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Author Topic: Global vs local sharpening  (Read 6593 times)

hjulenissen

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Global vs local sharpening
« on: October 11, 2011, 02:37:25 pm »

How does the global sharpening settings really interact with local (brush) sharpening? Does the brush only add to the amount set in the global sharpening, or is it a separate sharpening pass?

I often have different requirements for sharpening in-focus stuff (e.g. eyes) and out-of-focus background. Knowing this might help me improving my work.

-h
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Schewe

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Re: Global vs local sharpening
« Reply #1 on: October 11, 2011, 02:57:50 pm »

How does the global sharpening settings really interact with local (brush) sharpening? Does the brush only add to the amount set in the global sharpening, or is it a separate sharpening pass?

The local Sharpening is based on the settings in the Detail panel such as radius, detail and mask but will vary the amount. So if you have an amount 25 and you add additional local sharpening, it will increase the amount and use what you set in radius, detail and masking.

A minus sharpening between -1 and -49 will reduce the amount but if you go -50 to -100 it will actually add a lens blur.
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Jeremy Roussak

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Re: Global vs local sharpening
« Reply #2 on: October 12, 2011, 03:34:11 am »

The local Sharpening is based on the settings in the Detail panel such as radius, detail and mask but will vary the amount. So if you have an amount 25 and you add additional local sharpening, it will increase the amount and use what you set in radius, detail and masking.

A minus sharpening between -1 and -49 will reduce the amount but if you go -50 to -100 it will actually add a lens blur.
Jeff, your insights (and Eric's) into the way that LR functions are always fascinating. Are such details documented somewhere, or do we have to get them only from the horse's mouth?

Jeremy
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Schewe

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Re: Global vs local sharpening
« Reply #3 on: October 12, 2011, 03:41:37 am »

Jeff, your insights (and Eric's) into the way that LR functions are always fascinating. Are such details documented somewhere, or do we have to get them only from the horse's mouth?

Well, they're in some of my books (such as Real World Camera Raw) but a lot of it comes from use (and feedback from the engineers like Eric and Thomas Knoll).

A lot of credit is due to Eric for all the work he's done to optimize sharpening and noise reduction in ACR/LR (with Thomas' permission and encouragement of course).

:~)
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hjulenissen

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Re: Global vs local sharpening
« Reply #4 on: October 12, 2011, 04:44:46 am »

Thank you.

I wish that the local brush/gradient tools offered the same level of parameters as the global ones, but independently (if so selected). I.e. using one radius for general, global sharpening, and another radius for e.g. localized sharpening of the eyes (and perhaps yet another to blur out some offensive background). Might make the gui experience more cluttered though.

-h
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John R Smith

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Re: Global vs local sharpening
« Reply #5 on: October 12, 2011, 06:32:59 am »

I too often have a thought which goes "gosh, I wish Lightroom did (x, or y, or z)". But then I am brought back down to earth by another thought -

Lightroom costs around £200 here in the UK, and you can get it for less, down to around £170. That's for the full shebang, no holds barred, and free updates until LR 4 comes out.

Whereas, back in the Office, every bit of pro software we use - CAD, GIS, database - costs at least £1,000 a seat. Often more than £1,000 by quite a margin. Sometimes that much every year.

So to my mind that makes LR one hell of a bargain, and I'm not going to quibble overmuch about the odd item on my wish list.

John
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hjulenissen

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Re: Global vs local sharpening
« Reply #6 on: October 12, 2011, 07:19:53 am »

I too often have a thought which goes "gosh, I wish Lightroom did (x, or y, or z)". But then I am brought back down to earth by another thought -

Lightroom costs around £200 here in the UK, and you can get it for less, down to around £170. That's for the full shebang, no holds barred, and free updates until LR 4 comes out.

Whereas, back in the Office, every bit of pro software we use - CAD, GIS, database - costs at least £1,000 a seat. Often more than £1,000 by quite a margin. Sometimes that much every year.

So to my mind that makes LR one hell of a bargain, and I'm not going to quibble overmuch about the odd item on my wish list.

John

I quibble over everything that I dislike, and I think that Adobe should thank me for my advice :-)

Seriously, I think that the price of Lightroom has little to do with its features. Rather, it seems that the Adobe people have worked hard (and well) with removing clutter, making Lightroom a tool that any photo-interested boy or girl can put into use nearly immidiately. That is a quite impressive feat. Any new feature is probably weighed in terms of "how much clutter will it add, how much value will it add to most of our customers". I have no problem with "my" feature being refused on those grounds.

It may be that Adobe also protects its Photoshop product by not adding the more fancy image processing features to Lightroom.

-h
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KeithR

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Re: Global vs local sharpening
« Reply #7 on: October 12, 2011, 09:34:57 am »

A lot of credit is due to Eric for all the work he's done to optimize sharpening and noise reduction in ACR/LR (with Thomas' permission and encouragement of course).
A question was brought up in another forum asking if the NR was the same in ACR as it is in LR?
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Schewe

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Re: Global vs local sharpening
« Reply #8 on: October 12, 2011, 11:37:45 am »

A question was brought up in another forum asking if the NR was the same in ACR as it is in LR?

Yep...as long as the versions are consistent such as ACR 6.5 and LR 3.5.
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KeithR

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Re: Global vs local sharpening
« Reply #9 on: October 13, 2011, 05:37:08 pm »

Yep...as long as the versions are consistent such as ACR 6.5 and LR 3.5.
Thank you!
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madmanchan

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Re: Global vs local sharpening
« Reply #10 on: October 14, 2011, 05:02:03 pm »

hjulenissen, it is true that adding separate & independent sharpening parameters for the local controls would add a lot of flexibility. Unfortunately, it would also increase the complexity and (severely) negatively impact interactive performance. Keep in mind that most of the ACR/LR rendering is done on-the-fly, and UI space is valuable, so these drawbacks are important considerations. It's a tradeoff.
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Eric Chan

Schewe

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Re: Global vs local sharpening
« Reply #11 on: October 16, 2011, 03:42:32 am »

yeah, well fu%^-off bud...do you honestly expect any sort of positive response to this crap> Really? You'''ll be shut down very quickly. Now go away and quit bothering us, ok? Thanks...
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Robert-Peter Westphal

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Re: Global vs local sharpening
« Reply #12 on: October 16, 2011, 07:39:56 am »

Well, they're in some of my books (such as Real World Camera Raw) but a lot of it comes from use (and feedback from the engineers like Eric and Thomas Knoll).

A lot of credit is due to Eric for all the work he's done to optimize sharpening and noise reduction in ACR/LR (with Thomas' permission and encouragement of course).

:~)

Hi Jeff,

this is a very intersting and in my opinion very important point.

Does that mean that the settings for sharpening in the detail-panel is stored whenever a new brush is created for local sharpening some fraction of the image ?

In fact, does that mean that you will be able to start with a radius of 1.0 in the detail panel, start a brush and locally sharpen some areas of the image, then change the radius to 1.1 in the detail panel again, press new brush and do a different sharpening of a different area of the image ?

Another way to go could be to set the perimeters in th details panel, set the masking to 100% so that nearly nothihng is shrpened globally, and then use the brush to paint in local sharpness.

Msany thanks and best wishes

Robert
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Schewe

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Re: Global vs local sharpening
« Reply #13 on: October 16, 2011, 04:38:49 pm »

In fact, does that mean that you will be able to start with a radius of 1.0 in the detail panel, start a brush and locally sharpen some areas of the image, then change the radius to 1.1 in the detail panel again, press new brush and do a different sharpening of a different area of the image ?

Nope...the only change in local sharpening is the amount setting in the Detail panel. Once you set the radius (or even change it) any and all local sharpening use the same radius. Same deal for the Detail slider. Read what madmanchan wrote above. BTW, he's the Eric from the Camera Raw team I was referring to...
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Robert-Peter Westphal

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Re: Global vs local sharpening
« Reply #14 on: October 16, 2011, 05:26:53 pm »

Jeff,

thanks for the fast reply and the very interesting and impoprting information about madmanchan ( now we all know where to adress our wishes and hopes - e.g. soft proofing ) ;)
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Schewe

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Re: Global vs local sharpening
« Reply #15 on: October 16, 2011, 06:01:09 pm »

( now we all know where to adress our wishes and hopes - e.g. soft proofing ) ;)

Well, he's really more of a Camera Raw engineer not so much a Lightroom engineer (although all the ACR processing is in both ACR/LR pipelines).
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Robert-Peter Westphal

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Re: Global vs local sharpening
« Reply #16 on: October 17, 2011, 02:39:32 pm »

Well, he's really more of a Camera Raw engineer not so much a Lightroom engineer (although all the ACR processing is in both ACR/LR pipelines).

Thanks for the interesting info - I really thought that this is Thomas Knoll's part.
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Schewe

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Re: Global vs local sharpening
« Reply #17 on: October 17, 2011, 03:27:56 pm »

I really thought that this is Thomas Knoll's part.

Thomas is the founding engineer and still works on ACR. Eric was added to the ACR team a few years ago. There's also Zalman Stern and a few other QE engineers. Occasionally other engineers will work for a period on a project basis such as when ACR had to be rewritten for Cocoa for CS5. Mark Hamburg, who started Lightroom, also pitches in on ACR from time to time...Mark nominally "manages" the engineering teams working on ACR, DNG Converter and Lightroom. Mark was also the founding engineer on the new Adobe Carrousel app for IOS. All things considered it's a relatively small group of people compared to Photoshop...
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