What I did was reduce the image size in PS to 17"x23" WITHOUT resampling down so the image was now 338.3 ppi. I printed it and it somehow does not seem to have the same "punch" as the larger print. Should I maybe have downsized to 240 ppi in PS by down sampling using the selection which says "best for reductions"?
...probably, the world's greatest authority on the matter.
His conclusion, briefly, is that most software has got it totally wrong (or worse).
... probably, the world's greatest authority on the matter.
Guy has a point though. Why doesn't Photoshop have a wang bar that applies different degrees of sharpening to shadow and highlight pixels?
No, I think that would be Bruce Fraser. Even in absentia.And of course our very own Jeff Schewe, and personally I doubt theres many know more about the subject of sharpening than Jeff.
Are the fuzzy before images on the left in Guy's demo the product of Camera Raw's default sharpening?
And of course our very own Jeff Schewe, and personally I doubt theres many know more about the subject of sharpening than Jeff.
If you are interested in sharpening, take a look at this lesson by, probably, the world's greatest authority on the matter.
His conclusion, briefly, is that most software has got it totally wrong (or worse).
But it's not just sharpening that the guy can help us with.
He also explains how most Raw converters have got it seriously wrong:
I read somewhere that Deconvolution sharpening (Focus Magic, Topaz InFocus) is best for "resolution" sharpness when used for capture or output sharpening, and Unsharp Mask sharpening (Photokit Sharpener, Nik Sharpener Pro) is best for "acutance" sharpness when used for creative sharpening. What say you?
But it's not just sharpening that the guy can help us with. He also explains how most Raw converters have got it seriously wrong:
Process Version 2012 doesn't actually apply any "recovery" by default–recovery only kicks in with minus Exposure, Highlights and Whites adjustments and recovery is much improved. What PV 2012 does do is an image adaptive auto-ranging that keeps near clipping from clipping. If all three channels clip, it indicates total sensor saturation and there's nothing one can do to "recover" from that. What PV 2012 does is more a tone mapping function and not a recovery operation. Yes it has an impact on the tone mapping of highlights (and shadows BTW) and yes, PV 2012 is much less likely to clip highlight data–which is actually a good thing, not a bad thing. How you handle the mapping is up to you. Not only do you have the Basic panel for tone mapping but you have the point curve editor which give very fine control over the highlights–if you know how to use it.
He also explains how most Raw converters have got it seriously wrong:
Oooops...I never watched Guy till the bitter end till this time. I caught him in a big fat lie.
He claims Adobe didn't develop Lightroom from the ground up, he claims Adobe bought Lightroom and only to compete against Aperture after Aperture came out. Nope, sorry Guy, that is a lie plain and simple. I've been involved in the development of Lightroom from the very, very beginning and I can assure you Adobe developed it from the ground up and developed in in the same time frame that Apple developed Aperture and that Adobe didn't "copy" anything about Aperture...you can read the real Lightroom development here (http://photoshopnews.com/2006/01/09/the-shadowlandlightroom-development-story/).
So, whatever credibility Guy may have had just went out the window...liar, liar, pants on fire :~)
If you are interested in sharpening, take a look at this lesson by, probably, the world's greatest authority on the matter. His conclusion, briefly, is that most software has got it totally wrong (or worse).
http://guygowan.com/focus/
Regardless of his expertise or lack of it, what I find most fascinating about Guy is that the format of his spiel is similar to that of any number of self-proclaimed authorities in alternate archaeology, physics, psychology and spiritualism -- the pop gurus of Atlantis, cold fusion, New Age healing and paranormal investigations. The four giveaways are the glib use (often misuse) of technical terminology to create an air of authenticity, the bashing of establishment thought to project a character of truth-seeking and altruism (often with an implication of selfless martyrdom), the lack of established credentials and/or presence of questionable credentials, and always the push to self-publicize.
It's called salesmanship.
My customer/friend was telling me a few days that Guy had recommended never using the 2013 version of ACR for that particular function because it isn't as accurate as 2010.
Accurate? That's an easy buzzword to throw out but it's kind of meaningless without a through description of what is meant with some metric of inaccuracy (like the differences between a reference value and the output values is a dE of 1.3). So when someone says this is more or less accurate, without backing up the methodology used to come up with the conclusions, the hair's on the back of your neck, like mine should raise!
Accurate? That's an easy buzzword to throw out but it's kind of meaningless without a through description of what is meant with some metric of inaccuracy (like the differences between a reference value and the output values is a dE of 1.3). So when someone says this is more or less accurate, without backing up the methodology used to come up with the conclusions, the hair's on the back of your neck, like mine should raise!
He has on screen a wedding shot wherein the brides white dress is of course lacking a lot of detail in order to maintain shadow detail throughout the rest of the image. He then shows that although all of his clipping parameters are turned on there is no indication of any clipping in the highlights. At that point he reverts back to v2010 in the "Process" tab and it shows a rather large amount of highlight clipping, which he proceeds to overcome with the "Exposure" slider. It does seem rather evident that v2010 is for some reason indicating clipping where v2013 is not.
Thanks for that Andrew. I assume you haven't seen the video I was referring to from the "Guy". He has on screen a wedding shot wherein the brides white dress is of course lacking a lot of detail in order to maintain shadow detail throughout the rest of the image. He then shows that although all of his clipping parameters are turned on there is no indication of any clipping in the highlights. At that point he reverts back to v2010 in the "Process" tab and it shows a rather large amount of highlight clipping, which he proceeds to overcome with the "Exposure" slider. It does seem rather evident that v2010 is for some reason indicating clipping where v2013 is not. I'm not at all sure why that would be the case, so if you could provide an answer to that it would be much appreciated. For me it's not so much a matter of metrics as perhaps a possible indication that v2013 is not indicating highlight clipping with the same degree of "accuracy" as was the case with v2010. I'm not sure I am making any sense here at all, even though it somehow seems reasonable to me that v2013 may not be telling the whole truth as far as clipping is concerned. Any further light you can shed on this would certainly be helpful.
Thanks again,
Gary
Neither can be said to be accurate or inaccurate IMHO. The correct statement would be "they are different". If you have a bias, you can attempt to prejudice others by suggesting one isn't accurate but again, that's not useful. There isn't clipping in the truest sense if the rendering controls bring back the data unclipped!
At that point he reverts back to v2010 in the "Process" tab and it shows a rather large amount of highlight clipping, which he proceeds to overcome with the "Exposure" slider. It does seem rather evident that v2010 is for some reason indicating clipping where v2013 is not. I'm not at all sure why that would be the case, so if you could provide an answer to that it would be much appreciated. For me it's not so much a matter of metrics as perhaps a possible indication that v2013 is not indicating highlight clipping with the same degree of "accuracy" as was the case with v2010.
The raw data is either clipped or not.
Note that in Camera Raw, the clipping calculations are done in 8 bit based on the output color space set in Workflow Options. Also note there are 3 potential clipping indicators; holding down the option/alt keys when adjusting certain sliders, the on screen red for highlights and blue for shadows and the flashing triangle indicators on the histogram. Of the three perhaps the most accurate are the option/alt when moving a slider and the red/blue on screen indicator.
So, evaluating the differences between PV 2010 and 2012 in terms of clipping indicators being in 8 bit, it wouldn't surprise me that PV 2012 can (and does) get at more highlight texture detail that is not really clipped while PV 2010 shows the data as clipped.
When talking about "recovery", I think a lot of people get confused between recovery vs compression. PV 2012 does a lot of extreme highlight compression to mitigate clipping. Some people don't like that and you can work around that by using curves. When I think of recovery I think of the old Recovery algorithm in PV 2010. PV 2012 is NOT doing that sort of recovery...and PV 2012 doesn't suffer from the same color contamination that PV 2010 suffered from.
PV 2012 was originally designed for use in floating point HDR images...(see the Local Laplacian Filters article). It was adapted to work on non-HDR image in ACR/LR by the engineers and believe me, when I read the SIGGRAPH paper, my eyes rolled back in my head. I don't understand that stuff and never will.
But, I do know how to tell really smart people from not so smart people. I know Thomas and Eric pretty well and I've met Sylvain Paris (one of the authors of the paper) and they are really, really smart. I don't like the way Guy accuses Adobe of arrogance and denigrates the work of these guys...neither Thomas nor Eric are arrogant. OK, Mark Hamburg (the guy that started Lightroom and the second engineer to work on Photoshop) is a bit arrogant...but the engineers do this stuff to get the absolute best they can out of raw captures. They are not predisposed to back off on the raw processing and simply fix it in Photoshop.
So even though Guy comes down hard on most if not all modern sharpening tools and methods (high pass and ACR etc), he does put forward a few arguments that cannot be easily or at least entirely dismissed.
You can already apply global sharpening in ACR/LR and modulate the sharpening in the local controls...you can paint out sharpening or paint it in stronger locally. ...
The only point that Guy is somewhat right about is that the 5 sliders for sharpening (I count luminance noise reduction the 5th slider) isn't intuitive and needs to be learned. I've tried to teach people what the adjustments do and how to use them...
So, yes, it takes some time and effort to learn how to use ACR/LR sharpening. ...
I sometimes have trouble getting the creative sharpening I want to be what is printed. I set my view to 30%-50% which on my 100 dpi monitor should mimic 300-200 dpi printed output.
Although he does come down hard on his wang bars, I think it's not the Adobe tech that he is slamming, but the fact that they are so easy to misuse.
Just so you know, I would have absolutely ZERO interest in engaging in a sharpening competition...
You mean even with a man who Photography Monthly says:
Uh, you can't evaluate the final sharpening on a computer display. Even if you zoom out to 50-25%, you are looking at a higher rez image at 1/3 to 1.4 the resolution if your display is 100 ppi. All you can do is do the proper capture sharpening add creative sharpening and the final output sharpening should not break the image.
What's Photography Monthly? Sorry, never heard of it...maybe I do live under a rock...(although I tend not to read photo magazines that features dogs on the cover–silly me).
And you say you never heard of the man? Do you live under a rock? ;)
I must be under a rock too, never heard of the that guy Guy until this post. Or that magazine (although while I haven’t seen it, I like dogs on covers and on the bed <g>).
I've been 'involved' with imaging since Photoshop 1.0.7 shipped in 1990, how could I have missed Guy? I recall Kai from under that rock a long time ago.
Come on Dave, you aren't really drinking Guy's Kool-Aid are ya?
Output sharpening is usually also hard to exactly jugde on display, again, because the display resolution is too low, and because a light emitting output device has a different characteristic compared to reflective printed output, and viewing conditions can have quite a different effect on both. Of course when output is generated for screen display, e.g. Web Publishing, it becomes easier to judge the final result for a given display type (although there are a lot of different display qualities available for which one can optimize).
Again, experience plays a large role here in judging how the on screen adjustments will translate to the actual output medium. So while the on screen displayed image is not an accurate preview, one can learn how to translate that preview to how things will actually look, and experience takes time to develop.
Cheers,
Bart
Bart,
Somewhat tangential but, I think, relevant - the era where photos will mostly be exhibited on hi-res digital panels is not far off. While a paper print is held up (by some) as the gold standard today, once the price of large hi-res panels drops, the game will change.
I assume you haven't seen the video I was referring to from the "Guy".
Note that in Camera Raw, the clipping calculations are done in 8 bit based on the output color space set in Workflow Options. Also note there are 3 potential clipping indicators; holding down the option/alt keys when adjusting certain sliders, the on screen red for highlights and blue for shadows and the flashing triangle indicators on the histogram. Of the three perhaps the most accurate are the option/alt when moving a slider and the red/blue on screen indicator.
So, evaluating the differences between PV 2010 and 2012 in terms of clipping indicators being in 8 bit, it wouldn't surprise me that PV 2012 can (and does) get at more highlight texture detail that is not really clipped while PV 2010 shows the data as clipped.
When talking about "recovery", I think a lot of people get confused between recovery vs compression. PV 2012 does a lot of extreme highlight compression to mitigate clipping. Some people don't like that and you can work around that by using curves. When I think of recovery I think of the old Recovery algorithm in PV 2010. PV 2012 is NOT doing that sort of recovery...and PV 2012 doesn't suffer from the same color contamination that PV 2010 suffered from.
PV 2012 was originally designed for use in floating point HDR images...(see the Local Laplacian Filters article). It was adapted to work on non-HDR image in ACR/LR by the engineers and believe me, when I read the SIGGRAPH paper, my eyes rolled back in my head. I don't understand that stuff and never will.
But, I do know how to tell really smart people from not so smart people. I know Thomas and Eric pretty well and I've met Sylvain Paris (one of the authors of the paper) and they are really, really smart. I don't like the way Guy accuses Adobe of arrogance and denigrates the work of these guys...neither Thomas nor Eric are arrogant. OK, Mark Hamburg (the guy that started Lightroom and the second engineer to work on Photoshop) is a bit arrogant...but the engineers do this stuff to get the absolute best they can out of raw captures. They are not predisposed to back off on the raw processing and simply fix it in Photoshop.
I'm a bit confused Bill.
RD shows clipping, I get that. But then PV2012 shows none so is this clipping 'eliminated' by rebuilding that channel from the other two (an old 'trick' that was done in the past but perhaps differently with the new process)?
That is my take on the findings: PV2012 has applied an adaptive correction of the highlight clipping. The maximal pixel value with PV2012 is 253 but the upper tones are compressed. With PV2010 the first two steps are clipped to 255 and the third shows a color shift as shown. The PV2010 rendering is on the top.
OK so it's rebuilding data in some respect and if so, it's accurate (the net results are, no clipping).
On the other hand, it's not accurate in terms of the actual data prior to rebuilding depending on how you want to look at it. IOW, PV2013 shows no clipping because it's going to produce no clipping. Sound about right?
Does LR5 use PV2012 or PV2013? The current process is identified as PV2012 in the LR display.
In any event, the histogram shows the values in the rendered file, but does not indicate clipping in the raw file.
The histogram in ACR has always been the output refereed data, not the raw data. In Lightroom the histogram is Melissa RGB (ProPhoto RGB, sRGB tone curve–so pretty much output referred) or whatever RGB profile is set for soft proofing which is obviously output referred.
So, the question is, when RawDigger is showing that the raw data is clipped, what is PV 2012 doing with it to eliminate the clipping in the output referred data? Is it "recovery" as stated by Guy? Well, PV 2012 is NOT doing "recovery" the way recovery was done in PV 2010. I can guarantee that! So, exactly what is PV 2012 doing? I have a sneaky suspicion but I would defer to Eric Chan if he feels he can describe what's actually happening. When I describe PV 2012 as image adaptive and auto-ranging, that characterization was vetted by Eric. But understanding EXACTLY what is happening and what algorithms are being employed would require more imaging science than what I have. If you can read the Magic or Local Laplacian Filters? (http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2012/02/magic-or-local-laplacian-filters.html) and understand it, then I think you'll be closer to understanding what PV 2012 is actually doing. But PV2012 handling of tone mapping is NOT the same as PV2010's recovery...which is a very good thing in my book.
Jeff....who cares if it is the exact same recovery as PV2010. I think everyone knows that Eric changed the algorithms (for the better).
Whatever the math....IS THIS RECOVERY or not?
Consequently who care's what you call it? The clipping isn't there. The software doesn't show it's clipped and you don't get clipping. Seems accurate (accurate enough) to me.
Hi, Andrew...
The point I was making is that auto-recovery is being done, which we were told was not (even though anyone who tested would know it).
I agree that this recovery is great for most people....and in most cases....and protects them from "oh shucks" over exposure. However, it will result in probable changes to color and texture and the ability to do further exposure reduction. It doesn't take much testing to show how poorer the recovered areas are vs the same area in a properly exposed (non-recovered) image.
The remapping of highlights that are blown in the raw file is definitely improved with PV2012.
Thanks for using a better term–remapping–because that's what I think is happening. It's obviously not "recovery" related to PV 2010. That's clear...and Guy, when he did the demo with the girl and violin chose to prove his point using PV 2010, not PV 2012. The result would have been considerably different if he had compared PV 2012 to Aperture.
With regards to ACR/LR's histogram, I think the argument for providing a scene referred raw histogram is only useful for image analysis purposes, not actual raw image processing. The output referred histogram is what's important for raw image optimized processing. For analysis purposes, RawDigger provides a useful set of tools which I applaud. But I wonder how useful a redesigned ACR/LR histogram would actually help image processing. I rarely pay much attention to the histogram when adjusting raw images–there is no such thing as a perfect histogram. It's simply a tool to evaluate your image. What's really the most important aspect is what does the image look like and what do you need to do to adjust it?
As to what EXACTLY happens with PV 2012 and clipped highlights, I've pinged Eric to see if he has an interest in explaining...but I got an auto-reply that he's on the road for a while. So, if/when he answers, it'll be down the road. As I said, I really don't understand the math behind PV 2012 and will defer to Eric...
In any event, the histogram shows the values in the rendered file, but does not indicate clipping in the raw file. This could cause problems when one is judging ETTR exposures.
Thanks for using a better term–remapping–because that's what I think is happening. It's obviously not "recovery" related to PV 2010. That's clear...and Guy, when he did the demo with the girl and violin chose to prove his point using PV 2010, not PV 2012. The result would have been considerably different if he had compared PV 2012 to Aperture.One can use the term recovery in a specific or generic sense. If one uses the term recovery to indicate the algorithms used in PV2010, then the remapping that PV2012 does is different. George Jardine has some excellent examples with back lit scenes in his LR4 develop tutorial where he was able to get considerably better results with PV2012. Perhaps Guy could learn something from George's tutorial.
With regards to ACR/LR's histogram, I think the argument for providing a scene referred raw histogram is only useful for image analysis purposes, not actual raw image processing. The output referred histogram is what's important for raw image optimized processing. For analysis purposes, RawDigger provides a useful set of tools which I applaud. But I wonder how useful a redesigned ACR/LR histogram would actually help image processing.I agree that the histogram should show the distribution of levels in the rendered image when one is actually editing an image and am not suggesting that the behavior of the histogram should be changed, but it would be nice to have a switch in LR/ACR for use in image analysis such as is available in Rawdigger. This would avoid unnecessary trips to Rawdigger when one needs to have an indication of clipping in the raw file.
With regards to ACR/LR's histogram, I think the argument for providing a scene referred raw histogram is only useful for image analysis purposes, not actual raw image processing.
The raw histogram is important if you want to know where your camera clips, which is important if you want to optimize your exposures.
Which is why such a raw histogram needs to be on the cameras.
Besides the significantly more overall contrasty rendering by Lightroom, the huge difference in highlight detail is obvious. Also obvious is that both renderings are only basic conversions with lots of potential for tweaking, but this is the virtually straight out of the box rendering difference.
Hi Bill,
Although the thread's topic originally was more about sharpening before it turned into Guy bashing, you step-wedge images show the issues with tonecurve rendering in PV2012 nicely. The fact that highlights that are clipped in Raw do not show that in PV2012. In fact, it does an automatic highlight recovery and, IMHO more importantly, a default highlight compression. That latter fact is exactly what Guy Gowan was harping on about.
As we can see in the attached chart I made from your Stouffer stepwedge conversions, and compare the PV2010 and PV2012 with the original step-wedge data, it is clear that the default PV2012 conversion suffers from significant upper midtone and highlight compression. That would indeed be detrimental for bride's dress and white cloud image content. The PV2010 conversion is much closer to how the original data (the blue line in my chart) would look in a straight conversion.
Of course Guy Gowan doesn't mention that the Highlights and Whites controls in PV2012 can help to restore highlight tonality, because that doesn't suit his agenda, but he does have a point that one would need to work the highlights in PV2012 conversion much more than usual, and similarly the shadows in a PV2010 conversion (which is what he advocates).
All this demonstrates that there is a bit of truth in all positions that are defended and that PV2012 can create a good image, with recovered highlights, but one really needs to work the PV2012 files very differently. One should e.g. not apply an simple S-curve or Clarity to a regular PV2012 conversion to boost overall contrast, if you want to keep some life in the highlight rendering. Work the highlights if you want the images to sparkle, and apply a curve adjustment if necessary.
George Jardine also has a new tutorial "Image Correction Master Class".
Does a great job showing how to manage tone and contast corrections....highlights being one of the key areas.
Ironically, I prefer the Lightroom rendering (having recently shot a lot of waves and water on a vacation to Hawaii). Also, pulling the Whites slider down would allow you to tune the brightness of the whites considerably...
BTW, I really don't care about the "virtually straight out of the box rendering difference" comparisons of any raw converters...what I care about is the ability of a raw converter to optimize the image. When I use LR or C1, I tend to touch all the controls that are needed to get the image the way I want it so "out of the box" is pretty meaningless for me.
When you re-read the great article by Charles Cramer (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/techniques/tonal_adjustments_in_the_age_of_lightroom_4.shtml)
[...]
Have been following Guy's techniques since 2006 (Sheesh, only realised it's almost a decade) when I first met Guy in Dublin. First bought his DVD's and then became a member of the first site.
When I first met Guy I was having an awful time trying to get to grips with Post Production and learning how to operate in PhotoShop (V7 back then). It was the first software package I had ever come across that I could not figure out how to work it myself. There seemed to be many people out there who would tell you how I should do things but many were people with about as much idea as myself but with bigger ego's. Then there were the "guru's" who would give you a bit of a demo but if you wanted more you had let the moths out of the wallet.
Wandering into one of Guy's seminars for me was so refreshing. This was the first person I had seen who was not repeating parrot fashion what everyone else was saying. He was teaching from a solid base of knowledge and using (gasp) LOGIC. None of the "This technique will work really well on the sample image, and will work for you if the third moon is rising in the house of Sagittarius" BS. I remember one thing very clearly, it was when someone asked about images being 300dpi. Nobody in the room knew why 300dpi became the gold standard (except Guy) and he then explained the reason and showed why it was bollocks.
The thing that impressed me most was that Guy would show his whole technique on a subject even in a free seminar. There was no high pressure sales talk. He did come across as quite opinionated, but with good reason. When I would have a chat with him he had time to listen and offer help, even though he was as bust as a Blue Arsed Fly, literally flying all over the place.
I happened to be at the birth of Webcasting too. That also happened in Dublin where Guy was booked to appear. However he was stuck in Amsterdam due to the Volcanic Ash. Rather than cancelling he arranged a Video Link and presented that way, with very big delays.
What has always impressed me with Guy is that even in free seminars he would show the full technique on a subject. There was no showing a bit then point to the DVD and saying the rest is in here. I sought out the DVD's to buy them and later became a member of the first site.
[...]
First off, my sincere apologies ...