Luminous Landscape Forum

Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Adobe Camera Raw Q&A => Topic started by: DougBG on February 14, 2009, 03:49:11 pm

Title: Position of 3rd party filters in Raw workflow?
Post by: DougBG on February 14, 2009, 03:49:11 pm
I have adopted the use of ACR to the maximum extent I'm capable of. I include noise reduction in the Detail panel, and capture sharpening to the preview only.  Immediately after conversion to 16 bit PS I apply Noise Ninja, and then Capture and Content sharpening in PG Photokit sharpener, before any edits in PS.  Any thoughts about other options?
Title: Position of 3rd party filters in Raw workflow?
Post by: Eyeball on February 14, 2009, 09:21:55 pm
Just out of curiosity, what do you feel the sharpening on preview-only gets you in ACR?
Title: Position of 3rd party filters in Raw workflow?
Post by: Ben Rubinstein on February 15, 2009, 03:15:06 am
I do the same, I prefer to sharpen in PS relative to the print size and after I apply PTLens (and certain other custom curves) to an image. As a wedding photographer I'm processing the RAW files but then batching the images out either as 7X5 proofs or orders, anything from 6X4 to 30X20". I want my RAW 'receipe' to always be the same and untouched. Resizing, distortion correction, sharpening, crop for non 3:2 print sizes etc is done in PS and is specific to the output. If I used ACR as a 'one stop' image processor and if you could type '7X5 300 DPI' into the image size box then I could apply sharpening in ACR. The idea of applying distortion correction and curves to an image already (finally) sharpened for print makes me shudder.

In answer to your question, I use sharpen in preview is to check focus and overall sharpness of an image, nothing else.
Title: Position of 3rd party filters in Raw workflow?
Post by: DougBG on February 15, 2009, 11:31:34 am
Quote from: Eyeball
Just out of curiosity, what do you feel the sharpening on preview-only gets you in ACR?
Sharpening in the Detail panel is intended for Capture sharpening only, and applying it to Preview Only allows you assess the effects of the other ACR global corrections in the context that pass of sharpening . I prefer the bullet proof automated routines of Pixel Genius so I delay the actual capture sharpening of the image till after PS conversion, but if you don't use a third party filter then the ACR sharpening for capture is excellent.
Title: Position of 3rd party filters in Raw workflow?
Post by: KeithR on February 15, 2009, 12:17:16 pm
I tend to do my capture sharpening in Lightroom(ACR uses same the sharpening) as it is the same as Pixel Genius's capature sharpening. This way I can evaluate the effect before I render it in PS. I haven't printed from LR(yet)as I tend to do other adjustments in PS, but the understanding is that it also is PG Sharpener but that it takes into account all of the parameters(output size, media, etc.) that you have to set if it was printed through PS.
Title: Position of 3rd party filters in Raw workflow?
Post by: digitaldog on February 15, 2009, 12:34:15 pm
Quote from: DougBG
I have adopted the use of ACR to the maximum extent I'm capable of. I include noise reduction in the Detail panel, and capture sharpening to the preview only.  Immediately after conversion to 16 bit PS I apply Noise Ninja, and then Capture and Content sharpening in PG Photokit sharpener, before any edits in PS.  Any thoughts about other options?

Other than the Preview Only option not doing anything useful as others pointed out, sounds fine. You can do capture and output sharpening in the Adobe product, but don't apply any (aside from Creative Sharpening) using PKS OR do the opposite but not both.
Title: Position of 3rd party filters in Raw workflow?
Post by: Ben Rubinstein on February 15, 2009, 12:54:53 pm
Quote from: digitaldog
Other than the Preview Only option not doing anything useful as others pointed out, sounds fine.

Capture Sharpening in ACR is only useful if you intend ACR as your only processing solution. As such the only reason not to have it set to 'preview only' is in this case. Far from the impression others have been giving. I cannot believe that people are suggesting that you do capture sharpening prior to distortion correction or noise removal. If you want a one stop solution then LR is better, ACR is a portal into PS and as such has different priorities.
Title: Position of 3rd party filters in Raw workflow?
Post by: digitaldog on February 15, 2009, 12:56:36 pm
Quote from: pom
Capture Sharpening in ACR is only useful if you intend ACR as your only processing solution. As such the only reason not to have it set to 'preview only' is in this case. Far from the impression others have been giving. I cannot believe that people are suggesting that you do capture sharpening prior to distortion correction or noise removal. If you want a one stop solution then LR is better, ACR is a portal into PS and as such has different priorities.

Good point, you absolutely want to do noise reduction first, then capture sharpening!
Title: Position of 3rd party filters in Raw workflow?
Post by: Schewe on February 15, 2009, 01:29:44 pm
Quote from: KeithR
I tend to do my capture sharpening in Lightroom(ACR uses same the sharpening) as it is the same as Pixel Genius's capature sharpening.


Actually, no...the Output Sharpening of Lightroom could be said to be the same as PKS Output Sharpening, but as it relates to "Capture Sharpening", neither Camera Raw nor Lightroom uses the "same" sharpening...it only uses the philosophy set forth by Bruce and PKS...actually, the ACR pipeline capture sharpening is further advanced in its capabilities and can do things you can't easily to in Photoshop (or PKS) because of the Detail slider. The only downside is that there really are no "presets" for source and content as there are with PKS so it forces the user to know how to use the adjustment parameters (something it seems very few people actually know how to do).
Title: Position of 3rd party filters in Raw workflow?
Post by: Ben Rubinstein on February 15, 2009, 02:31:18 pm
Quote from: Schewe
Actually, no...the Output Sharpening of Lightroom could be said to be the same as PKS Output Sharpening, but as it relates to "Capture Sharpening", neither Camera Raw nor Lightroom uses the "same" sharpening...it only uses the philosophy set forth by Bruce and PKS...actually, the ACR pipeline capture sharpening is further advanced in its capabilities and can do things you can't easily to in Photoshop (or PKS) because of the Detail slider. The only downside is that there really are no "presets" for source and content as there are with PKS so it forces the user to know how to use the adjustment parameters (something it seems very few people actually know how to do).

How about a 'default' setting ala the camera colour profiles but also the ability to tweak?
Title: Position of 3rd party filters in Raw workflow?
Post by: madmanchan on February 18, 2009, 07:26:34 am
Ben, depends on what you mean by 'defaults' -- i.e., are these user-created or Adobe-created?

Default settings can be established by the user using per-camera defaults.

Sharpening presets can also be created by the user. You can have a portrait sharpening preset and a landscape sharpening preset, for instance. Or you can go more fine-grained than that, and organize similar to how PKS works (e.g., narrow edge, medium edge, wide edge, low res, mid-res, high-res, etc.).

The main difference is that Adobe does not currently provide a set of these defaults/presets for you in Camera Raw. There is one in Camera Raw, and two in Lightroom. The creation of a full suite of presets/defaults is left up to the user.

There is certainly already the ability to tweak to your heart's content, just by adjusting the sliders.