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Author Topic: The "New and Improved" Clarity  (Read 6171 times)

WPalank

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The "New and Improved" Clarity
« on: March 12, 2012, 11:28:09 am »

Anyone as unimpressed as I am.

Sure, you can pull the new one to 100 as the old one needed to be used judiciously. But what I am finding is the "New" Clarity is pulling down the Shadows and Blocking them up quite quickly. It seems to act as a Contrast map between mid-tones and shadows. At least that seems to be what is happening on my Leica M9 DNG files.

The "Old" Clarity seemed to reach into the mid-tones only. Yes, you could get into trouble with Halos if pushed too far, but what the heck, just back it up.

Mike Guilbault

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Re: The "New and Improved" Clarity
« Reply #1 on: March 12, 2012, 04:42:29 pm »

I've noticed its a little too much and use it at much lower settings.
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Mike Guilbault

WPalank

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Re: The "New and Improved" Clarity
« Reply #2 on: March 12, 2012, 06:37:53 pm »

Thanks for the feed back gentlemen. John, are you noticing your shadows block up?
typically with the old clarity I wouldn't go over 15 or so and felt I got a different result.

MBehrens

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Re: The "New and Improved" Clarity
« Reply #3 on: March 12, 2012, 09:09:46 pm »

The new clarity gets "gritty" much too quickly for my taste and seems to be less effective than PV2010 in high frequency images. Haloing reduced but certainly not eliminated.

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Wayne Fox

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Re: The "New and Improved" Clarity
« Reply #4 on: March 13, 2012, 01:43:06 am »

I think the new clarity is better, but a little goes a very long way.  I haven't seen serious shadows blocking up but I tend to dial in a little clarity right after I set exposure/white/black points.  then it's contrast if needed and then shadows and highlights.  It's a little different but I feel like I can dial in a good basic tonal rendition faster than LR 3.  still experimenting with different methods.  I didn't do much with the beta, it was just way to slow with develop module sliders and my large raw files, fortunately the release is much faster.
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WPalank

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Re: The "New and Improved" Clarity
« Reply #5 on: March 13, 2012, 10:04:25 pm »

Sometimes ya gotta eat a little crow. :-\

Having just returned form North East Africa many of my images were taken in really Contrasty light. New Clarity doesn't work so well.
However, in situations where I was in more control of the light or during the 'Magic Hours', it works very, very well....

Schewe

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Re: The "New and Improved" Clarity
« Reply #6 on: March 13, 2012, 10:13:11 pm »

Having just returned form North East Africa many of my images were taken in really Contrasty light. New Clarity doesn't work so well.

Then I suspect you still need to grok how to use Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites and Blacks. If you think your Clarity shadows are too dark after the addition, they were prolly too dark before hand and Clarity only made the problem worse...again, Clarity PV 2012 is "different" but so are ALL the controls. One thing I see is people failing to use Contrast correctly. That impact everything else you do. I suspect if you reduced Contrast, adjusted Highlights and Shadows correctly, you would like the new Clarity a lot better.
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WPalank

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Re: The "New and Improved" Clarity
« Reply #7 on: March 14, 2012, 11:38:11 am »

Thanks Schewe. Agreed, it is different.
Just went into LR3, opened an image with Shadows I was able to recover and then ran the Clarity all the way to the right. The Shadows remained untouched.
Went into LR4, same image, same procedure as above but ran Clarity just a little to the right and the Shadows blocked immediately.

What can I say, I've actually never thought of running Contrast to the Left. I don't like the milky filter it produces, although running it from 0 to -5 was OK. Thanks.

Schewe

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Re: The "New and Improved" Clarity
« Reply #8 on: March 14, 2012, 01:01:27 pm »

I think a lot of people simply never used Contrast before...let alone minus contrast. But...the PV 2012 controls are all different. Clarity is a mid tone contrast bump so if you are working on a contrast image, reducing contrast, adjusting the highlights and shadows and then using clarity is the way to go. The new clarity will add to the overall contrast of the image. The new Basic panel is really all about tone mapping. To get the really optimal results usually means using most of not all the tools available.
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WPalank

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Re: The "New and Improved" Clarity
« Reply #9 on: March 14, 2012, 01:51:42 pm »

Brilliant Jeff, Thanks!

BernieKohl

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Re: The "New and Improved" Clarity
« Reply #10 on: March 15, 2012, 10:17:10 am »

I have been battling with process version 2012 for a week now. It is so much different from its predecessor. Exposure used to set the white point but now it is altering the image in a non-linear fashion and just adding  +/- 0.10 can produce a completely different look. On the other hand I can drag the slider quite a lot to the right without any highlights clipping. I have files that were impossible to process without some serious masking before – either the sky was overexposed or the ground too dark. Now the default setting produces a very HDR-like result and squeezes an enormous amount of data out of the RAW file. The contrast slider has probably moved up for a reason. It seems to define how linear the processing should be. Personally I decided to set the default for contrast to -20 for a more neutral starting point.
« Last Edit: March 15, 2012, 10:20:01 am by BernieKohl »
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AveryRagan

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Re: The "New and Improved" Clarity
« Reply #11 on: March 19, 2012, 05:25:23 pm »

"I think a lot of people simply never used Contrast before...let alone minus contrast. But...the PV 2012 controls are all different. Clarity is a mid tone contrast bump so if you are working on a contrast image, reducing contrast, adjusting the highlights and shadows and then using clarity is the way to go. The new clarity will add to the overall contrast of the image. The new Basic panel is really all about tone mapping. To get the really optimal results usually means using most of not all the tools available."


Minus contrast with clarity...who would of thought...it never crossed my mind. Solved my problem. Thank you!
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