Do These Adjustments in LR work for Birds

[Suzan J]

I have been trying to make use of the bitterly cold February by improving my PP skills. I recently moved from Aperture 3.0 to Lightroom 5. From browsing the forums, it seems that a lot of folks will sharpen up to the level of 100 or so. I have just tried that with some new bird pics. Previously, I did not sharpen beyond a level of 50 or 60. Lightroom has a far superior noise reduction tool, so along with sharpening this image to 94, i also used the NR feature to a level of 31. I just did this by eye looking for a balance of sorts. Does this image look too "crispy"? On my screen, it appears to be OK. Also, I did not notice any CA, but then again I may not have a good enough eye to see it.

The work flow I used today for my new birds shots was as follows:

- increase exposure by .62
- increase contrast by 21
- reduce highlights and whites (the snow was quite bright)
- increase clarity by +11
- increase vibrance by +10
- Then sharpen to 94 and use NR of 31
-Finally, slight crop (just a bit off the sides and bottom) image is probably 90% of original

Can anyone please comment on the settings I am using? Is the contrast increase too much?


I am linking from Flickr, so here is the EXIF data:

SS 2500 f 6.3 ISO 640 460mm

[Suzan J]

Here is another one with the same processing workflow and settings. Should I make changes to this workflow?

[Brownbear]

Hi Suzan,

Both are especially lovely images!

For the first image at this size it is truly difficult/perhaps impossible to see noise or an image being too soft. However, I would guess from your camera settings (assuming you own a decent dslr) that the birds are sharp enough and that the noise levels are minimal.

I typically sharpen in LR using an un-sharp mask with a .5 to .8 radius at 25 or 30, braving 40 once in a while. (but I may need to be braver with sharpening more) If you hold down the alt key you will be able to view your image in b&w which lets you see the effects of the sharpen, detail, and masking effects with greater ease. I find that the NR on the subject softens all that beautiful detail, and the detail in the bird in the 2nd image seems a little soft to me. That said I still love the image because it's beautifully captured and a soft scene.

If sharpening is adding noise to your images that needs to be reduced, I wouldn't sharpen so much.

All that said, I'm still learning but perhaps my suggestions are something to try, and I'll try some stronger sharpening on my own images.

[Suzan J]

Hi Christina: Your input is much appreciated. I have been admiring your birds of late and the processing looks very nice to me. What do you mean by using an "unsharp mask in LR" ? I don't see that option on the panel. I just see a general box showing, amount, radius, detail, and masking. Are you saying that you use the "radius" box to bump things up to .5 or .8?

[Brownbear]

Hi Suzan,
Thank you.
For birds I typically use a smaller radius than 1, say .7 or .8 and then hold down the alt key to see the effect of sharpening as I bring it up. When I say un-sharp mask I mean that when you hold down the alt key and drag the masking slider over to the right you will see a visual which shows a masking effect in that the sharpening is only apply to the important details of the image. Best to try it to see.

Here is a link I found which I think demonstrates it nicely

https://photographylife.com/how-to-p...s-in-lightroom

Another way to sharpen selectively is to use the adjustment brush to apply to just the subject, also for example decrease the highlights on just the bird to bring out more detail in the bird, or add clarity to just the bird, etc. I have a Bamboo pen which comes in very handy for this and far easier than using a mouse. (fine control)

I forgot to say that your images do not look crispy or over sharp to me.

Hi Christina: Your input is much appreciated. I have been admiring your birds of late and the processing looks very nice to me. What do you mean by using an "unsharp mask in LR" ? I don't see that option on the panel. I just see a general box showing, amount, radius, detail, and masking. Are you saying that you use the "radius" box to bump things up to .5 or .8?

[Manfred M]

Suzan - without getting into too great a detail; with Lightroom, your sharpening options are rather limited because of the nature of the product.

What is important is that your sharpening be applied to the final output size of your image. Resize the image to whatever output size you are using and sharpen at 100% of that size, to your own taste. What this means is that sharpening will different if you print the image or display it on the web.

[Shadowman]

Do you reduce noise before sharpening? One rule of thumb often quoted and I tend to follow with any post processing is to repair or correct the big issues first; as long as it doesn't create negative after effects.

[DanK]

Here is another one with the same processing workflow and settings. Should I make changes to this workflow?

Suzan,

I may be reading too much into your post, but I think you may not be approaching this the right way.

A workflow is a general set of procedures in a specific order, not a set of specific settings. The whole point of doing postprocessing yourself, rather than just shooting jpegs in the camera, is to give you the control to select the settings that are appropriate for each image, given the characteristics of the image and what you want it to look like. Unless the images are similar to begin with, the settings will usually vary from one image to the next. (There are types of photography for which this is not true. For example, one superb macro photographer I know has default settings for processing his bug shots, but they are all taken under similar lighting, with the same equipment, at similar distances, etc.)

In this particular case, your first image looks very flat to me. There isn't much contrast, and the red bird looks washed out. Just adding a substantial curves adjustment gives it more pop from increased contrast and increased saturation (a curves adjustment set to the default RGB increases saturation also):



Then adding a little more saturation gives me this:



Re some of the steps in your workflow: I avoid NR unless I really need it because it reduces detail. A properly exposed image generally won't need it unless you are shooting at a high ISO for your camera. I don't know your camera, but given its sensor size and vintage, I would guess that you shouldn't need much NR at ISO 640. If you sharpen too much, it will look noisy, but that is sometimes just the look of excessive sharpening.

Re the order of steps: if you are using a pixel editor, such as Photoshop, a common recommendation is to apply NR first, so that you don't sharpen the noise. However, in LR, it makes no difference--the order in which the software applies the adjustments in rendering the image is not the order in which you perform them. You can see this demonstrated toward the end of this thread

In my images, I use LR sharpening with radius up to 2, depending on the nature of the image. 94 is pretty high, but I probably get that high occasionally. I routinely add modest clarity, as you did, and modest vibrance, but the amounts again vary. I almost never use the contrast slider, preferring the additional control that the curves tool provides.

I hope this helps.

Dan

[Brownbear]

Hi Suzan,

I forgot that when you export a downsized image from LR sharpening is applied to the entire image according to your chosen settings.

I have Photoshop CC and after I process in LR I typically apply an un-sharp mask to the downsized image in which case I typically apply sharpening to just the bird which can be done with a smaller radius. Before I had Photoshop CC I used Elements to sharpen my images after downsizing but last time I checked one is limited to an 8bit image (instead of 16) and a radius of .5 so not as great as Photoshop for sharpening but handy. My apologies for any confusion, as I said I'm still learning.

PS I like Dan's edit, gives it pop.

[Suzan J]

Christina, that link explains the sharpening function in an easy to understand way. Very useful and I have it now bookmarked.

Manfred, I have the Lightroom and Photoshop subscription package. I use PS to print out portraits of students who attend my husband's training course. I use PS to place some text on the portrait and then print at 300 dpi and frame the image as an 8 x 10. If I understand you correctly, the best method would be to apply the sharpening after I have re-sized to the print size. Up to now, I have sharpened at the original size.

John, I have been reducing noise after sharpening, only because the panels flow that way with NR falling immediately after the sharpening box. Also, what I see is that noise tends to increase after sharpening. I also get what Christina is saying about noise reduction going too far and softening an image too much. It's tricky to get a balance.

[DanK]

I'll add another 2 cents about sharpening:

--The sharpening tools in LR are quite good if you are going to sharpen the entire image. They are enough for most of my images. LR is relatively weak in terms of selective sharpening, but it does have a simple sharpening slider for the adjustment brush. I prefer Photoshop's smart sharpening for some images, and occasionally I use something else, but those two are almost all of what I do. If you don't need selective sharpening, I suggest you try mastering LR's tools first.

--Output sharpening is an entire additional step. Many really careful people do what Christina suggests: change the image size in photoshop to what you want and then sharpen again to make the image look right at that size for that output medium. To be honest, I don't bother. I have found that LR's output sharpening generally works very well for both screen and printing, and it is very simple. I host my images on Smugmug (and link to Smugmug to post here), which by default applies a bit more sharpening. Using LR's 'standard' output sharpening with that little bit extra seems to work fine for web displays. However, you can easily change the amount of output sharpening in the LR export dialog box and see how much you like.

[Suzan J]

Thanks Dan for taking the time to provide such a detailed explanation and for posting an edit. Your info definitely does help. I do have a Nikon D7100 and it really should not have noise issues at the settings I typically use. I should probably stop obsessing over "noise" because its probably not as bad as I imagine and it does now make sense to me that one would not want to sharpen existing noise. It looks like I will have some homework to do in reading the earlier thread and working on my RAW images again with some of the suggestions I have found here. Thanks all.

[NorthernFocus]

Suzan, hopefully you took the point in DanK's first response below. Workflow is the order in which you do things. The values to which sliders are set should be decided for each individual image. The only time a given set of slider settings might apply across many images is if you have a whole series of similar subject matter shot under the same light. In that case, you can likely edit one of them and then "synch" the settings to the remaining images.

As others have pointed out, sharpening should be the last thing done on final output to useful size of the image. Similarly, truly effective NR should be done early in the workflow prior to any sharpening/contrast tweaking. Sharpening, contrast, and clarity adjustments all affect noise. For that reason I don't find LR's sharpening/noise module highly useful. It is OK on average, but for photos that truly need NR, there are much better tools out there.

[davidedric]

A quick comment on Lightroom sharpening. As I understand it, it is a "hybrid" tool. At small amounts it uses a unsharp mask, and at high amounts deconvolution algorithms, with intermediate amounts using some kind of mixture (I'm attempting to paraphrase Jeff Schewe who wrote the thing as a member of Pixel Genious, so he should know!). The idea is to have a single tool able to deal with a wide range of requirements.

Dave

[NorthernFocus]

...I'm attempting to paraphrase Jeff Schewe who wrote the thing as a member of Pixel Genious...

That's interesting, Dave. I've wondered exactly how the LR sharpening functions and information is scarce. Can you provide any links to articles by the gent you mention here? I'd like to read more on the topic if possible.

[davidedric]

Hi Dan,

I shouldn't have relied on memory! It's the Detail slider that changes the algorithm. I've seen it referred to in a number of places, but here is a quote from Schewe's "The Digital Negative". I think the best place to track this down is probably Luminous Landscapes, but there are a lot of overlapping threads.

Dave

Detail: Yeah, there are three Detail sliders in the Detail panel (including noise reduction). Confused yet? The engineers tried to come up with a better term, but Detail is at least descriptive. The Detail sharpening adjustment is pretty complicated. When adjusted downward toward 0, the Detail slider kicks in a halo suppression algorithm that limits how strong the halos get with your Amount settings. Halos are a result of image-sharpening algorithms, but the idea is to have the halos be invisible at normal viewing distances. Lowering the Detail slider can reduce the halo visibility. Moving toward 100, the Detail kicks in a deconvolution-based sharpening that is very similar to Photoshop’s Smart Sharpen filter when set to remove Lens Blur. Deconvolution sharpening attempts to deblur an image based on determining what kind of blur is in the image. The processing algorithm uses a point-spread function (PSF) to approximate a mathematical description of the blur and then inverts the PSF to try to sharpen away the blur. Accurately calculating the PSF can be really difficult, but the Detail slider at 100 does a reasonable job of attempting to deblur based on a generic lens-blur PSF. The Detail slider interpolates between these two different sharpening algorithms. The default is 25, but I usually increase this toward the middle of the range (rarely to + 100, though). You should be aware that running the Detail slider up on a noisy image will substantially increase the sharpening of the noise.

[NorthernFocus]

Thanks, Dave. That's helpful. Any of the tutorials that I've seen to-date on LR sharpening pretty much just say to poke around with the various sliders and figure them out for yourself

In keeping with ages old wisdom, that sort of advice has been worth what I've paid for it...

[KingsHockeyFan]

As many have already stated, sharpening should be one of the last things you should do in your workflow and NR should be one of the first.
Something I learned about NR that has been very helpful is to separate the two types of noise in your photo. The two types, color noise (usually visible as green or red splotches) and luminosity noise (usually seen as grain) should be reduced or eliminated independently. LR automatically applies a setting of 25 to color noise reduction. I have found this too often be significantly more than is actually required, meaning LR is eliminating detail be default.
View at 100% and try this.....Eliminate color noise first. Move your color NR slider to 0. Move your luminosity slider to 100 (all the way right). The only noise you should see at this point is color noise. Slowly increase your color slider until the color noise is gone. Now focus on luminosity noise. Slowly reduce your luminosity slider until your detail returns without unacceptable grain.
NR is complete.

[HaseebM]

I don't think the contrast increase is too much. I rather like your second image, the colours seem to somehow gel together at once.

[tommcana]

Amazing.