Sharpening and noise in ACR 6.3.... advice please

Hi,
Where can I find some good tutorial stuff (or other advices) about sharpening and noise in ACR 6.3.
My camera is a Panasonic DMC-FZ8.
Adjustments like color / blacks / contrast I can "see" on my screen (I'm satisfied until now).
But Noise and Sharpening..... "that is a different kettle of fish " .... I have problems with it ... complex....(my std JPG is better than the RAW-JPG).

Rules of thumb are usually made to be broken. They might provide a good starting strategy in many cases.
The thread I referred to is: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/780678
I re-read it and it doesn't have that much more info in it.
Keep in mind there's nothing fundamentally wrong with an image file getting larger. If you're short on disk space, new disks are incredibly cheap nowadays.
A good rule of thumb (!!) is don't save, then open, then resave JPEG files. You can do it once or twice in a pinch, but the compression artifacts will accumulate, as JPEG does lossy compression.
If a PSD file is growing larger from save to save, it may be because you are doing something to the image to cause that - e.g., creating new layers, or sharpening it and increasing the amount of apparent detail the compression process has to deal with.
-Noel

Similar Messages

LOSING SHARPENING AND NOISE ON EXPORT

My workflow goes like this:
I use LR3 to apply adjustments, occasionally a preset from say VSCO....
While in LR I use, PHOTO > EDIT This photo in - PHOTOSHOP
I do my edits, ADD NOISE, SHARPEN....
Then PHOTO > SAVE AS.....
I save the photo to my external...
Here is the issue, when I re-open LR the photo is then present in my Catalog and there in LR to be viewed.... from here I export the final size for web etc and I am done
QUESTION IS: The photo that is now within my LR catalog is missing the NOISE I am added completely, and the SHARPENING is gone, or much less sharp then the photo I have saved in PS.
HELP
Thank you very much

In the PS-forum version of this message you said you were using LR3 with PS-CS3. This is important.
Because your PS is two versions older than LR, the ACR is not compatible, so using Edit In PS will create a TIF or PSD on the way INTO PS, right? This TIF or PSD is what is in LR—the one before you’ve done anything to the image in PS. When you do a Save As you are putting the results with your sharpening and noise in another location that LR won’t know about, right? What happens if you save your output from PS over the top of the file that LR created on the way into PS instead of somewhere else, or are you already saving over the top of your PS input file and wondering why LR doesn’t show the changes?
The second issue is that the communication between LR and PS. Without that communication LR has no idea where you did your Save As to. I believe your PS-CS3 is too old to know how to communicate anything to LR—Adobe hadn’t implemented the integration back in LR1 days when CS3 was current.
If you had LR3 sending images to PS-CS5 or LR4 sending to PS-CS6 then things would be compatible and communicating and would work how you expect.

Base Sharpening and Noise Reduction D800/E

Has anyone set up a base sharpening and noise reduction at different ISOs for the D800/E?
I had LR all set up for my D300 and D700 so the base settings where used at import.
Now I need to do it with the D800E and was wondering what others might be using.
Thanks
Jim

Order doesn't matter in Lightroom.

Missing Sharpen and Noise Reduction palettes

I've just exported some pictures for the web from Lightroom 5 which had to be downsized considerably. I now find that the sharpening and noise reduction palette has disappeared entirely from the right hand tools panel. What's going on? I've tried quitting and re-opening Lightroom and also shutting down and restarting my computer. (Macbook Pro retina and Mountain Lion)

If you are talking about the Panel in Develop, right click on any panel header and make sure that Detail is checked.

Disabling Sharpening and Noise Reduction

Hello. I have Lightroom 1.2. I have over a 1,000 images to process. How can I disable sharpening and noise reduction for all of them without having to click that little detail box for each of the images. I use Noiseware for noise reduction and Focalblade for sharpening. If there is something in a folder within Lightroom I can delete to remove sharpening forever, please let me know. Of course, I want to perform the other corrections in Lightroom as necessary. Thank you.
Francis

Jao, Thank you. I have asked this question elsewhere before. I have recieved replies, maybe I did not follow the directions properly, but they never worked. The sharpening would be disableduntil I went to make another correction. Then back to sharpening Lightroom would go. Your way, sharpening is disabled for all the images and stays that way. Thanks again.
Francis

Macbook Pro OSX 10.8 and Epson WF 7525 will no longer print. It did until quite recently . Now I get Filter failed and RastertoescpII when i try to print ( test sheets ok) . Have tried to to uninstall and reinstall but nothing. Any advice, please.

Question ?
Macbook Pro OSX 10.8 and Epson WF 7525 will no longer print.
It did until quite recently . However now I get filter failed and RastertoescpII and pages of items when i try to print .
Print head test sheets/head cleaning etc ok .
Have tried to to uninstall and reinstall but nothing.
Any advice, please?.
ps
The printer deos not show up on Epsons site but i think I have the software from Apple.
Not an ideal situation.

Try a reset > OS X Mountain Lion: Reset the printing system

Sharpening and noise defaults in the Develop Module

Capture Sharpness
I’m getting my head around sharpening and am of the understanding that there are three distinct phases: Capture Sharpening, Creative Sharpening and Output sharpening
With regards to Capture Sharpening I’ve noticed that when I import a CR2 file into Lightroom 3.6 there is an Adobe pre-set in the Develop Module. Is this a form of Capture Sharpening default?
Sharpening
Amount: 25
Radius: 1.0
Detail: 25
Noise Reduction
Luminance: 0
Colour: 25
Detail: 50

In Lr, "capture" sharpening is global sharpening, and "creative" sharpening is local sharpening (or sharpen masking on global basis but tailored to the image), or at least that's one way of looking at it.
in other words, if you're sharpening raw data non-destructively, such that first round of sharpening isn't being baked in, there is no need to separate capture sharpening from creative sharpening, in your mind, or in the software you use.
Put another way, the notion of capture sharpening comes from days when first round of sharpening was baked in, e.g. shooting jpegs, or in raw workflows where first pass yields a baseline tiff, and 2nd pass is artist's choice...
That said, what's needed for artistic sharpening (creative effects) can differ from what's need for baseline sharpening (initial "capture" sharpening, if you will).
Capture sharpening: just make stuff look reasonably sharp, since without it things don't.
Creative sharpening: sky's the limit... - some people consider Clarity to be a form of creative sharpening...
Note: since Lr's sharpening settings can't be varied (there is no way to apply high-radius sharpening in one region, and low-radius sharpening in another), and since its algorithm is aimed primarily at countering inherent and/or subtle/limited unsharpness, some people consider Lr's sharpening to be "capture-only". On the other hand, capture sharpening is, almost by definition, global, so since Lr supports local sharpening, and sharpen masking, those aspects can be considered "creative".
In my opinon, it's best not to get too hung up on semantics/terminology, but in a nutshell, conceptually:
* Capture sharpening needs to be done so stuff looks reasonably sharp, and is often done across the board, not dependent on image content (this is why most people apply a default amount of sharpening in Lightroom).
* Creative sharpening is going beyond initial/default sharpening, generally on an image-by-image basis, although not necessarily. Note: it may involve removing all global "capture" sharpening in favor of no sharpening, or local sharpening only (raw data required).
* Output sharpening depends on resolution and medium etc, and therefore needs to be done last - tailored to output device and such..
Sorry if this post had too high of an answer to question ratio .
Rob

Edge sharpening and noise: your settings?

I am experimenting with edge sharpening. I have a couple of questions.
1. How to lift and stamp JUST the edge sharpening? From the HUD it looks like all the adjustment settings get applied? (Do I need to do anything else but highlight the edge sharpening in the HUD before stamping)?
2. What do you like for portraits as a setting in edge sharpening?
3. What settings for noise reduction? My latest shoot has all kinds of noise (concert photography) due to 1600 ISO.
Any advice welcome here! Thanks so much!

1. All the settings under Adjustments will be stamped, at this point is not possible to select only one adjustment. If you are gonna apply the same settings to few images you can untick the boxes of the adjustments you don't want to copy to other images, then lift the adjustments (only those with the box ticked will be lifted) and stamp it to the others.
2. Edge sharpening is a great tool, the best is to experiment and find the results you like. That depends on many factors as the type of photography, lenses used and even personal taste. Have a look at this document:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304536
3. I don't find noise reduction in aperture any great. Only chroma blur for removing colour noise. At ISO 1600 2.5 setting in chroma blur does the job. Before printing I always bring the image to Photoshop and use Noiseware Professional, which gives great results.

Are sharpening and noise reduction working in 1.0?

I went to see if they'd made any improvements in the noise reduction area, and can't get any of the noise reduction or sharpening settings to effect the image at all. The settings definitely aren't making any changes to the visible image in normal or 100% view.
I tested this on an ISO1600 image to make sure there was visible noise.
Is anyone else seeing this lack of effect?

The server may think it's serving that page to some user-agents, but it ain't working for any over here:
$ curl -o file.jpeg -v http://learningtosee.org/aux_photos/sharpening_test.jpg
* About to connect() to learningtosee.org port 80
* Trying 204.16.138.5... * connected
* Connected to learningtosee.org (204.16.138.5) port 80
> GET /aux_photos/sharpening_test.jpg HTTP/1.1
User-Agent: curl/7.12.2 (i386-pc-win32) libcurl/7.12.2 zlib/1.2.1
Host: learningtosee.org
Pragma: no-cache
Accept: */*
< HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
< Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2007 21:31:06 GMT
< Server: Apache/2.0.52 (CentOS)
< Vary: Accept-Encoding
< Content-Length: 311
< Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 311 100 311 0 0 2159 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 0
* Connection #0 to host learningtosee.org left intact
* Closing connection #0
$

Sharpening and noise reduction

This question was posted in response to the following article: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/lightroom/using/WS67a9e0c3a11b149632d4213d12864349b1a-8000.htm l

Order doesn't matter in Lightroom.

CC update is REALLY confusing and problem filled... need advice please

I have 2 macs. On one, I just clicked on the update all in the CC desktop notification...what a mistake that was! LR would not work at all and PS installed a new version and (I think) updated my old version. But the new version does not have all my plugins working with it - it asked me if I wanted to migrate something (presets or something) and I said yes, but that did not seem to work either.
My question are:
1- do I really want to update Photoshop CC AND Photoshop cc 2014???
2- is there no way to just update the existing version so all the plugins work without an hour or so of figuring out how to reinstall them???
The LR problem I finally solved by downloading 5.5 manually and manually installing over the bad CC desktop install.
whew... what a bungle from Adobe...they are so proud of their new glitzy Web site and new apps and can't even update existing ones with out disaster... I've turned off auto download forever !!!
thanks for the help and for letting me vent ... so much anxiety and wasted time...
cheers,
tom

The main cause of slow system is due to certain heavy applications running in the background
We agree on that.
or because of duplicate and hidden files.
Files visible, hidden, the same as other files, do not do anything, unless they happen to cause the disk to be completely or nearly full. Otherwise they are just 1's and 0's. They are passive (speaking as a paid file system developer).
These files can't be easily removed.
If they can't be removed, then they are essential to the proper operation of the operating system (such as /private/var/vm/swapfie(s)). And if you have huge swapfile(s), then it is an indication of running too many RAM hungry apps concurrently, or a Mac that could use more RAM.
So I think using speed up Mac software is the best solution.
Hang around these forums long enough and you will see that in many cases those speed up, clean up, anti-malware apps "ARE" the "certain heavy applications running in the background" to use your own words. It has been the experience of the long time forum contributors that once these 3rd party utilities are removed, most performance issues and system panics go away.

Clean install of Lion and proper Time Capsule procedure. Advice Please.

Good day all,
I have performed a clean install of Lion. I have previously been using a 1TB Time Capsule to backup my Snow Leopard disk. I did not use the Time Capsule to restore my files to Lion, instead I restored individual files from a backup of my Home folder on a seperate exteral hard drive. I have not yet enabled Time Machine in Lion. Is it advisable to erase the Snow Leopard backups using Airport Utility before enabling Time Machine? If I enable Time Machine without erasing the Time Capsule will it ask me if I want to erase or will it simply begin another set of back up data leaving the previous backups intact?
Thank you!

If you had used Setup Assistant or Migration Assistant to put your data back, Time Machine would do an "incremental" backup, of what's new or changed.
Since you didn't, TM doesn't realize the erased disk has most of the same stuff as before, and will treat your Mac's internal HD as a different one, and will do a new, full backup of it. You cannot prevent that. (If your backups were on an external HD, you could make it "associate" the backups with the "new" disk, but that doesn't work on network backups for some reason.)
So your best bet is probably to erase the TC's internal HD.
If it's quite large, however, you may not have to. If it's at least 2.2 times the size of what's on your internal HD, there will be room for a new backup.

Noise, Sharpening and ACR

I have recently switched from processing my raw files from Aperture to Adobe Camera Raw 4.4.1. I shoot landscapes with the Canon 1Ds Mark III, low ISO, and wish to make very large prints (30-50"). After reading "Real World Camera Raw with CS3" it seems like the authors say that capture sharpening can be accomplished in ACR instead of what I was doing right after Aperture (with sharpening off)- that is, using Ninja Noise and then capture sharpen with Photokit Sharpener. But if I now capture sharpen in ACR I won't be able to use Ninja Noise since one should not sharpen noise. Right? So does this mean that if I capture sharpen in ACR that I should also use ACR's Noise Reduction? Or should I turn off ACR's Sharpening and Noise Reduction and do as I did before - use Ninja and PhotoKit sharpening after raw processing? (I hope this makes sense - I'm still learning the basics). Also any rough settings for what I'm doing would be very helpful. Thanks in advance.

>Not at all. There's ABSOLUTELY nothing wrong with that workflow. I would recommend it myself.
>[EDIT] except I prefer Noise Ninja most of the time, and Noiseware in a few cases.
I've discussed this matter with Gordon on another thread, but a few points are worth repeating here. On page 157 of his Image Sharpening with Adobe Photoshop PSCS2, Bruce Fraser states, "Always do noise reduction before sharpening. If you sharpen, you'll almost certainly make the noise worse; the noise reduction tool will have to work harder, and will probably wipe out the sharpening you did anyway."
Most noise reduction tools do not eliminate noise but merely make it less visible. When you sharpen after noise reduction, some or much of the noise may reappear. If you do the sharpening first, this problem is eliminated, but the effect of your sharpening may also be wiped out.
Sharpening and noise reduction are basically inverse processes and work against another. Some of these problems may be eased with the use of masks. You can use a surface mask during noise reduction to help confine the NR to smooth areas where the noise is most noticeable and keep the NR away from the edges where sharpness would suffer. Similarly, you can use an edge mask during sharpening to help confine the sharpening to the edges.
That said, Noise Ninja can work reasonably well on JPEG images that have been sharpened in camera as they often are. In this case, one has to use a different noise profile for the best results.
Bill

Question re Order of Sharpening and NR

Hello all,
Very quick question regarding order of sharpening and noise reduction. Is NR only supposed to be used to deal with sensor noise (like high ISO noise)? I ask because sharpening obviously introduces noise, which then could be tamed with NR (decreasing sharpness though, right?), but do you really want to do that? Are you supposed to do NR first, then sharpen up and live with the noise introduced therein?
Thanks, and I apologize for the stupid question!
Almost forgot--I do NOT have LR storing metadata in XMP files automatically (the checkbox in the catalog settings), but I noticed that after editing and adding metadata to photos, LR creates XMPs anyway. This confused me, but I checked the folder a little while later and noticed that all the XMPs are gone. Does LR temporarily create the XMPs before its stores in info in the catalog?
Thanks!
f1fan

The order in which you do things in Lightroom is meaningless...Lightroom processes images in its own order which has nothing to do with the order you set parameters.
And yes, Noise Reduction and Sharpening are really interrelated. It could be argued you shouldn't do one without doing the other. Noise Reduction is off by default but even well exposed low ISO images may need noise reduction to optimize the image when proper sharpening is applied.

Capture Sharpen (and other questions)?

I have been a very big advocate of capture sharpening for fine art workflow for more than a few years now (landscape fine art gallery enlargements). I was under the impression that in ACR (7.1) by using the Radius to the left (0.5) and Detail to the right (100) I was maximizing the deconvolution aspect of sharpening and maybe even drawing out a hair more real detail from the raw file.
Today I did a test on a high frequency raw image (trees) and had my settings at Amount 45, Radius 0.5, Detail 0, and masking at 20. But then I also did it on the same image, this way: I brought a second version of the raw file into PS with no capture sharpening, and saved it as a tiff, then I brought that tiff back into ACR 7.1 and then did the capture sharpening. In Photoshop CS6 I put them on top of each other as layers (one raw sharpened and one tiff sharpened) and at all viewing distances they were exactly the same to my eye (I did notice that the histograms of each were very, very slightly different).
But I could not see a single pixel or edge change anywhere in the image even at 1600% viewing distance. This seems to blow away my impression about deconvolution sharpening actually drawing out more real detail from a raw file. I totally understand that sharpening is not real detail, but on this forum years ago I came to believe that somehow a bit more real detail might be accessed in raw by the aforementioned settings. Any thoughts?
Second question: do you really think there is a quantitative quality difference in detail (or the illusion of) in an image that has capture sharpening applied in ACR (7.1) at its native size, then is enlarged substantially with further rounds of sharpening and grain simulation in the end (versus just sizing it up soft and doing all the sharpening at the end)? I did testing on this years ago and it seemed to be noticably better overall. I guess I'm just second guessing it again.
My basic workflow is capture sharpen Radius 05. / Detail 100, then upsize with Smoother (40, 50, 60, 70 inches...) then do some moderate high pass, then advanced use of unsharp mask (LAB - L channel - or Luminosity - RGB - also blending/blend if sliders for fall off if necessary) then ACR grain simulation (on a seperate layer - not to create grainy photos - but create the illusion of more detail and to camouflage artifacting). I believe after years of testing and practice this seems to be about as good as it gets for my content.
Lastly, smart sharpen... I have not used this much, but do you think this workflow might benefit from using it instead of USM (with the more deconvolution - lens blur/more accurate) type of sharpen near the end)?
Side note: for those involved with focus bracketing (for increased depth of field with the sharpest f/stop) it is common knowledge that capture sharpening at the raw stage (before the Auto Align and Auto Blend in PS) confuses the auto blend algorithm as to what are the real sharper pixels. So, we don't capture sharpen those images (this is common practice).
And after blending the images (Auto Blend) we usually just size up (for enlargement) and go. Now I am thinking that after the focus blending is finished and the file is flattened it might be a good idea to bring that tif file back into ACR and apply a little bit of capture sharpening before the upsize. Does that make sense to you?
Cheers for your time and feedback!
Message linebreaks added by: PECourtejoie

Disclaimer: I did not entirely understand the original post, and maybe some of this does not apply in your multi-step process, so take with salt...
ACRFREAK wrote:
With low ISO shots (100) I always try to use the least noise reduction possible in ACR (less is more approach) which means on correctly exposed images ("to the right") on Canon cameras, my ACR settings are often 0 on luminance and 0-5 on color noise.
At ISO 100, I rarely use any luminance noise reduction, however my experience is that even under ideal circumstances including low ISO, a modicum of color noise reduction is still essential for optimum image quality. - it is almost never desirable to set color noise reduction to zero, IMO - YMMV. (Note: in NX2 - you don't even get a choice about it - (true) color noise reduction will be applied, as Nikon sees fit).
Note: ACR's color noise reduction algorithm is image adaptive (it's more "aggressive" on higher ISO shots). You shouldn't see much (if any real) detail loss with color noise reduction at 25 on ISO 100 shots, eh?
ACRFREAK wrote:
My theory is that I am trying to keep a much of the fine detail as possible. Also the reason I like the 0.5 radius and 100 detail.
In my opinion, ideally, the sharpen settings should depend on the photo - type, and inherent focus... (.5/100 may be great for ultra-clean, ultra-sharp landscapes, but may not be appropriate for portraits...)
But different strokes for different folks. (and I don't know what kinds of photos you mainly (or only) shoot).
Rob

Sharpening and noise in ACR 6.3.... advice please

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