Thoughts on new(est) clarity (Lr4.0)?

My .02
=====
Review of old clarity (PV2010):
Mostly increased midtone contrast, but also would darken dark edges (and produce a faint glow in adjacent light areas - "halos"). Would not clarify shadows. Because highlight recovery in Lr3 was weak, one needed to keep contrast low-ish to keep from blowing out the highlights. Old clarity was often the bridge that allowed that extra sense of midtone contrast. Had a way of really darkening dark edges and fine regions, not just brightening light edges and fine regions. I used it on >50% of my photos.
Enter PV2012:
Offers the tools to produce magically clear photos to begin with, and allows strong midtone contrast via contrast slider without losing highlight detail, so extra clarity is not usually needed.
New clarity (Lr4-beta):
Brightened and clarified everything. Gave things a bit of a gritty/grungy look, in my opinion. Not appropriate for most photos (great for others...). I used it on <10% of my photos (way less). One may have needed to compensate for its effects by -exposure...
New(est) clarity (Lr4.0):
In many ways similar to new clarity in the beta, but in many ways very different, and more similar to old clarity from PV2010. Like new(beta) clarity, it affects all regions, but has less of a gritty/grungy look, and like old clarity (pv10), accents the darks more than brightening the lights. I don't use a global dose of it on most photos, but I do use a touch of it on far more photos than new(beta) clarity.
If more than a touch is used, it will produce significant darkening most prevalent at the bottom-most end - will even increase black clipping. One may need to compensate via +blacks...
+blacks undoes some of what +clarity does in the shadows, thus it is a very valuable method for "easing" its effect in the shadows, which can otherwise be a bit "much" sometimes.
Rob

hamish niven wrote: Subtle, but nice pointers Rob thanks
You're welcome .
hamish niven wrote: I will definitely play with the whites as it really makes the images sing a little.
My whites rule:
* +whites if possible (and desirable), -whites if necessary (or desirable).
hamish niven wrote: I'm a great fan of compressed blacks, so Ive not pushed the blacks above +10
I've learned not to think of blacks as setting the amount of blacks, or setting black clip point, but as the shadow slider's partner in determining the ratio of deep-shadow to shallow-shadow fill, as nececessary, if necessary, for the individual photo. I mean sometimes shadows slider alone can provide sufficient shadow fill and blacks can be set to clip, but sometimes the blacks slider must take a more active roll in filling the shadows, and tone curve used instead of blacks slider to set amount of blacks to "crush". And now that I've discovered its other purpose as partner to +clarity... I've been able to jack clarity up to 100 and as long as +blacks is high enough they don't look nearly so over clarified (so far only for testing...) - especially if you lower regular contrast too. Its possible to have blacks set way high and still have lots of clipped blacks, and sometimes it may be just the right thing to do.
An extreme example, working from your original (tiny - from the web page as we see it - I should have saved the bigger image "behind" it) ALREADY COOKED jpeg - so settings are not what they would be for the raw:
Anyway, you know - PV2012 slider values can be very non-intuitive: highlights = -50 may still mean really bright highlights...
I'll be looking for your horse to race.
PS - I don't think new(est) Lr4.0 clarity is gritty and grungy. In fact, the word "clean" springs to mind to describe it. I did think Lr4-beta clarity was gritty and grungy. Eric figured out what it was and fixed it. New(est) clarity tends to look "blackened" fairly quickly if pushed, which is why the +blacks compensation is so exciting. As far as I'm concerned, Lr4.0 clarity is way better than the beta.
Also, as you may have already noticed, +vib/sat can help make up for loss of color due to +clarity.
Cheers,
Rob

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Just when I thought I new how progressive and interlaced are working....

Hey everyone.
I thought I new the difference between progressive and interlaced but I've still got a few questions. For the most part... i get it. Progressive is like 1 solid picture. Interlaced breaks up the picture into interlaced lines and 2 fields, odd and even . Great, that much I've got.
Here's my issues.
This is actually a compressor question but it starts off with Final Cut.
I shot some footage on Mini DV NTSC 29.97 interlaced.
When I edit it in Final Cut things look pretty good. I see a little interlacing in the preview window but that's ok, it's the preview window. I know there is a filter to de-interlace my footage but what is the option in my sequence settings of Field Dominance? There is an option of field Dominance- Lower, even and None. Lower and even I assume deal with interlacing fields. I assumed none meant progressive. What's the point of needing a filter if I can change the field dominance within my sequence settings? Does it do the same thing?
If I export this footage to compressor I use the H.264 codec from inside compressor.
I noticed that I can turn the Frame Controls tab of my setting on. I then have access to the resizing controls. Resize Filter... not sure what that is. Then Output fields. I change that to progressive. Which I assume deinterlaced everything... but then there is another option right below that to Deinterlace....? Didn't I just do that by saying their are no fields? On a final note after it exports and I go to look at the .mov... the footage is still interlaced.
One last thing with compressor. The above issues are all part of my setting inside of the inspector for the actual "codec" i have attached to the project. If I mouse click on the project itself... not the settings of the codec but the project itself, the information inside my inspector window changes. Now instead of Codec Settings I have A/V Attributes... there is an option there for Native Field Dominance? Which one do I change? How many field dominances are there? I have 1 in Final Cut another 1 in my AV Attributes of my project in compressor and a 3rd on in the codec settings.
I hope these questions make sense. They are confusing issues to me so I'm not quite sure how to ask them.
Thanks a lot.
-Drew

It's not surprising that you're confused. It's a pretty confusing subject. Hopefully, I can help you get some sense out of it.
Most of your questions stem from not quite understanding the definitions of "deinterlacing", "progressive frame rate", and "field dominance". Let's start with the last since it pertains to your first question.
When you have interlaced footage, you have 2 fields (as you noted) per frame. One field is drawn on the Odd (or Upper) scan lines of the TV. 1,3,5,7...down to 479. The other field takes the Even (or Lower) scan lines: 2,4,6,8...480. Together they are woven into a single frame.
The field dominance in your sequence settings determines which field is drawn first. DV and NTSC in general is Lower field dominant and if your footage is DV, you should not change this. Interlaced HD is typically Upper field dominant. Again, under most circumstances, this should not be changed. What will likely occur is a "tearing" of the image in movement, particularly noticed in pans or fast action. None draws each line successively which is how progressive footage needs to be interpreted.
However, progressive does NOT mean deinterlaced. Nor does deinterlaced mean progressive. If you use the deinterlace filter in FCP on your DV footage, you merely remove one field from your footage and REPLACE it with a copy of the field you kept. In other words, if you set the deinterlace for Upper, then the clip will copy the image in the Lower field and paste it into the Upper field. The footage will still be interlaced.
In Compressor, changing the Output to Progressive in the frame controls will make your interlaced footage progressive. This should always be done when the final viewing medium is a computer. You see, computer monitors always display thing progressively; they have trouble with interlacing frames. They are not built like TVs. If going to TV, then you want to keep it interlaced (unless you're going for the progressive look), as that is how standard def TVs are designed to view video.
The deinterlace option in Compressor is the same as the filter in FCP, but as you know now, that's not the same thing as making a file progressive.
Finally, the AV settings for the clip you placed in Compressor are the same as the sequence settings in FCP. They help the program determine how the file should be displayed. If you have DV footage, and you switch the dominance in that setting or in FCP, then you risk having your footage look jittery and generally no good.
I hope this clears things up for you a bit.
Andy

I have to restart my computer at least once every day in order to get my podcast to update? I thought the new version would fix this but it's just getting worse. Please help.

I have to restart my computer at least once every day in order to get my podcast to update? I thought the new version would fix this but it's just getting worse. Please help

Did you check the Processes tab in the Task Manager?
See "Hang at exit":
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Thoughts on new Clarity Adjustment

Hi,
Firstly great to see the new beta, and am in general liking the change in the develop module, particularly when processing high dynamic ranage images.
However, just some of my thoughts on the new Clarity slider. Interested to hear what others views are...
The Good....
- The new clarity slider is definitely better at preventing halos. Great.
- The clarity slider provides a much greater 'rnage of effect' for those that want to push things. Great.
The not so Good (for me at least)
- Even small changes in the clarity slider seem to have quite a pronounced effect on the overall image brighness - increasing it overall in the image I've tried so far.
With this behaviour I'm finding it hard to get the local contrast increase that clarity provides without having to then go back through the other sliders to bring the general image brightness levels back to where they were.
Is anyone else finding a similar effect?
Thanks,
Andy.

I would like to contribute an example where the difference seems especially prominent.
The first photograph is clarity v1 set to 100, the second is with no adjustments and the third is with clarity v2 set to 30. I couldn't really match the settings because the effect is so different, but 30 seemed to produce the same overall enhancement.
Also note that I had to set the exposure to -0.16 in the v2 image because clarity brightened the image.
(Images are distributed for comparison purposes only)
The best way to see the effect is of course to toggle between the downloaded images. Because the resizing in my browser seems exceptionally bad (I can't see a difference in the images at all).
That way you should be able to see that clarity v1 effects pretty much the opposite regions (sky) that clarity v2 (shadows) affects, at least from a visual perceptive point of view.
For such images, I could probably never reproduce the v1 effect with any v2 setting plus tonal adjustments.
And I really like the silhoutte images where I increase the blacks a little bit, but not too much. Clarity v2 then punishes me by revealing more details in them...
Of course I could provide countless examples where v1 doesn't stand a chance against v2.

Personal thoughts on new site design

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Thought 2:
Looking for the 'forum' I'm interested in seems harder than it should be.
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Is it possible to add a magic button that will "Format and color PL/SQL" selected code?
(and can that be an Plugin for APEX?)

This isn't APEX. It is still Jive, but a newer version. Regarding code, you can in the advanced editor. Click the advanced editor link in the standard editor, then select your code and choose the double arrows -> Syntax Highlighting.
The code tags are apparently no longer necessary. (Which I personally welcome).

Any thoughts on new keyboard?

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Added New Hard Drive, LR4 Won't Write to it, even though selected in Import Dialog

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Cheers for your help.
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or something like that. This drives me to the conclusion that you guys are on a role. Indeed setting my Raptor to Active was probably all it needed in the first place. Thank you very much already for that little piece of information.
So now the new question becomes, can I copy NTLDR from my xp cd into my WINDOWS directory and assume it will boot on SCSI? (or perhaps if I would remove my Seagate). I've tried to re-copy an NTLDR file for someone a year ago but there were many different versions of the file. I can still boot to XP if I set boot device to HDD-0, don't forget. And I did a windows search for NTLDR and it doesn't come up anywhere. Now what?
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I need help updating LR4 so I can import Nikon Df images. When I try to update, a message says, no new updates. How do I get new updates for LR4?

I need to update LR4 so I can import Nikon Df images. When I try to update a message says there are no new updates. Please help?

Adobe - Lightroom : For Macintosh
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Any Thoughts on New iMac Fusion Drive for Editing Video

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Thanks, I've read it, well I should say I've tried to read it. Somewhat over my head, but not totally. I'm just curious if some of the video editing tasks would be done on the HDD or faster SSD drive. I'll have to go back to the article and see if there is any mention of that type of task.
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I thought the new MBA Mid 2012 would ship with ML OS X?

^ title.
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New installation of LR4 and nothing is active or clickable

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Some thoughts on new features and workarounds

Hey Gang,
I am a recent FCP7 convert, actually used to use PPro up unitl 2005. A couple things have really bugged me and I think that these requests may be helpful to some of you or perhaps you know an easy workaround.
One thing that is annoying is the lack of "Apple" keystrokes in the MacOS version. For isntance when trying to select multiple clips with the selection tool I am unable to hold down the Apple key to add additional clips to my selection.
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In FCP I used to be able to rightclick a selected audio or video clip near an edit and find "Add Video/Audio Crossfade". Yes there is a shortcut for this but some times the dissovles show up on tracks that are highlighted on the left. This is another funny Premiere thing that I guess I'll get used to, but I am not sure why I need to highight the clip and the track when all I want to do is apply something to that clip?
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Please be sure to submit these feature requests where the right folks will be certain to see them:
http://www.adobe.com/go/wish
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hi
I just have received my new iMac 27" today and am really overwhelmed. the only thing one needs to get used to is the new magic mouse.
the fact that the scrollball click and the 2 buttons on the side are missing, means that there are 2 options less than for the mighty mouse. a thing I really do not understand, if the mouse can determine a rightclick leftclick and even swipes for scrolling, I do not understand why apple hasn't implemented a 2finger click and a 3finger click as well. shoould be possible as it is a software related issue IMHO.
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This should be an option - if not the default value - the user can set. That would improve the performance & usability so much more. Please fix it!
Who are you talking to? As I’m sure you recall from your careful reading of the Terms of Service you agreed to when you joined the Apple Discussions, this is a User to User forum. Apple aren’t here. They don’t promise to read anything here.
http://www.apple.com/feedback
to send a message to Apple.
Regards
TD

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no-more-holds wrote:
I was told that the New DVR which is what i have, i guess its called a media center or something like that was supposed to record more than 2 shows simultaneously but found out last night that not to be true. I had 3 scheduled and 1 of them did not record.
its next to impossible to make 1 show record at a later time, in the instance of a series because you would have to allow it to record 1st run and repeats. I don't want it to record older previous episodes. If I set it at only 1st run it would skip the later time becaue it is no longer 1st run it is now a repeat.
there needs to be a better option available for series or truly allow to record more than 2 shows at a time.
If the media server you have (Arris VMS1100) is only recording 2 shows at once then you aren't signed up for enhanced service which does cost more per month.
All new customers are getting the VMS boxes however you have to add the correct service to be able to record 6 shows at once. If you don't have enhanced then Verizon limits the box to be able to only use 2 tuners.
If you want the 6 tuner option you have to upgrade through your account online or call them for them to add the enhanced service.
I don't know if thats what you wanted and did order it and Verizon didn't configure your account correctly or not, but thats how it works.
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Sign into your account online and go to add/change service. Once you are on the add/upgrade my services pages, on the left click on tv equipment & outlets. You should then see an option to add the enhanced service on it. If it is not there then you will have to call.

Thoughts on new(est) clarity (Lr4.0)?

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