[civiletti]

LR4's clarity works quite well for increasing microcontrast, but, as mentioned previously, it can increase overall contrast too much. NIK Viveza II's structure function increases microcontrast with very little increase in overall contrast. Topaz Clarity appears to give results intermediate to LR4 and Viveza II.

[TastyCelery]

But you have to take price difference into account ... Topaz Claritiy is 3-4x cheaper than Viveza or Perfectly Clear and still gives you great results.

[DeadJohn]

The lightroom slider can easily blow the highlights though, which is where this came in nice. That crow shot for instance would never have survived a Lightroom slider - the sky would have gone absolutely brutal. The same goes for the snow shots - I was able to actually darken the snow to get details while making the rest pop a bit. Lightroom would have failed me on those.

I think you're misunderstanding Lightroom 4. Perhaps you have an earlier version. You'll only blow the highlights and get a brutal sky if you increase the Exposure slider. In Lightroom 4 there are additional sliders that cover narrower portions of the curve. You can lighten just the dark areas, or dim just the bright areas.

For example, I took your unprocessed crow and adjusted the Shadows slider. That brightens the dark feathers without touching the sky. Things still looked a bit washed-out so I boosted the Clarity slider; Contrast achieves something similar. Working from a RAW file would achieve even better results.

[civiletti]

I think you're misunderstanding Lightroom 4. Perhaps you have an earlier version. You'll only blow the highlights and get a brutal sky if you increase the Exposure slider. In Lightroom 4 there are additional sliders that cover narrower portions of the curve. You can lighten just the dark areas, or dim just the bright areas.

For example, I took your unprocessed crow and adjusted the Shadows slider. That brightens the dark feathers without touching the sky. Things still looked a bit washed-out so I boosted the Clarity slider; Contrast achieves something similar. Working from a RAW file would achieve even better results.

But LR4 clarity does increase overall contrast. Yes, that can be mitigated with exposure and contrast controls, but increasing microcontrast and edge definition without increasing overall contrast is not without merit.

[wildman]

Just because some of these look better than others doesn't mean the software is necessarily better, it just means I'm better with that type of software than the others.

I have, probably, a lot more software for PP than most.
By and large I've found that, say, a given method of sharpening, contrast enhancement or whatever is not better just that it works differently for different software.

I think the the most important skill for PP is the ability to evaluate a file to see what it needs and to come up with a workflow with appropriate software for that particular file. There's no good or bad or right and wrong only optimal choices.

[newmikey]

you can get the same effect by using unsharp masking - the problem with this edge definition technique is that lenses with less than excellent handling of chromatic aberrations are going to produce some pretty hideous results.

That's exactly what I was thinking! I regularly apply USM with a large radius and extremely low power/amount to improve clarity (microcontrast). Why would I need a $30 software to do that? Is it because we tend to favor ready-cooked actions rather than actually learning how to use our image editing programs?

[Sagitta]

With the "LERN 2 PP" comments I went in and did some unsharp masking on a shot from a decade ago, taken with a cheap-ass pocket camera (I would hesitate to even call it a point and shoot). Its a Bell and Howell... something. 3.1 megapixels if I remember right. These are full size images as the camera produced them. The very definition of a 'lousy quality original'. I spent almost the exact same time in post for both shots - one with unsharp masking twiddling the three sliders in photoshop, one with Clarity twiddling its 7 or so sliders, just to see which worked better for me.

I'll let everyone else be the judge as to the results.

Original OOC JPG



Unsharp Masked



Clarity



Mind I was purposely doing this 'fast and dirty' - if I spent more time / mixed in other PP elements I probably could have done a better job than this with both techniques, but this round goes to Clarity for me at least. The clouds came out much, MUCH better.

EDIT: Feel free to grab the original and see what you can do with unsharping - as I said, different methods/different people and all, I'm pretty sure others could do better than I did.

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Last edited by Sagitta; 05-31-2013 at 09:33 AM.

[Sagitta]

On a whim I ran one of my recent single in shots through both clarity AND unsharp masking to see what happened.

[newmikey]

Guys, guys, no need to get excited! There is a difference between using USM as a sharpening tool and using the same USM for clarity - the settings are radically different and "twiddling the three sliders in photoshop" will not show you the difference.

Please have a look at Contrast Enhancement(on Lumininous Landscape)

[wildman]

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