C&C Request feedback on appropriateness of sharpening

[relic]

the OP mentions raw, so is the too red in both the post-proc. pgms jpgs and the ones by the camera?

Yest, the jpeg out of the camera also shows too much red. The effect is not huge, but it just gives the image too much warmth in my opinion. Grays are a bit brownish, and browns are a bit reddish (at least to my eyes).

 

[relic]

Have you experimented with any of the settings in Gear/G/Color/WB?

No. I preferred (probably out of ignorance) not to change the output of the camera, since I could do that later. But I guess that this would only change the jpeg output? In which case I'll experiment with it. I didn't think about that. Thanks.

 

[relic]

It helps to look at it as a whole pipeline issue rather than just messing with it in the final output stage:

* super harsh and direct lighting on a highly reflective scale in the original capture - maybe raw has more lattitude here but it's going to have a limit

* nothing in post processing seems to have helped this much (eg using a brush to go over areas of minimal contrast and heighten them by selectively dodging/burning to exaggerate it in the flatter areas) - the lit areas remain lit and the darks seem to have got pushed up

* denoise and sharpen stage has seen these areas of minimal contrast and decided to further obliterate internal contrast in those broad highlight areas and make them look even harsher than they were already by putting sharpening around the edges of them, something that extends to as much as 8 pixels out from the antenna.

I would go back to the RAW, see how much you can push the tonal range of the highlights down before they look unnatural - eg is there an area here that is clearly max to the max 255 bright that is going to look posterised or take on a weird colour if it's pushed down. Then work up from there and brighten shaded areas if you can, and take on the very bright areas with a 2-3px wide brush and see if you can heighten detail with dodge/burn (or lightroom's neat proper tools for this, clarity and dehaze).

On the other hand, if you have a super contrasty image like this it doesn't necessarily hurt to go the other way entirely. You can try and emphasise the stark contrast and leave areas receding into darkness, rather than trying to make an image where you can clearly see all the captured detail in shadow that will just look noisy or unnaturally lit.

I would recommend doing a selective sharpen on the sharper in focus areas and a higher level of denoise on the OOF areas. There's a great tool in photoshop called select > focus area that is great at picking out an area that should be sharp from one that shouldn't. It can give you either in a mask, layer, selection, whatever, and you can feed that into other filters or work on it separately with brushes.

Many thanks for the very detailed analysis and suggestions: you've given me a lot to think about and experiment with. I guess I've now received from all the extremely helpful comments what amounts to quite an advanced course in photography. I shall be printing this whole thread and reading it while practicing and learning (even as some of the suggestions go over my head at the moment). Of course, until my eyes are repaired, anything I do will be hampered by my poor vision.

A million thanks to @piggsy and all the other wonderful forum members who devoted so much or their time to educating me.

 

[Hendrik]

I find that my camera produces too much red. For example, the butterfly wings are grey rather than brown, and the flowers are a bit more toward the yellow rather than orange. And I find this is almost always the case. This probably should be a subject for another thread (actually I have seen a thread that is about this subject), but what I do is two things: I use levels to reduce the red by about 5 to 10 bits, and, if I find that it is still too red (for example the color of the earth is more reddish than brown, I also reduce saturation in the red. I don't know whether one method is preferable to the other, but I sometimes use both out of ignorance just so I don't use too much of one. White balance does not seem to solve the problem (as in clicking the eyedropper on a white part of the image). I used to attribute that to my monitor, but I have since calibrated it and I still get the red problem.

Interesting. In the spirit of experimentation and for what it's worth, I went back to the .psd and re-processed the smart object with the Camera Raw filter with different values. (Now I get full value for using Smart Objects.)

I reduced temperature to 4750.

Knowing that the perception of saturation is reduced as luminance is increased, I increased exposure to + 1.40, accompanying it with a hefty Shadows boost (+40).

I also reduced contrast, knowing that it is a quirk of Adobe Raw processing that doing so also reduces saturation. This was accompanied by an equal Clarity boost.

The resulting decrease in saturation can be recovered by boosting the Saturation slider by around +1/3 the Contrast reduction - in other words, to taste with the slider. In this case, knowing that the Vibrance slider is designed to differentially boost saturation in everything except skin tones (i.e., orange), I restored the saturation of the greens with it.

This leaves the wings a grey-dun color. The most effective of all of these manipulations was the exposure increase. The combination of the Shadows boost and a balanced minus-Contrast/plus-Clarity move is a useful tool for bringing shadows out in high dynamic range situations.

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My solution to this problem has been twofold. First, I try to get closer, either physically or with a longer lens and, second, getting my exposure as far to the right as I can (at least further than you dared, in this instance). Both of these will pay substantial dividends when it comes time to do the processing. In this instance, photographing the sunlit side of the butterfly would have eased processing considerably but may not have been as interesting.

Finally, you need to determine whether the story you wish to tell with the image is the truth, a merely plausible half-truth, or a creative retelling presented in the service of drama or beauty. Sometimes the image will force your hand.

 

[ralf-11]

ok, since the jpg is not as bad or biased, that means the in camera processing engine is doing a better job than the post-processing software

1st thing is to check camera settings for that vs. the software on the computer - e.g. cloudy vs. std. etc

 

[relic]

Interesting. In the spirit of experimentation and for what it's worth, I went back to the .psd and re-processed the smart object with the Camera Raw filter with different values. (Now I get full value for using Smart Objects.)

I reduced temperature to 4750.

Knowing that the perception of saturation is reduced as luminance is increased, I increased exposure to + 1.40, accompanying it with a hefty Shadows boost (+40).

I also reduced contrast, knowing that it is a quirk of Adobe Raw processing that doing so also reduces saturation. This was accompanied by an equal Clarity boost.

The resulting decrease in saturation can be recovered by boosting the Saturation slider by around +1/3 the Contrast reduction - in other words, to taste with the slider. In this case, knowing that the Vibrance slider is designed to differentially boost saturation in everything except skin tones (i.e., orange), I restored the saturation of the greens with it.

This leaves the wings a grey-dun color. The most effective of all of these manipulations was the exposure increase. The combination of the Shadows boost and a balanced minus-Contrast/plus-Clarity move is a useful tool for bringing shadows out in high dynamic range situations.

My solution to this problem has been twofold. First, I try to get closer, either physically or with a longer lens and, second, getting my exposure as far to the right as I can (at least further than you dared, in this instance). Both of these will pay substantial dividends when it comes time to do the processing. In this instance, photographing the sunlit side of the butterfly would have eased processing considerably but may not have been as interesting.

Finally, you need to determine whether the story you wish to tell with the image is the truth, a merely plausible half-truth, or a creative retelling presented in the service of drama or beauty. Sometimes the image will force your hand.

Thank you again so much for your time and trouble on my behalf. I'm must admit that much of the first part of your post is way above my head (and I think above the capability of my Elements software) but as I said, I'll print this whole thread for future reference as I learn more. I'll try to experiment with color temperature, but (except when I forget or when I don't have time to adjust camera settings-- bugs and the like don't usually wait) I use the "correct" value (in the sense of "sunlight" when the object is in sunlight, but when part is in shadow, it gets rather tricky). I do realize that "sunlight" spans quite a range of color temperatures, so I will try in the future to experiment with the setting during processing. Regarding the story I wish to tell: I mostly take bug mug shots, and may aim is to show them as close to what I saw as possible (I am not artistically inclined, so the only aesthetic thing I do is try to crop the image in a way that looks balanced to my eyes). So often I have to bring out the shadows because often the lighting is harsh. I do tend to underexpose because even with that I usually need to reduce the highlights slider in order to avoid local blown highlights. I'll try your suggestion of exposing to the right, but that would probably involve more blown highlights even when the "live" histogram is within the right edge. The reason I generally use the raw file is because it does allow me to deal with highlights and shadows more easily (as well as correct white balance when I fail to set it correctly in camera). Getting closer to the subject is often not practicable (a butterfly would likely not be there if I have to change lenses, and often it doesn't like me to get too close).
Having said all that, I shall study your posts over time (there is so much in it) and try to implement (or at least experiment with) what I can.
Thank you again so much for using so much of your time and for effort in experimenting and explaining.

 

[relic]

ok, since the jpg is not as bad or biased, that means the in camera processing engine is doing a better job than the post-processing software

1st thing is to check camera settings for that vs. the software on the computer - e.g. cloudy vs. std. etc

Thank you so much. I will do as you suggest and also experiment more with color temperature both in the software, and (when possible) in the camera setting. Again, many thanks.