Help Please - Canon 20D NR and Sharpening

[JayS]

All,
   Despite the many improvements that were made in 1.2 with regard to NR and Import Sharpening, at the highest ISOs with a Canon 20D, I am still finding it not as  clean as when using RSP's Processing parameters to handle noise by ISO (a prior post I've made here).  I tend to find that I can't achieve that balance of noise suppression and then associated work on the Sharpening section.  I wind up with too much "blocking".  I've almost found it easier at times to set all NR and Sharpening to 0's and let PS3 handle things with Noise Ninja and USM.
   Has anyone had success is coming up with a baseline set of numbers for ISO 800 and 1600 in these two areas where you can add sharpening and detail but not get some of the mottled effect?  I've watched all the videos, gone through the lessons, etc..  I love the ability at the lower ISOs where NR is not as much of a factor..  There I have little to no issue with Sharpening.  Many thanks in advance.

Jay S.

[JayS]

All,
   Despite the many improvements that were made in 1.2 with regard to NR and Import Sharpening, at the highest ISOs with a Canon 20D, I am still finding it not as  clean as when using RSP's Processing parameters to handle noise by ISO (a prior post I've made here).  I tend to find that I can't achieve that balance of noise suppression and then associated work on the Sharpening section.  I wind up with too much "blocking".  I've almost found it easier at times to set all NR and Sharpening to 0's and let PS3 handle things with Noise Ninja and USM.
   Has anyone had success is coming up with a baseline set of numbers for ISO 800 and 1600 in these two areas where you can add sharpening and detail but not get some of the mottled effect?  I've watched all the videos, gone through the lessons, etc..  I love the ability at the lower ISOs where NR is not as much of a factor..  There I have little to no issue with Sharpening.  Many thanks in advance.

Jay S.
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Anyone?  Has no one done ISO 1600 images with LR 1.1 or 1.2 that can share their NR and sharpening parameters?

Jay S.

[Misirlou]

I wouldn't even try it. There's just too much noise in 20D ISO 1600 images for a simple tool to handle. I use Neat Image in Photoshop for anything over 400.

I'd love to see a Neat Image plug-in for Lightroom some day, and I'm sure others would prefer Noise Ninja or somethin else. The noise tool in Lightroom isn't quite that sophisticated, yet.

[JayS]

I wouldn't even try it. There's just too much noise in 20D ISO 1600 images for a simple tool to handle. I use Neat Image in Photoshop for anything over 400.

I'd love to see a Neat Image plug-in for Lightroom some day, and I'm sure others would prefer Noise Ninja or somethin else. The noise tool in Lightroom isn't quite that sophisticated, yet.
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Misirlou,
     While I'm not disagreeing with the decision, I'm not sure Adobe would agree that was the design point.  Clearly folks using LR are doing so for the RAW processing, something not many P&S shooters would do (assuming the even have RAW).  That said, there had to be an expectation that folks would be shooting at 800, 1600, and perhaps even 3200.  It isn't only the NR.  You can mess up a fairly good image with just the sharpening tools, creating that same "Watercolor" effect.  I agree, plugins would be nice, but there again, most are dealing with JPG, TIFF,  not RAW.  Thanks for responding.  Shows up over on the Adobe forum as well..

Jay S.

[Misirlou]

Misirlou,
     While I'm not disagreeing with the decision, I'm not sure Adobe would agree that was the design point.  Clearly folks using LR are doing so for the RAW processing, something not many P&S shooters would do (assuming the even have RAW).  That said, there had to be an expectation that folks would be shooting at 800, 1600, and perhaps even 3200.  It isn't only the NR.  You can mess up a fairly good image with just the sharpening tools, creating that same "Watercolor" effect.  I agree, plugins would be nice, but there again, most are dealing with JPG, TIFF,  not RAW.  Thanks for responding.  Shows up over on the Adobe forum as well..

Jay S.
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Yeah, there are a lot of things I do to my images that aren't available in LR, obviously. I really like the whole idea of non-destructive editing though. I suppose making the LR sharpening and noise tools more robust would only be possible up to a point. Eventually, the instructions for really sophisticated processing might become too complex to do without changing pixels. I agree that many shooters are probably happy with the noise and sharpening tools in LR now, but I'm not at 3200 ISO in a 20D.

I'm hoping LR (or Photoshop) will eventually reach a point where we can process images completely without changing the original pixels. Then go back and swap out demosaicing routines, lens corrections, etc. as technology improves. Just keep tweaking the developing recipe forever. Kind of like the way we used to do with printing from film in the old days...

If you think about it, we've only scratched the surface of digital imaging possibilities. A few years ago, I wondered if it might be possible to design simpler lenses full of all sorts of optical faults that could be processed out automatically at a later time. Maybe designers could drastically reduce the number of elements, for example. That way, the lens could be smaller, lighter, and much cheaper to manufacture. The captured image would be terrible, but the right software could remove the known problems later. Maybe that's the direction Hasselblad is taking with the H3D.