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Author Topic: the selective adjustment tool brush for sharpening  (Read 7443 times)

Philmar

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the selective adjustment tool brush for sharpening
« on: February 26, 2010, 04:31:50 pm »

I have a question about the sharpening slider in the selective adjustment tool tab. If one uses the selective adjustment brush to sharpen locally is it applied in conjunction with the mask generated in the capture sharpening tab? Or is this sharpening that occurs later on in the RAW pipeline? Should one consider it part of the creative sharpening phase or capture sharpening phase (to use Mr. Fraser’s paradigm)?

Currently I seldom use sharpening when employing the local adjustment brush. Can anyone give me any advice/hint/pointers for using the local adjustment brush for sharpening?
(i.e. things like it should be used judiciously since it may be better to sharpen later on in PS with an edge mask)
Currently I do my creative sharpening with edge masks in CS4. But sharpening with the selective adjustment tool seems like it could be a useful tool. Do some people use it for creative sharpening instead of the sharpening in PS? Under what circumstances is it best used?

Thanks!

Schewe

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the selective adjustment tool brush for sharpening
« Reply #1 on: February 26, 2010, 09:35:55 pm »

If you are talking ACR 5.x or LR 2.6, I really, seriously wouldn't resort to using the current local sharpening control...in the "next version" of ACR & LR, things will have progressed to the point you can use the local controls as a "creative sharpening" step even though it's use will need to be kept subtle...
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smahn

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the selective adjustment tool brush for sharpening
« Reply #2 on: February 26, 2010, 10:23:09 pm »


Jeff are you able to talk about why they can't make local sharpening more sophisticated? For instance, why must it use the same radius as global, etc?
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Schewe

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the selective adjustment tool brush for sharpening
« Reply #3 on: February 26, 2010, 10:55:34 pm »

Quote from: smahn
Jeff are you able to talk about why they can't make local sharpening more sophisticated? For instance, why must it use the same radius as global, etc?

Let's just say that the current ACR 5.6 and LR 2.6 local sharpening is less that optimal (not my fault BTW) and that changes have been made for the next version (that I had a small role in) that makes local sharpening adjustments much better (although still fundamentally limited by being "parametric" edits vs. pixel edits).
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smahn

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the selective adjustment tool brush for sharpening
« Reply #4 on: February 27, 2010, 02:44:34 am »

Quote from: Schewe
Let's just say that the current ACR 5.6 and LR 2.6 local sharpening is less that optimal (not my fault BTW) and that changes have been made for the next version (that I had a small role in) that makes local sharpening adjustments much better (although still fundamentally limited by being "parametric" edits vs. pixel edits).

I'm mostly wondering why they can't port the existing sharpening tools to the adjustment brush. IOW, the same "controls" as global, but allowing local adjusting of said controls, like, to allow us to set the appropriate radius to differing detail frequency, etc.

I'm sure there are reasonable explanations. I'd just be less contemptuous if I knew what they were.  
« Last Edit: February 27, 2010, 02:46:20 am by smahn »
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Schewe

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the selective adjustment tool brush for sharpening
« Reply #5 on: February 27, 2010, 02:02:49 pm »

Quote from: smahn
I'd just be less contemptuous if I knew what they were.  

Because for local controls, the processing must be a simplified control channel that can be adjusted in a relative scale. As a result of the manner in which those control channels were implemented, multiple controls for a single adjustment just is far too complex for the parametric editing.
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smahn

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the selective adjustment tool brush for sharpening
« Reply #6 on: February 27, 2010, 02:38:51 pm »

Thanks Jeff.
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Philmar

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the selective adjustment tool brush for sharpening
« Reply #7 on: March 01, 2010, 09:05:13 am »

Thanks for your reply Jeff!!
Yes, I am talking about the ACR v5.x
All this talk of the upcoming improvements has got me thinking if I am using the current tools properly - or if the current tools I have a re enough. Realizing PS's noise reduction is insufficient (even on a surface mask) I have been thinking about buying a noise reduction plugin for a while but have held off in anticipation of the next ACR version. So I have been holding off on the purchase (though I did find a nice free plug from Colormancer that works in 64 BIT Vista).
When is the next version/release of ACR scheduled for? And will it be a free upgrade (I have CS4) or will it be part of CS5 (or however they name it?).

Philmar

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the selective adjustment tool brush for sharpening
« Reply #8 on: March 09, 2010, 09:59:30 am »

Forget the release date then. I've learned the virtue of being patient.
Will the upcoming improvements to ACR be part of a downloadable ACR upgrade or part of a new Photoshop release, i.e. CS5?
If some are already a part of the LR3 Beta then would it be safe to assume they wouldn't be passed off for free to ACR users?

madmanchan

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« Reply #9 on: March 23, 2010, 04:55:59 pm »

The improvements that Jeff referred to are now user-testable in the form of Lightroom 3 beta (it was there in the original beta 1, from last October, as well as the newer beta 2, released this week).

Getting back to ACR, I would expect that these improvements to make their way into ACR at some point (given the history of ACR and LR offering rendering & editing parity) but the actual product versions and dates aren't publicly known yet.
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Eric Chan

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the selective adjustment tool brush for sharpening
« Reply #10 on: March 30, 2010, 10:28:12 am »

Quote from: Schewe
(although still fundamentally limited by being "parametric" edits vs. pixel edits).

What does this mean for optimal sharpening? When is sharpening in raw (papametric) better than sharpening in photoshop (pixels)?

Christopher
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madmanchan

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the selective adjustment tool brush for sharpening
« Reply #11 on: April 09, 2010, 12:29:46 am »

Where possible I recommend doing sharpening in CR/LR because the image processing is ordered in a way to optimize overall image quality. It also means you can go back and undo/improve/remove/change the sharpening later without image quality loss, and minimal overhead.

You will always have somewhat more flexibility in PS because you can change the sharpening parameters locally if you wish, even on a per-pixel basis if you wanted to. That by itself does not guarantee better results, but it can be useful in some situations.
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Eric Chan
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