The thread drifted a little bit only for sharpening. I tried a long time several methods, for example the so named "Marc Adamus" version. The resizing and sharpening technique is similar to others here.
Since some months I use only for web images a little piece of software which I found recently - "absolute sharpening". It is a script based on layer techniques.
Furthermore it is important what your host and the software there will do with your images. I´m a moderator of www.mflenses.com and show there a lot of images with different cams and lenses too.
The embedded image within a thread there looks different than the enlarged version. It seems that it is a "problem" of the forum software with no room for improvement for the user.
Most of my internet images are hosted at smugmug.com. Here you can choose the value of sharpening within a gallery, so you will get a sharpening add-on on a otherwise sharpened image - if you like !
What is the reason for the getting to the target resolution in multiple steps, with sharpening in between? Is there a guideline about what intervals we should resize one at a time (eg. decrease by 1000 pixels each step)?
I am curious why a simple 4000pixel wide image (minor sharpen at lightroom) resized to final resolution and then sharpened would be less good (I don't doubt it, just wondering).
I am supposing that there is no sharpening done at all at the RAW level, for example on lightroom?
shoenberg3 wrote:
I am curious why a simple 4000pixel wide image (minor sharpen at lightroom) resized to final resolution and then sharpened would be less good (I don't doubt it, just wondering).
I am supposing that there is no sharpening done at all at the RAW level, for example on lightroom?
You can try it for yourself. I did a simple comparison of a straight conversion to the final size (900px wide) and one with one intermediate step to 3000px wide, and one with four steps (original, 4000, 3000, 2000, 900). I saw almost no difference between the four-step and two-step reduction, but a clear difference between the two-step and one-step reduction. Now this was a special case of trying to sharpen an image with minimal aliasing and I didn't do sharpening between the reduction steps, but the one-step reduction had the worst aliasing ("jaggies" or stair steps).
About sharpening in Lightroom: you can use the default amount when exporting to Photoshop (Denoir said he does this).
philip_pj wrote:
Some good ideas, thanks to contributors.
The special sauce sharpening routines have been promoted for as long as digital has been around, to be joined later by High Pass and Smart Sharpen and so on - all have their enthusiastic proponents. There are some fine apps made by Nik and others as well. Probably all work well if used judiciously. I use PKS.
I use RCs for the job they must do (demosaicing) and little else - due to the variable quality of tools and hidden adjustments (and assumptions) they often make. I only do WB and overall tone levels in the RC.
Layers in PS do not damage the image, and retain full flexibility with much more control than many grafted on tools with fancy names, for example 'clarity', 'vibrance' etc. The marketing guys are in full swing! Maybe we will soon see 'beauty' as a tool name.
Separating luminosity from colour is vital to preserve colour relationships in editing. Rather than using LAB (the Margulis way) I use a set of luminosity masks within special RGB color spaces and variant profiles developed by Joseph Holmes (DCam3 for digital) which are great containers of typical image gamuts.
I use Blend Modes in PS (in empty curve layers) for contrast and tone control as they use actual pixel values to apply the edits: Screen, Multiply, Soft Light and Hard Light. Much more accurate than hand drawn curve adjustments, and you get the percentage slider for fine tuning. Using these with luminosity masks preserves color relationships and retains a realistic appearance. I work from global to local in all edits.
I fine-tune colours for images that do not respond to careful WB using Selective Colour, a very effective tool.
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Looks pretty advanced. May I ask where did you learn all this? Any good online sources, what books on the subject do you suggest? I assume you didn't just test every possible combination of tools yourself to find the current workflow?
Vibrancy = Color brightness (intensity)
Clarity = Definition (I think a kind of medium sized detail enhancement similar to local contrast sharpening. I think it's a similar algorithm to USM with a fairly large radius but with a non-linear falloff.)
Not really marketing terms like "Beauty" might be.
Bifurcator wrote:
Vibrancy = Color brightness (intensity)
That's not a very accurate description. Vibrance (not -cy) only adjusts the least saturated colors. It doesn't increase saturation globally because there is a separate slider called "saturation" (surprise) for that.
Color Brightness is different than Saturation. Saturation is the intensity of a color expressed as the degree to which it differs from white. Brightness as in the HSV (hue, saturation, value), also known as HSB (hue, saturation, brightness) is as you noticed, not the same thing.
Although Adobe themselves slightly misuses the term (and perhaps the tool too) - here is what they say:
"Vibrance adjusts the saturation so that clipping is minimized as colors approach full saturation. This adjustment increases the saturation of less-saturated colors more than the colors that are already saturated. Vibrance also prevents skintones from becoming over saturated.
The Vibrance slider solves some of the problems that you’ll encounter when trying to boost color saturation because it is more particular about what it adjusts. With vibrance only the least saturated colors in the image are adjusted and those pixels which are already relatively saturated are adjusted less. The result is that you’ll get a general improvement in the saturation in colors in the image but not to the extent where colors become unrealistically bright. Vibrance also offers some protection for skin tones which makes it a good choice for adding saturation to portraits as it is less likely to over saturate and destroy the subject’s skin tones. In many instances you can safely bypass the Saturation slider and adjust Vibrance instead."
Anyway the point was that it's a perfectly acceptable term with a scientific definition and not a marketing buzz word.
Here's what they say about clarity:
"The Clarity slider affects the contrast in the midtones in the image. It works by increasing some of the edge detail in the midtones giving a general sharpening which adds punch to your photo.
Clarity Adds depth to an image by increasing local contrast, with greatest effect on the midtones. This setting is like a large-radius unsharp mask."
Does anyone have any good B&W conversion tutorials. I would prefer either Lightroom or Aperture conversion methods, but Photoshop is fine as well. Or if there is any absolutely amazing software, I know Nik gets a bit of use.
And it looks like Luka and Samuli both lean towards Aperture over Lightroom, but what reasons for choosing one over the other. I am used to Lightroom, but I am willing to switch and am trying Aperture right now.
ewadler wrote:
Does anyone have any good B&W conversion tutorials. I would prefer either Lightroom or Aperture conversion methods, but Photoshop is fine as well. Or if there is any absolutely amazing software, I know Nik gets a bit of use.
And it looks like Luka and Samuli both lean towards Aperture over Lightroom, but what reasons for choosing one over the other. I am used to Lightroom, but I am willing to switch and am trying Aperture right now.
I use Lightroom.
I also make my B&W conversions in Lightroom but without any particular method to it. I pull on the color sliders until I get something I like. I've learned that orange lets you control skin tones/detail and blue the tone of the sky, but that's about it
I also make my B&W conversions in Lightroom but without any particular method to it. I pull on the color sliders until I get something I like. I've learned that orange lets you control skin tones/detail and blue the tone of the sky, but that's about it
A fast response!!
Luka, thanks. I will continue to play with the sliders, then. I think I just don't have an eye for it. I have trouble envisioning the way the final image should look. It was so much easier back in the stone ages when I shot with B&W film and the conversion was done. I just had to think about what film and what paper to use.
There are two problems with it - one is the overexposed sky and the second one is that it is blurry due to camera shake. Both issues make it a good candidate for a B&W conversion as I did not want to discard it.
Step3: I want to deal with the overexposed part. I add a digital ND grad filter with a bit below one stop darkening and clarity maxed. The clarity slider is used here to add stronger edges to the lamp and to the top most windows.
Step 4: The image is still a bit to bright and I want to increase the contrast but without further blowing the highlights. So I pull the "Darks" slider to -20:
Step 5: BW adjustements. I like strong contrasts in B&W photos so I'm going to leave the path bright and try to darken the walls. The red slider will help there but I play around with everything:
You click on that little circle to activate the tool and then you place the cursor on some part of the image, press the left mouse button and drag upwards to make it brighter and downwards to make it darker.
I did this now on the left wall. Since the right wall is a similar color it will be affected as well. Again, into Photoshop and resize & sharpen:
I think I prefer the first version as in the second the guy putting on his shoe almost gets lost in the darkness of the wall, but you see how you can experiment with the conversion. My principle is that I try to find some form of balance in the composition with the contrasts - trying when possible to use it to enhance the geometry of the image. This is of course not always possible but then again not all images are suitable for B&W conversion.
Silver Effex is an amazing plugin for Black and White conversions. Generally Photoshops built in B&W converter is enough but I really like the three preliminary sliders in Silver Effex (Brightness, Contrast and Structure). They really help to tweak the impact of the B&W conversion (especially the structure slider which seems to effect the edge definition of shadows). Then there's other options like adding vignetting, adding grain and toning.
Here's a before and after with a typically processed image (for me, which is some sharpening, an s-curve applied and white balance tweak) and after with Silver Effex applied (which involved a 20% Structure increase, slightly lowing the Contrast by -5% and the brightness was raised by 5%. I also applied some light grain with the soft/hard slider set to hard and lastly I applied a light blue tone)
Fantastic thread Great contribution guys!
For B&W Nik Silver Effex Pro is widely used, and is accepted as an excellent choice for B&W conversions. Only problem is that the plugin still only supports CS5 32 bit for now, but in November this year, 64 bit is due out. Another excellent program now is Alien Skin Exposure, which is very intuitive and is great for B&W conversions, and importantly it plugins into LR/CS5 64 bit with windows 7.
Another contrast/sharpening improving technique in PS, is using the unsharp mask, is setting the amount to 20 or less, radius to 80 to 70, counter-intuitive as it may be, but works very well. This tip is from one of the guru's of PS.
