Luminous Landscape Forum

Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Digital Image Processing => Topic started by: John Caldwell on September 21, 2009, 11:56:09 am

Title: Clarity & CS4
Post by: John Caldwell on September 21, 2009, 11:56:09 am

Just getting started in CS4. Is there an equivalent to Lightroom's Clarity adjustment now available in CS4, outside of the RAW conversion context? I'm aware we've been able to perform local contrast increases via USM for many PS versions, but I was hoping for Clarity as an adjustment layer with + and - values.

John-

Title: Clarity & CS4
Post by: JeffKohn on September 21, 2009, 12:05:03 pm

Quote from: John Caldwell

Just getting started in CS4. Is there an equivalent to Lightroom's Clarity adjustment now available in CS4, outside of the RAW conversion context? I'm aware we've been able to perform local contrast increases via USM for many PS versions, but I was hoping for Clarity as an adjustment layer with + and - values.

John-

No, not in CS4. You can use large-radius USM on a duplicate layer, set to luminosity mode with blend-if sliders split to taper off the effect in the shadows/highlights, and you'll get pretty much the same result as positive Clarity. I'm not sure there' any easy way to get the effect of negative Clarity, but then again I can't imagine wanting to so I've never pursued it.

Title: Clarity & CS4
Post by: Kirk Gittings on September 21, 2009, 12:34:09 pm

At what point in your workflow do you want to use Clarity and what type of file are you using. If you are using CR2, JPEG or Tiff, why not open it in Camera Raw?

Title: Clarity & CS4
Post by: mdijb on September 21, 2009, 10:34:17 pm

Quote from: JeffKohn

No, not in CS4. You can use large-radius USM on a duplicate layer, set to luminosity mode with blend-if sliders split to taper off the effect in the shadows/highlights, and you'll get pretty much the same result as positive Clarity. I'm not sure there' any easy way to get the effect of negative Clarity, but then again I can't imagine wanting to so I've never pursued it.

Here is link to a wonderful plug that will do more than USm can  do with lots more control   http://thepluginsite.com/products/photowiz/contrastmaster/ (http://thepluginsite.com/products/photowiz/contrastmaster/)

MDIJB

Title: Clarity & CS4
Post by: smahn on September 22, 2009, 01:30:59 pm

You can also try Image>Adjustments>Shadows/Highlights. Under more options is the Midtone Contrast slider.

Unfortunately this isn't available as an adjustment layer, but you can use it on a Smart Object as a work around.

Title: Clarity & CS4
Post by: John Caldwell on September 22, 2009, 03:04:14 pm

Thanks for the comments everyone.

John-

Title: Clarity & CS4
Post by: kers on September 22, 2009, 04:57:15 pm

Then there is something called perceptool-

http://www.georgedewolfe.com/perceptool.html (http://www.georgedewolfe.com/perceptool.html)

I do not know if that is about the same effect as clarity but if i see what it does it looks like it.

Title: Clarity & CS4
Post by: kers on September 22, 2009, 06:08:35 pm

Quote from: mdijb

Here is link to a wonderful plug that will do more than USm can  do with lots more control   http://thepluginsite.com/products/photowiz/contrastmaster/ (http://thepluginsite.com/products/photowiz/contrastmaster/)

MDIJB

Thanx for the link - That plug-in reallly seems to be interesting!- Nice these fora..