Any Topaz Detail Users?

[HMW12]

Do any members use this? I picked it up at 50% off quite some time ago and have just started to play with it. It works with both LR and PSE and comes with a number of presets to get you started.

I would welcome any feedback on the following first attempts. My PP skills are quite rusty . I also haven't been shooting much either so those skills are also rusty . For the most part I processed these in PSE as I tried my hand at a bit of cloning and also lightening the shadow on the husky's face with a layer mask and blending ( used Screen mode).

One thing that became readily apparent and that I found a little surprising is that my lens - a Sigma 55-200 is really either quite soft wide open or the autofocus on the camera had trouble in this case.

The original pretty well SOCC except for jpeg conversion (and no it is not my dog . His name is Moose and he is a type of Newfoundland known as a Landseer )



and the processed version using Topaz detail - does this look over processed? I am thinking it does - however tinypics does seem to be 'enhancing' the processing a little - when I view the .tiff in LR it does look a little more natural.



The second photo of the husky was shot at f11 instead of f4.5 and there is a surprising difference in sharpness even in the unprocessed version. (BTW I have no idea why the EXIF always references an incorrect lens whenever I use this lens)



And the processed version - In this case I attempted to reduce the shadow on the face - not sure that it looks natural. On this one the corrections that I used in Detail were not as strong as the starting point was much sharper.



Any C&C would be welcome.

[John 2]

A couple of nice images. Does the Husky really have one blue eye and one yellow eye. It's cute but it could be a trick of the light.

In reverse order and IMHO:

The second is the more successful. The only problem I see is that you have pushed the highlights too far and they are partially blown. Try reducing the Highlight slider before you add contrast.

The second one is the opposite. The blacks are blocked in places. Try lifting the shadows using the Shadows slider before you add contrast but make sure the highlights also stay under control as above. The main problem with the first image however, is that it is not quite sharp and the BG highlights on the LHS are a bit distracting. It will take some gentle sharpening and you could crop the image more tightly to lose some of the distraction. Something like this but there is no substitute for getting it sharp in the first place. Hope this helps.:

[HMW12]

Thanks for commenting John. I definitely agree about the crop on the first photo. This was about to go in the bin but I thought I could see if it could be made passable using the plugin.

Yes the husky does have one blue eye - his name not surprisingly is Blue. His brother has 2 blue eyes. (Again not my dogs :-) but the dog park is a great practice arena)

You make a good point on checking the highlights and shadows - Unfortunately the plugin does not have a histogram and I did not do any tweaking after bringing back into LR

[Brev00]

Topaz is a global editor so I try to be careful not to heighten areas of the pic I do not want more detailed. The background in the first pic, for instance. One way you might have done this is to select shadow detail which, I think, is what you are after. After selecting the most pleasing shadow preset, then I would adjust the highlight and overall settings manually and carefully to taste using - boost to keep things smooth if needed. I generally use T Detail to enhance detail rather than saving missed images. Less is also usually more. Check back to the original often and go back to normal view from the magnified view. Stuff looks great enhanced up close but can look overdone back in normal view. I don't typically have histogram issues with this program as I am fairly conservative and tend to decrease contrast with the tone controls (- highlights, whites; + shadows, blacks). Have fun and use it on your very good images, too.

[HMW12]

Thanks for the tips Larry. Yes it is very easy to get carried away in PP. Still trying to get a handle on when to stop. I often struggle with the notion that there is still one more tweak that needs to be done.

[victor]

If using photoshop You can use layer masks to filter the effect and therefore apply the effect to a part of your image only. This applies to photoshop adjustments as well which have their own layer masks.

[Brev00]

Then get carried away. One thing I like to do is save a conservative version then go all in on a second version. I can use any of my subprograms: DxO Filmpack, HDR Efex Pro (cool for one file, too) Analog Efex Pro, Silver Efex, etc. Topaz Detail has some pretty strong presets which can create a very bold take on a scene. Bold Detail, for example. I can save that version and compare. I also do thiswhen I have two or three similar shots of one scene. Why not let it rip for one of them? In the end, I typically use Topaz Detail just to recreate the scene the way I remember it, with all the sharp detail intact. But no extra crunch.

[arith]

I use it all the time.

First I use Topaz Denoise5 on usually light settings,

then Topaz Infocus, I think this makes for a sharper end product but I'm not sure,

Finally Topaz Detail 3.

But in this case I used Topaz Remask 5 to extract the car,

put the background back in only darker and blurred,

used Topaz Infocus very carefully on the saved 8 bit jpeg,

finishing up with Topaz Detail 3, softening small detail and increasing medium and large, but mostly messing around with light to show reflections.

Powerful tools, I only wished I was better at using them.

[HMW12]

Very nice work Steve. I have not looked into InFocus yet. Figure I should learn what I tools I have before buying more :-)

[arith]

I think Detail is the one to get Helen; somehow I always put the image through Detail, use a preset then compare and it almost always looks sharper.

Detail3 has got a sort of mask and even deconvolution called deblur , the only settings I've successfully used on Infocus are generic and unknown where the application chooses the method, it is especially good with portrait but you have to keep an eagle eye on artefacts which look like ripples. There might be one on the car bumper above, hard to tell.