A few shots on the streets of Hermosillo

richard stone wrote:

Ted

Thank you for your post and information. Yes, I checked your references, after looking into CBDL (Contrast By Detail Level) in RT. I have not used that function in RT yet.

I will try RT and CBDL on some of the SD10 shots. Combined with the better lenses I have now (The 30mm 1.4 is really very sharp.) it should make the SD10 more like a newer digital camera. Alternatively I could look into the results on sdQ images shot on the low resolution setting.

I would imagine RT and CBDL could be helpful on the older DP cameras too.

Yes, the good thing is being able to adjust fine (micro) detail independently of larger detail:

"Contrast by Detail Levels uses wavelet decomposition to decompose the image into six levels, each adjusted by a slider. Slider 0 (Finest) has a pixel radius of 1, sliders 1 to 5 have a pixel radius of approximately 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32 pixels. Giving a slider a value less than 1.0 decreases local contrast at that level, while giving it a higher value increases it. Thus you can use it to increase perceived sharpness of an image, to increase local contrast, or to mitigate certain levels of detail."

'mitigate certain levels of detail' means that you can go negative, i.e. reduce skin pores and keep the beauty spots.

Lots more here:

http://rawpedia.rawtherapee.com/Contrast_by_Detail_Levels

For most images I'll click once on the + button (moves all the sliders to the right a bit); then move up and enable the impulse noise reduction as-is; then move up to the top and select and enable RL deconvolution if I want to sharpen - generally 0.4 to 0.6px radius and about 65% amount; the other two sliders left as-is.