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May also try adjusting the Green Primary/Saturation along with the Shadow Tint (green vs. magenta) sliders in the Calibration panel.
Viginti Septem fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Oct 21, 2023 |
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Oct 21, 2023 17:17
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I've found myself getting away from trying to clean up images. Nothing wrong with denoising and sharpening, however, it really seems like it's only the photography community that cares about noise in a photo to the point of stressing themselves trying to remove every tiny bit of grain from a photo. Color/contrast/framing/story telling in a photo, to me, is more impactful than having the "cleanest" image.
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Nov 18, 2023 03:31
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Again, nothing wrong with cleaning images. Some photographers enjoy chasing that clean, noiseless look, and using the sharpest lenses they can buy. That's a style that some enjoy. If that's your thing, go do it. Just wanted to caution a bit that there's a market for companies to sell the idea that a photo isn't good unless you buy their denoising software, specifically with the increase in AI-denoising right now, and to offer an alternative view that good photos come in all shapes and sizes, noisy or not, sharp or not, etc. To your specific questions about workflow: Lightroom and Capture One are probably pretty close in their capacity. Topaz really floods the market with advertising for denoising. All of those are going to use AI algos now to denoise. It's something I've sort of grown to not like about the whole denoise process, but that's a very-specific-to-me thing. I just felt that painting over my image with a recreation from images that are not noisy is a weird process for denoising that I just didn't want to use going forward, so I've just stopped denoising completely. If anything I will use just a slight denoise from the older, manual denoise sliders in Lightroom, but only on images that I've intentionally stepped away outside of the safe ISO zone on, like 12800 or above. But, if I'm ever shooting that high an ISO it's probably some artsy creative shoot where I'm wanting some noise, so maybe it's a wash. I do sharpen my photos, but I've found a style for that that works for me. In Lightroom: Around 96 sharpness, then move to the Mask slider, Alt-click and drag until just the slightest outline of main subjects is sharpened, usually around 81-99 of 100 on the Mask slider. This keeps sharpening artifacts out of most of the images, and just focuses on the important outlines of the subject. Then move to the Radius slider and Alt-click and adjust following this method: Start low on the slider and move right until you JUST start to see the outlines of a haloing around the sharpened areas. Then walk it back just a tad. This usually results in a numerical values of between 0.9 and 1.5 for Radius. Then do the same process for the Detail slider... Alt-click, start low, move right until you JUST begin to see a thickening of the sharpened areas, then walk it back just a smidge. Typically the numerical value ends up between 9 and 36 out of 100. More often than not my Detail panel settings are roughly between: Sharpening: 96 - 126 Radius: 0.9 - 1.5 Detail: 9 - 36 Masking: 81 - 99 This keeps the sharpening on the low to medium end and targets just the most visible lines for sharpening, while not blowing out the radius/details and sharpening too far beyond the edges. That said, each photo is unique. Try many different things, and adapt over time. My style is always changing. There was a time when I added grain to photos and then did massive denoise/sharpening so that it would create a pseudo-painterly look. Now I barely touch the sharpening and never use denoise or added grain.
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Nov 18, 2023 04:19
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Oh, since you mentioned Clarity too... Give this a try and see what your thoughts are. There is an interesting interplay between the Texture and Clarity sliders. Clarity affects the contrast of the midtones in an image. Unlike the Contrast slider, which increases or decreases space between the highlights/shadows in the image, the Clarity slider affects the contrast in the midtones of the image. This can make a photo appear a bit sharper or more "dramatic" if increased, and less sharp/hazy/diffused if decreased. The Texture slider increases or decreases the visibility of textures. Increasing it adds texture, decreasing it can flatten and soften texture. Typically decreased texture can be used to soften skin texture, like wrinkles or even blemishes. There is a trick that sort of mimics the Orton Effect from Photoshop (named after Michael Orton who developed a technique in Photoshop that softens the image and diffuses light). The trick is to decrease Clarity and Texture. Simple, gets close to the same effect from Photoshop, but not really. Most photographers will adapt that a bit, and decrease Clarity while increasing Texture. This saves some of the sharpness of the image while softening the light and overall tone of the image. The trick I'd ask you to try is to invert that process. Instead, decrease Texture while increasing Clarity. I do not see a lot of photographers doing this. Decreasing Texture will soften details like grain and noise, and can actually work as a pretty good denoiser. But the trick is to then add an increase in Clarity to bring back some of the sharpness of the overall image. Proper contrast can trick the eye into thinking the image is sharper than it is. And the Clarity slider works by adding contrast to the midtones of your image. So with a decrease in Texture of about 25-35% you cover up a lot of noise. But you're also making the image slightly soft. So then you increase the Clarity about 35-50% (or more) to recover that "sharpness" by bringing out midtones contrast. I've been playing with this trick for a little while now and getting great results at a pseudo denoise/sharpen without touching either the denoiser or the sharpening. Viginti Septem fucked around with this message at 05:04 on Nov 18, 2023 |
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Nov 18, 2023 05:01
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