clarity tool in LR

[Melodi]

What would you consider to be the photoshop mirror of the clarity slider in Light room?
Would you simply use the curves tool to create an S type curve in the midtone ranges or do you have other preferred methods for creating separation in the midtones?
Thanks for your feedback,
Melodi

[DarkPenguin]

The clarity slider in ACR would be the Photoshop mirror of the clarity slider in lightroom.

If that doesn't work for you try wide radius USM.  There is an article on this site called Local Contrast Enhancement (or similar) that you should look up.

[dalethorn]

There is an article on this site called Local Contrast Enhancement (or similar) that you should look up.

A big 10-4 on that one. I wish I had 100 quick-fix tools as good as that.

[JeffKohn]

I actually prefer the large-radius USM technique in Photoshop to ACR's Clarity slider for a couple of reasons:

1) With Clarity you only have control over the amount. With USM you have control over both the radius and the amount. I can go anywhere from 20 to 120 with the radius, depending on the image and the look I want.

2) With USM I can use a duplicate layer with mask to limit the effect. Sometimes I may only want to hit part of the image. Even when applying the effect globally, there will often be some high-contrast edges I need to mask out to avoid halos (think mountain sky-line).

[Melodi]

Thanks. I guess I'm somewhat confused because I read that the clarity tool is used to separate midtone values.  I also didn't know there was a clarity tool in Photoshop CS3.  The Unsharp mask applies to the full tonal range, but I guess, as noted, masks can be used to limit this.

[Melodi]

Just read the article. Thanks so much for all of the info. and feedback. Great article.

[JeffKohn]

Thanks. I guess I'm somewhat confused because I read that the clarity tool is used to separate midtone values.  I also didn't know there was a clarity tool in Photoshop CS3.  The Unsharp mask applies to the full tonal range, but I guess, as noted, masks can be used to limit this.

The clarity tool doesn't just affect mid-tones, although it may be weighted to affect them mode. If it only affected mid-tones it wouldn't produce halos on high-contrast edges.

You can limit the affect the the large-radius USM in Photoshop if you're working on an duplicate layer, by using the blend-if sliders. I do this to keep the USM adjustment from pusing nearly black areas to zero, and nearly-white areas from clipping.

[Melodi]

Thanks.  I will have to re-read George DeWolfe's book on B&W printing.  I'm flipping through to try to find the sections in which he mentions using the clarity slider, and it seems to consistently mention using it to separate midtones. examples: p. 123 "Clarity separates the midtone values using a different algorithm than Contrast."  p. 125 "....which is too light and needs contrast ...To accomplish this , I pulled back slightly on Brightness and maxed out the Clarity."  

Actually, I also just went back to review the Luminous Landscape printing tutorials as well because I remembered them going over the clarity tool there, too.  It seems that the clarity setting is a hybrid of the local area contrast work and something to do with tapering off and glending of deep shadows and highlights.  I need to look up some more on this.  In the tutorials they mention how it is used to give punch to mid-tones.  

I don't have LR, so this is part of the reason i'm looking into this....looking for "easy" methods of doing this in CS3 other than tweaking curves.  

So, without further review, it seems at this point, using USM is maybe part of the steps...

[madmanchan]

2) With USM I can use a duplicate layer with mask to limit the effect. Sometimes I may only want to hit part of the image. Even when applying the effect globally, there will often be some high-contrast edges I need to mask out to avoid halos (think mountain sky-line).

In CR 5 / LR 2 there is local clarity (via gradient or adjustment brush) which one can use instead of global clarity. Just another tool in the toolbox.