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05-23-2013, 07:56 PM   #1
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I grabbed Topaz Clarity outright. Have some samples for everyone.

I completely spaced on the 30 day trial Topaz offers and wound up buying Clarity outright. I figured I'd share some samples from it - these are all straight OOC JPGs/DNGs that I then simply used the plugin on without any other editing except for a bit of cropping and dust bunny stomping on a few shots prior to running it through the paces.

So far, I like it, which is good because I would of kicked myself for blowing $30 on something I didn't like otherwise.

By and large the results trend towards subtle - which isn't a bad thing at all. I usually use Photomatix and faux-HDRing to mimic pretty much what I'm getting here.

If I actually did any editing and post besides just running the single filter, I'm sure the results would be a lot stronger as well, but for the sake of just seeing what I could do running Clarity solo, this isn't a bad set of results.

In case its not obvious, top is original, bottom is post-Clarity.




















05-23-2013, 08:20 PM   #2
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Pretty impressive, particularly given how little effort you said you put into the process.
05-23-2013, 08:33 PM   #3
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QuoteOriginally posted by Docrwm Quote
Pretty impressive, particularly given how little effort you said you put into the process.
I think the most work I put in was for the crow - I was aiming to try to get the detail from him. It didn't go quite as well as I'd hoped, but I was also limiting myself to only using that plugin. If I could have fiddled with sliders elsewhere I could probably have popped the detail nicely.
05-23-2013, 11:45 PM   #4
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The backlit leaves and the nightshot really benefit from your "editing." With the rest I feel like the lightroom slider would do as well.

05-24-2013, 12:51 AM   #5
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QuoteOriginally posted by FlashMuller Quote
The backlit leaves and the nightshot really benefit from your "editing." With the rest I feel like the lightroom slider would do as well.
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.
05-24-2013, 01:05 AM   #6
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QuoteOriginally posted by Sagitta Quote
I think the most work I put in was for the crow - I was aiming to try to get the detail from him.
Just thought you might like to see it quickly run through ACR+PS for comparison. Of course I'm only working with your screen shot.

Last edited by wildman; 05-31-2013 at 08:49 PM.
05-24-2013, 09:19 AM   #7
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QuoteOriginally posted by wildman Quote
Just thought you might like to see it quickly run through ACR+PS for comparison. Of course I'm only working with your screen shot.
I actually may have had it default through ACR as I dumped the image into Photoshop to run Topaz (if the original was a DNG, I did). I'm sure I could do better than I did, its simply a matter of sitting down and futzing with the thing for a while.If I could get a result like you did THEN run it through Clarity it would probably come out even nicer. In fact....


Last edited by Sagitta; 05-24-2013 at 09:27 AM.
05-24-2013, 09:26 AM   #8
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Thats your JPG worked throug Clarity just to see what happens. The sunset colors are starting to creep into the shot, which is kind of impressive since it was so mild/in the background in the original.


05-24-2013, 09:26 AM   #9
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Nice results! I'm one whole likes a really sharp clear image and it looks like the Clarity tool works well.

I downloaded the trial last night, and followed the instructions to also download their Fusion Express to work in Lightroom. After an hour of not being able to get it to work, I got frustrated and un-installed it.
05-24-2013, 09:31 AM   #10
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QuoteOriginally posted by stormtech Quote
Nice results! I'm one whole likes a really sharp clear image and it looks like the Clarity tool works well.

I downloaded the trial last night, and followed the instructions to also download their Fusion Express to work in Lightroom. After an hour of not being able to get it to work, I got frustrated and un-installed it.
I use it via Photoshop. I tend to open a file via that, then work on it if possible. Lightroom is for quick and dirty fixes for me, and to be able to find stuff. I tend to have a somewhat convoluted workflow - I open with lightroom, fnid the date/title of a file, then open it via photoshop (since Lightroom bypasses ACR, or at the least I haven't been able to get it to behave itself and open files that way), then go from there.

I'm trying to wean myself from Picasa since the database went PFFFFt on me with that, but I like the facial recognition feature so keep it installed if I need to find a portrait fast to work with.
05-24-2013, 02:03 PM   #11
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Since we are talking about canned quick and dirty one click software I thought I would run this through Perfect Portrait just to see what would come out the other end. This was at default.
However it was first run through ACR where I always try get the usual stuff more or less correct before I passed it on to Perfect Portrait in PS.
I hope you don't mind it's kind of fun to just compare side by side what the different software will do to a file.

Last edited by wildman; 05-31-2013 at 08:49 PM.
05-25-2013, 07:38 AM   #12
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Been thinking about this sort of "one step" software so I installed Clarity. I also have a similar program called Perfectly Clear.

Anyway took a challenging back light DNG file and ran it through the following

1. ACR with no processing ("ACR defaults")
2. Clarity using "General" and "Med contrast boost 1"
3. Perfectly Clear using "Fix Dark" (Clarity had no setting like this that I could find)
4. My usual roll my own by hand using ACR and whatever else that helps in PS.

Thought the results were interesting.

Last edited by wildman; 05-31-2013 at 08:49 PM.
05-25-2013, 09:56 AM   #13
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Sagitta ,Wildman, or anyone else who can answer my questions: What is the difference between Topaz Detail 3 and Topaz Clarity? If you have Topaz Detail 3 do you still need Topaz Clarity if you have lightroom 4? Are either of these programs necessary if you have Lightroom 4 ? Thanks.
05-25-2013, 04:29 PM   #14
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QuoteOriginally posted by V'cuz Quote
Sagitta ,Wildman, or anyone else who can answer my questions: What is the difference between Topaz Detail 3 and Topaz Clarity? If you have Topaz Detail 3 do you still need Topaz Clarity if you have lightroom 4? Are either of these programs necessary if you have Lightroom 4 ? Thanks.
I can't say whether you need it with LR or not, but I can definitely say Clarity works better than Detail 3 for its intended purpose for one huge reason - grain and the halo effect. Clarity somehow manages its voodoo without causing everything to explode into a mess of grain and halos if you take things too far (unless of course you crank micro contrast up to silly levels, but thats a given)

In the end, post processing really comes down to what your personal preferences and likes are. I've seen people pull off stuff with software I'd never use in a million years because I can't wrap my brain around them. I know I tend to be a bit weird in my own process work, so again - grain of salt. 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.







Extreme example, but considering both Detail 3 and Clarity had their sliders maxxed for these...






This is what I came up with when I processed it ~for serious~. I actually went with Clarity and Simplify (to crisp up the edges of the limbs and the like).



And this is what I came up with using only Lightroom 3 for processing. No idea how much better 4 may be for soloing shots like this.

05-25-2013, 10:45 PM   #15
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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.
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