, there is no settings for that sections in the chosen preset. It is quite helpful if you have partial presets (e.g. separate split toning preset, or just curves or…)

Fading of gradual filters is now supported, but as this is a bit of advanced feature – you need to know how the presets actually work. If there is no gradual filters in the preset, The Fader will keep the current values. So, to fade out current gradual filters, you just fade in “Reset Graduated Filters” preset, which I’ve written for this purpose.

Anyway, fading gradual filters also enables special tricks with Clarity, you can add multiple 100% clarity layers to create what I call “SuperClarity“, clarity effect that exceeds the 100% range of normal clarity slider. See photo below for example on this.

Download

Download thefader_r899.zip

Changes in version 0.7.899

• Added fading of graduated and radial filters
• Fixed accessing snapshots via virtual copy
• Disable section checkboxes when chosen preset does not affect that section
• Disabled preset caching, it caused updated presets no to do anything when
  fading

Firstly, there is now a proper interpolation algorithm for split toning hues. Earlier, it was just linear, now we are using it as an angular value. This means that if you have a split toning hue set to yellow and you are fading towards magenta, the slider value will wrap around 0 (slider left) to 360 (slider right).

Second improvement is the case when split toning hue is not set (hue 0, saturation 0) in the current settings, but you want to fade in a certain split toning effect. In this case, the hue value is now copied from the photo values, which allows smoothly fading in just the correct hue value. One case where this happens is fading of Lightroom’s built-in Zeroed preset.

Also, this release includes a spline computation fix where the result of a tone curve faded 100% to other curve would not always be exactly the same as you would expect.

And finally, I’ve added a registration reminder and removed the restriction of not being able to test fading of all presets in the unregistered version, now all preset folders are unlocked.

Download

Download thefader_r890.zip

Changes in version 0.6.890

• New algorithm for split hue calculation
• Fixed fading tone curves when fading smooth curve against linear curve
  would result in non-linear curve
• Unregistered version now allows fading of all presets, but it has delay/nagscreen

Additionally, the confusing lock icon has been moved and the registration dialog has indication what to type there, something that I should have improved long time ago.

Download

Download thefader_r796.zip

Changes in version 0.5.796

• Reordering fader dialog, lock icon is now next to sections
• Added placeholder value (“Paypal transaction ID”) for registration to indicate where
  the registration code should come from
• Workaround attempt for progress dialog sticking on screen

New version brings long-awaited ability to toggle individual slider modules on/off from fading, this allows e.g. keeping your lens corrections or split toning when fading.



Also, there’s some additional fixes to fading disabled sections (if you disable develop section from LR UI and then fade).

Download

Download thefader_r768.zip

Changes in version 0.5.768

• Ability to disable fading of individual sections (registered version only)
• Fixed disabled section interpolation which was using non-defaults if
  current photo had disabled sections
• Registered version no longer shows lock icon (it was too confusing)
• Added retina icons for future support