[biz-engineer]

Micro-contrast is often refer to image characteristic coming from lens optics. I've been able to improve local contrast by increasing clarity in post, but it also comes with increasing noise in the image. The other way I found to make images look better was to increase global contrast, but this results in darker shadows, deeper shadows is not what I want, I often need to raise shadows because I feel like shadows from my digital camera is too deep compared what my eyes can see. So, the problem is, how to increase micro-contrast without increasing global contrast? Any idea? Thanks for any experience and know how shared.

[ffking]

The facetious answer is buy better lenses

The more serious answer depends a bit on what software you use, but have you tried the trick which in Lightroom is holding down alt while you slide the black or white sliders to the point where you get the first tiny bit of colour on the B&W rendering - that gives you the maximum global contrast for the scene without blocking or blowing and you can work on micro contrast in specific areas to bring them up if required - you seldom want all areas of a scene to be that contrasty as local contrast, like sharpness, helps emphasise the bits you want emphasised.

[pid]

try to reduce the brightness of the shadows and than increase the contrast.

[microlight]

It’s possible to use additional clarity for micro-contrast and then deal with the noise as the last stage of processing. In ACR (Lr is the same, I believe, but I don’t use it) you can use the Alt key trick to optimise noise reduction and sharpening at the same time.

- Zoom to 100 or 200% to show up the noise, then move the luminance noise slider until the noise is reduced to what’s acceptable for you (not too far, to avoid the plasticky look).
- Subtract the numerical value from 100 and put the resultant number in the sharpening box.
- Now the magic bit: hold the alt key and move the masking slider to the right until you get a monochrome outline of the edges that will be sharpened, and the rest will be noise-reduced. I use typically 95 to 99% position of the slider.

[BigMackCam]

I'm not sure how to approach this generically, however... RawTherapee has a very effective micro-contrast tool that has very little effect on noise. It's worth trying if you haven't done so already...

[fs999]

I first remove all noise (even at 100 ISO) then I add clarity...

[UncleVanya]

Can you Post examples of what you want vs what you end up with...

[mcgregni]

How about using the "High Pass Filter" sharpening method. An internet search should bring up some tutorials for Photoshop use.

[StiffLegged]

How about using the "High Pass Filter" sharpening method. An internet search should bring up some tutorials for Photoshop use.

Sean Tucker has a good YouTube video on that.

You Tube

You Tube

[thazooo]

Topaz Labs plugin 'Details' is interesting. It can increase Micro Contrast and if it generates noise you can adjust your sliders to eliminate the problem. Sliders include Large, Medium and Fine. You can target the noise by size.

[mcgregni]

I use Topaz Details, and it is excellent. Very versatile for different types of images, thoroughly recommended. I usually apply it to a Duplicate Layer in Photoshop, and use layer masking to control the exact areas that have detail added, and those I leave untouched.

[MrB1]

Biz-Eng, is this any use to you? - Local Contrast Enhancement

Philip

[biz-engineer]

Sorry for the late reply.

The facetious answer is buy better lenses

Thanks, humm I know, the trouble is, I prefer using zoom lenses for convenience, except the DFA*70-200, they tend not to deliver the micro contrast that prime lenses deliver.

try to reduce the brightness of the shadows and than increase the contrast.

Thanks. That's usually what I do, and it works well with exposures with low and moderate contrast, but is problematic for scene containing both bright areas and dark areas. Increasing the contrast of the whole image does work, but it also pull down the shadows in opposite direction to what we want to do when having to raise shadows of a landscape shot for example. Decreasing global contrast brings up the shadow but also reduced the contrast in well exposed area.

It’s possible to use additional clarity for micro-contrast and then deal with the noise as the last stage of processing.

Yes, I've tried that, removing the noise that pops up with clarity boost (I use Silkypix Dev 8), but reducing the noise also wipe out the details in properly exposed areas. In fact, that's why because I faced this problem that I opened this thread.

I first remove all noise (even at 100 ISO) then I add clarity...

Thanks. Seem that with Silkypix, both ways produce the same result, more clarity with less noise but less detail or less noise and less details with more clarity :-)

Can you Post examples of what you want vs what you end up with...

I could, not working on this right now. Around November I developed around 3000 raw files, and that's at that time that I encountered this issue and hadn't found a solution.

How about using the "High Pass Filter" sharpening method. An internet search should bring up some tutorials for Photoshop use.

Thanks. I see what you mean. Highpass filter is sharpening, it increases pixel level noise, so I end-up with result similar to clarity.

Sean Tucker has a good YouTube video on that.

Thank for sharing that video. Hummm... very interesting.

Biz-Eng, is this any use to you? - Local Contrast EnhancementPhilip

Thank Philip. Yes, that works, I can play with unsharp mask sharpening using a high radius and low amount of sharpening, this way, contrast local to radius amount increase, pixel to pixel noise isn't affected and global contrast isn't affected. I guess I need to sharpen separately as the final stage of image processing.

[emalvick]

I've always found that you have to make a lot of balancing edits and compromise when dealing with global and local contrast. All I can say or suggest as it can be software specific is that I find it more valuable to start with global adjustments first. For instance, I adjust global contrast early in the process. Once I have the histogram generally the way I want, then I start fiddling with more local adjustments. For instance I might increase contrast, brighten up shadows (to compensate for things getting too dark in the initial contrast), apply noise reduction, and then deal with local contrast.

Other things I do is avoid the global contrast and make adjustments by changing the global exposure and then making limited adjustments with the highlights, midtones, shadows, and blacks to get the overall contrast how I like it.

Finally, use local edits or masks if you are looking to focus on a region of your photo. For instance I might brush an area where I want to increase the micro-contrast or if my software couldn't handle it, I might export 2 versions of the photo and then composite them in 2 layers in Photoshop or similar. I often find myself brushing or using gradients to actually decrease micro-contrast in my skies as that is where noise can become an issue.

[biz-engineer]

I've always found that you have to make a lot of balancing edits and compromise when dealing with global and local contrast.

I agree. Yesterday I've played with some raw images to try things out. Different parts of an image relate to each other, including contrasts. It's hard to transform a badly exposed image into a good one with post processing. Correct exposure of different par of the image is essential to be able to take advantage of the post processing. Applied light can reveal so much and give the extra headroom for the post processing. Then the post processing is a set of trade-offs.

---------- Post added 28-01-19 at 19:49 ----------

I first remove all noise (even at 100 ISO) then I add clarity...

I've tried that again yesterday and compared it to the unsharp method. Both methods do not give the same results but similar, the clarity / noise approach is more straightforward and allows to play with sharpness separately.