Add Exposure and Gamma controls to the Image Editor
Most render viewers and compositors have controls for adjusting exposure and gamma while viewing a given output. It would be very handy to have these same controls in Blender's Image Editor. Something similar to the Arnold Render View or Nuke's Viewer window would be fantastic (basically, a slider centered on zero that can go left-negative or right-positive for exposure and gamma, each). Maybe these could live in the editor's numeric View tab.
3 Comments
If I recall correctly, earlier version of Blender in the 2.5 or 2.6 series had this, but it was removed in favor of doing that all in the compositor so there wouldn't be two controls in different places (and potentially multiplying gamma adjustments because of it).
* @Jason van Gumster * Thanks for the reply. The fact that this concern isn't an issue in applications like NUKE or MAYA might mean it's time rethink why this feature was removed. Not everyone uses the Blender compositor, and I certainly miss this feature when checking final Cycles/Eevee frames in Blender's Image Editor.
* @Stephen Bailey * I wouldn't assume that it's not an issue in other applications. Many users didn't think it was an issue in Blender, either. But at this point, neither Nuke nor Maya do as much as Blender does. Maya comes close, but Blender has more that it can do out of the box... and when developers have to support all these various editors in a single application, it's often helpful to simplify the process and use the features and tools that are already in hand. It keeps code cleaner and reduces the chances of bugs.
That said, I could easily see writing an add-on that may support what you're looking for. In short, maybe there's a button in the Image Editor that says something to the effect of "Color Adjustment"... and when you click it, it automatically generates a Compositor node tree with exposure and gamma adjustments on it. You can still control those nodes' values from the Image Editor, so you never have to see the Compositor if you don't want to... but it's still using the tools at hand to achieve what you're looking for.