HS10 Ultrasharp Moonshoot

maisatomai said:

Yours, which is shot at HS10 ISO100 f/8 1/60s. I did not post the URL in order not to flood this thread with repost. Can please teach me?

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Kim Letkeman said:

The sharpening protocol I use is a combination of several tools. I'll give it to you straight, and then make some recommendations for variations:

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Kim Letkeman said:

maisatomai said:

Yours, which is shot at HS10 ISO100 f/8 1/60s. I did not post the URL in order not to flood this thread with repost. Can please teach me?

Click to expand...

Ok ... your posts are coming in under the wrong locations in threaded view. I presume that you use flat view and are not being precise about which "reply" button you are hitting.

It does not hurt at all to repost an URL for a small image on a different server. Load times are quick for almost everyone ...

The sharpening protocol I use is a combination of several tools. I'll give it to you straight, and then make some recommendations for variations:

1. Capture sharpen in ACR6 to remove the slight blurring effect of the anti-aliasing filter.

2. Contrast adjustments in ACR6 to pull out details ... but often you have to reduce contrast because the lighter details matter too.

3. After the transfer to CS5, I work on local contrast. This can be done many ways. I often run a clarify filter from Noel Carboni's dSLR Tools action set. You obviously need Elements or Photoshop to run these.

http://www.prodigitalsoftware.com/dSLR_Tools.html

Note: I also like his "more vivid color" and "local contrast enhancement" actions.

4. And then there is Topaz. I sometimes use Adjust 4 and / or Denoise 4 to clean up the image and extract massive details. Adjust can pull detail like crazy ... but it also pulls noise along with it. But Denoise works in concert and can keep the noise down. Once run, I often tune the final effect with opacity (run it on a layer) or fade (same effect, but less easy to use.)

5. I sometimes use PKSharpener's haze cutter filters to paint in changes to the

Now ... variations.

For local contrast, you can use the unsharp mask filter with low amount and high radius settings. That's the trick for affecting contrast more than edge sharpening.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/contrast-enhancement.shtml
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/techniques/local-contrast-enhancement.htm

This technique can get you a long way ... and it does not pull all that much noise.

If you want a reasonably priced tool for noise reduction, consider Neat Image. But learn the sliders and remember to leave some grain at 100% ... it will help preserve details and yet will vanish at web sizes.

Let me know if you want more info ...

--
http://kimletkeman.blogspot.com
http://letkeman.net/Photos

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chuckielpn said:

Question: do you typically sharpen before or after using neat image?

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Kim Letkeman said:

chuckielpn said:

Question: do you typically sharpen before or after using neat image?

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Actually, there are three stages of sharpening as documented by the world's foremost guru on such matters -- Bruce Fraser (r.i.p.) His book is called "Real World Image Sharpening" and is a terrific read. The tool that came out of that body of work is called Photokit Sharpener (PKSharpener for short) and is very good.

Stage 1: Capture

You remove the effects of the anti aliasing filter but you do not go as far as visible halos.

Stage 2: Creative

This is a combination of global and local contrast adjustments, edge enhacements and softening. There are more tools and tricks here than you can shake a stick at.

Stage 3: Output

After all is said and done, you save a copy of the working file if you plan to output to more than one media. Then, for each media you: (a) resize to the exact size and ppi (e.g. for an 8x10 on a continuous tone printer like the Fuji Frontier, you need to resize to 300ppi at 2400x3000 pixels); and (b) sharpen the resized file for the specific media. Light sharpening for 800px web image through to heavy sharpening for a contone 300 image ... a 360ppi Epson ink jet would be in the middle somewhere. PKSharpener handles different media semi-automatically.

Typically, you do noise reduction as close to the beginning as possible. These days, I do it after capture sharpening in ACR itself if possible. Sometimes, I run either NI or Topax Denoise after transferring to photoshop. But typically it should be done before creative work starts to mangle the noise into something the tool cannot recognize.

--
http://kimletkeman.blogspot.com
http://letkeman.net/Photos

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animedia said:

Wow so many steps, I just used the smart sharp to 180% for the first picture, and for the next picture I used Neat Image software and default mode to remove the noise

I really wish that someone can post a youtube video tutorial of how to get the best.

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