Lately I've been noticing the dreaded 'Halo'

[JBW]

How do I get rid of halos?

[Donald]

How do I get rid of halos?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUCq...tbChannel=null

[MrB]

Brian, another approach might be to try not to create them. The experts here will correct this if I'm wrong, but halos seem to arise from applying (over-) sharpening, or clarity, or local contrast enhancement, to the whole image. Selective application of those sorts of adjustments might avoid the halo effect.

Philip

[xpatUSA]

Brian, another approach might be to try not to create them. The experts here will correct this if I'm wrong, but halos seem to arise from applying (over-) sharpening, or clarity, or local contrast enhancement, to the whole image. Selective application of those sorts of adjustments might avoid the halo effect.

Philip

Agreed. CiC's article on three-stage sharpening explains that well.

RawTherapee's Contrast By Detail Level (allows negative settings) can tone down Brian's halos but inevitably some micro-contrast gets reduced.

[Shadowman]

And also, maximize the image after applying the edit to see if halos are created and back off if able.

[Stagecoach]

Brian, I'll throw in some more that are with respect to trying to not have to deal with halos;

We don't know what the original was like and we don't know what sharpening procedure you use.

You have used f/16 here and it may be that diffraction has come into play and you have used sharpening to overcome that.

At f/16 there may have been DoF limitations of which you have tried to compensate for with sharpening.

Plus all the others already mentioned.

[george013]

I don't see halo's

George

[xpatUSA]

I don't see halo's

George

Allow me to help ... every egg has a halo, here's one:

[proseak]

What is your sharpening procedure?

[JBW]

Please allow me to use the all answers in one reply?

Usinjg Capture 2 I sharpen first in Lens correction usually going to 125 which is half of the maximu8m. Then I use sharpening to add halo correction and I usually change the radius to 2 or 2.5. Then I move onto layers and apply sharpening as needed. My final sharpening procedure is done in recipe proofing.

Donald I'll try to apply that YouTube video.

F/16 is my best compromise for DoF and sharpness. F/18 I see deterioration and F/14 is sharper but shallower.

I'll b e trying these solutions on today's bug shot. We'll see how it goes.
B.

[Manfred M]

Brian - sorry I did not respond yesterday, but I was out all day teaching at one of the photo clubs.

When I was taught sharpening, the analogy the instructor used was Goldilocks & the Three Bears; with the porridge too hot, too cold and just right. Sharpening is much the same way; too little is not good, too much is not good and deciding what is "just right" takes some time to learn. Most of the people whose opinion I respect use a variant of the 3-step process that (the late) Bruce Fraser and Jeff Schewe popularized. The one thing that they stressed is that sharpening is NOT formula driven, but is based on the examination of the individual image.

Input sharpening - This corrects for the AA filter and de-mosaicing process as well as any slight capture problems. If you shoot from a tripod, I think you will find that the defaults that C1 uses for your camera will be good enough. Examining the image should be done at 100% size.

In-process sharpening - Challenging to do in C1 because of its limited ability to select and mask for sharpening. This is also done at 100% size. Clouds and skies, water, skin often do not need sharpening while detailed items like trees, grass, etc. need to be watched very carefully.

Output Sharpening - done after the image is resized to final posting (or printing) dimensions and viewed at 50% of final size (this is used rather than 100% of final size because of differences of how the human visual system picks up on the bordering dark and light areas produced by the sharpening algorithms). If you have done in-process sharpening as a single step, this can be done as a global sharpening. Some photographers I know do a combined in-process / output sharpening and if so, this will be a combination of global settings and local masking to protect areas that need less sharpening.

It does look like you are pushing sharpening too hard and you need to cut back. One of my teachers suggested that it made sense to sharpen to where the photographer thought the sharpening looked right and then cut that value back by at least 10%.

I don't know your workflow, but unless you work at 100% of image size at input and in-process sharpening and at 50% of image size at output sharpening, you will end up significantly oversharpening your images. I'm not sure, based on your description, as to what radius you use in the actual sharpening, but keeping that to a value of around 1 (range of 0.8 - 1.3) and a threshold of 0 (assuming the C1 / Photoshop numbers are roughly the same; in my limited testing this assumption seems to be more or less correct). If you don't add halos that are noticeable in the first place, there is no need to correct for them.

[Donald]

And to add to the confusion, the opinion of those that I have been tutored by say that the sensor on the newest of cameras mean that images don't need sharpened at all.

Now there's a claim that should set the cat amongst the pigeons.

[Manfred M]

And to add to the confusion, the opinion of those that I have been tutored by say that the sensor on the newest of cameras mean that images don't need sharpened at all.

Now there's a claim that should set the cat amongst the pigeons.

There is a group out there that seems to think that eliminating the AA filter means that no input sharpening is needed.

Eliminating the AA filter eliminates one of the main sources of capture softening, but that ignores other issues that impact capture quality. That softening from the anti-aliasing process, lens softness and minor camera movement do impact the sharpness of the captured image.

I also know that some glamour and portrait photographers who do not sharpen because they wanted a softer look and would in fact add blur to their work to enhance overall softness. Others are significant users of all three sharpening steps, especially in process sharpening of the eyes, eye brows, eye lashes and lips.

I get into trouble from time to time by saying I rarely output sharpen my images when posting to social media. The downsizing of a 36MP capture to a ~2MP image that is subjected to all kinds of "hidden" compression work done (especially given the wide range of devices used to view the image) negates the need for output sharpening.

There are good reasons to sharpen, especially if we like crisp and sharp large prints like you and I make.

[DanK]

Now there's a claim that should set the cat amongst the pigeons.

Donald, that's one that hasn't made it across the pond. I'm guessing it means something like "will create quite a kerfuffle." is that about right?

And to add to the confusion, the opinion of those that I have been tutored by say that the sensor on the newest of cameras mean that images don't need sharpened at all.

I don't think so. Some newer cameras lack and anti-aliasing filter, so they need little or no capture sharpening. That has no bearing on the second stage, what Manfred calls in-process sharpening and many call creative sharpening, or output sharpening.

[Donald]

Donald, that's one that hasn't made it across the pond. I'm guessing it means something like "will create quite a kerfuffle." is that about right?

Yep.

[xpatUSA]

And to add to the confusion, the opinion of those that I have been tutored by say that the sensor on the newest of cameras mean that images don't need sharpened at all.

I don't think so. Some newer cameras lack and anti-aliasing filter, so they need little or no capture sharpening. That has no bearing on the second stage, what Manfred calls in-process sharpening and many call creative sharpening, or output sharpening.

None of my Sigma cameras have AA filters by virtue of a good reason (not really relevant here). Therefore, I've been shooting AA-less for years - from 9.12um pixels down to 5um. I usually shoot the 5um camera at low-res, true pixel-binned i.e. 10um raw data.

Only point I'm making here is that even low-resolution raw images extracted from the X3F files are usually a bit soft and, in fact, the proprietary converter SPP actually applies capture sharpening by default! That is to say that many a well-captured shot acquires halos during conversion to RGB which in turn means that the SPP sharpness slider needs some setting below zero so as not to get those halos.

[xpatUSA]

Please allow me to use the all answers in one reply?

Using Capture 2, I sharpen first in Lens correction usually going to 125 which is half of the maximum. Then I use sharpening to add halo correction and I usually change the radius to 2 or 2.5.

Brian, I'm a little wary of "usually" using specific sharpening parameter values by rote. My own shots are so variable that the amount of capture sharpening needed is equally variable; in other words, I adjust the amount of sharpening to suit the capture.

Of course, in my other world on DPR, there are indeed those that "always apply -2.0 sharpening [sic] and send their often soft images to an external editor to be sharpened up to taste ... doesn't seem quite right but chacun a son goute, eh?

Then I move onto layers and apply sharpening as needed. My final sharpening procedure is done in recipe proofing.

Donald, I'll try to apply that YouTube video.

F/16 is my best compromise for DoF and sharpness. F/18 I see deterioration and F/14 is sharper but shallower.

I'll be trying these solutions on today's bug shot. We'll see how it goes.

Will be interested in the outcome ...

[Manfred M]

many call creative sharpening, or output sharpening.

There is definitely a difference between creative / in process sharpening and output sharpening, although they can be combined in one step. The critical aspect of output sharpening is that it occurs after the image have been resized to the output dimensions

[JBW]

And to add to the confusion, the opinion of those that I have been tutored by say that the sensor on the newest of cameras mean that images don't need sharpened at all.

Now there's a claim that should set the cat amongst the pigeons.

yes it shall

[JBW]

Brian, I'm a little wary of "usually" using specific sharpening parameter values by rote. My own shots are so variable that the amount of capture sharpening needed is equally variable; in other words, I adjust the amount of sharpening to suit the capture.

Of course, in my other world on DPR, there are indeed those that "always apply -2.0 sharpening [sic] and send their often soft images to an external editor to be sharpened up to taste ... doesn't seem quite right but chacun a son goute, eh?



Will be interested in the outcome ...

Here is the start of the outcome. A very different look.