I am getting in a complete muddle about sharpening and editing, is there a definite workflow in which I should be doing things?
I have Lightroom 4 and recently acquired the Nik Silver package, lots to play with but in what order!
1 - If I want to convert a RAW image to B&W, do I do it in entirely in LR or transfer it directly as a colour image to Silver Efex?
2 - Should I be doing ALL the sharpening and noise reduction in LR before transferring to Silver Efex or leave it till after?
3 - Is Nik Pre RAWsharpener any good, and when should it be used. Can it be used as well as LR sharpening and again when, before or after editing?
If anyone can offer any advice I would be very grateful.
Always finish with sharpening, the pre raw sharpener is ok to use at the start of editing,
My work flow is noise reduction if required , curves and levels then any filters if I'm going to use them then finally smart sharpen or unsharp mask.
Jo I am not an expert but I can give you an opinion based on my own experience.
1. No need to convert image to B&W in Lightroom unless you want to do some basic adjustments first. My workflow is to do make the adjustments after I re-import back into Lightroom.
2. Many of the Silver FX presets (if you use them) add noise and or grain so applying sharpening or NR in advance can be counter productive. In any event, I prefer to do the sharpening and NR as the final step in my workflow excluding output.
3. Cannot comment on the Nik PreSharpener as I do not use it..
One final comment. The sharpening in Lightroom 5 is a significant upgrade and in my opinion, well worth the money. Also, keep in mind that sharpening increases the noise in an image. I find using any combination in LR5 adding up to 100% seems to work well. ie. 75% sharpening + 25% NR.
Interesting Q - I don't think I ever gave this huge amounts if thought so I will be interested to see what others have to say...
I process from RAW in LR5... Including adjusting WB, exposure, add clarity and vibrancy, tonality, sharpening, noise reduction, fix angle and lens distortion and usually crop...
Then to silver fx to convert to b&w.. I will get it as close as I can to what I want there... I usually will add vignette here because I like a lot if dark in my shots...
Then back to LR to do final tweaks on contrast and add tones - usually to shadows only...
Some good stuff here Jo. The 100% rule mentioned by @grahambudd is quite well recognised btw and seems to work well.
Another useful tip, when you sharpen in LR, use the mask (hold Alt down when you move the slider as you move the slider to the right to visualise) so that it only sharpen the edges or what you want to sharpen (which most of the time is what you want - all helps to reduce the noise). For instance, you don't want to generally sharpen the sky - the mask is the ideal way to avoid this.
I have used the Nik Pre-sharpener quite a lot - it's dead easy just to apply some sharpening to the edges with the sliders which definitely gives a cleaner look to the picture. On a B&W I then often go straight into Silver Efex and get started on those wonderful Control Points - they're ace but a complete subject in themselves.
1. Always send a color image to Silver efex if you want to have full control of the conversion.
2. I try not to sharpen an image until the end. The reason for this is any artifacts created from sharpening an image can easily get amplified when making further edits.
3. I haven't used the Nik Pre-sharpener much, and I need to do some more research on it. One thing to remember is that it converts your image into a Tiff so make sure you have all of your raw edits done first (such as white balance).
One nice feature in Lightroom that many people seem to not think about is the sharpening mask slider. This can be used to focus your sharping more no the edges.
With the sharping mask slider, as well as may other sliders in lighroom, you can press option(mac) alt(pc) while moving the slider to get more information. Pressing this button while moving the mask slider will show you that actual mask that LR is creating. You can also use it on highlight and shadow sliders to see exactly when things are clipping and what channel they are clipping in.
I do all of my sharping in PS now as I fell that I have way more control. Using a combination of one of the contrast layer styles, like soft light, and the high pass filter you can get great results that can easily be masked to control where you want your sharping to be.
@soren Thanks Jake, all great advice, I had not come across the mask slider so I will give that a go first thing. One quick Q, should one remove the default sharpening from an image before running it through Silver Efex or is that alright to leave in place? I have been been giving B&W portraits a try and I want to get as much detail out of the skin without it looking overworked, I fear PS is probably the way to go, but I feel it's just way out of my league.
I do remove the default sharping is LR before sending the image to another editor when I remember too, I am not sure how much difference this makes.
PS would give you so much more control but there is a learning curve.
@chippy1402@grahambudd@snaggy@soren
Jo, as these folks have mentioned, last thing is sharpening/noise reduction and filters come just before that (usually). Do tonal/WB adjustments pre-converting to b&w so that you have more control...all this mentioned very well in the above thread. I do more of what Jake mentions rounding out the process with PS.
Like @northy, first (using Aperture), I 'clean up' the RAW image and then export it to Silver Efex to do all the bw work. In Silver Efex, I usually start with a preset that comes closest to what I have in my head, then use the sliders on the right to adjust brightness, contrast, structure, focal edits, etc. to get the final piece I want. Then I export back to Aperture, then export from that to a jpg.
I don't use LR so my 2-cents-worth may not be that helpful, but it may help other readers who happen upon this.
I use Photoshop Elements 11.
I always shoot RAW and I always sharpen first, but as a non-destructive layer using the High Pass filter and then the layer set to Overlay blend mode. That way I can erase the portions I don't want sharpened and adjust the opacity of the layer if I decide it's a little too strong after I do everything else.
With raw images, you should think about sharpening twice, at least. Once as you import the raw file into the raw converter, Lightroom, or Adobe Camera Raw for me, and then once again *after* you have made your major tone adjustments, including black and white conversion perhaps in the Nik plugin.
Your raw converter (Camera Raw) will probably have default import sharpening for raw images which I'd advise keeping. The import sharpen originally was designed to compensate for the slight blurring of the Anti Aliasing filter over the sensor, and a vendor name sometimes references this. But even if you have the newer Nikon DSLRs that have removed the AA filter, I think it is still a good idea to keep this, perhaps not the *default* value of 25. You can reset this default of course. Importing JPEGs or TIFFs will have, typically zero import sharpening applied bringing them into Lightroom/ACR since the JPEG or TIFF process that produced the file has typically sharpened the image already. Don't know about the import default sharpening of Nik. If you use the LR defaults, I'd tend to want to turn the Nik ones off.
Sharpening does not necessarily increase the visibility of digital noise, if used judiciously. But unfortunately excessive noise reduction editing can further blur your images and spoil the sharpness. It always seems a delicate balancing act to get both to play nice together. I only have seen Lightroom 5.3 and Camera Raw since 7.x, but evaluate your image to see if you need to "mask out" the sharpening from any flat or non detail space where noise can become apparent. That's what the fourth sharpening slider does. As you move this slider, hold down the ALT key (Windows) and you will see an exclusion mask in black begin to appear. I find this extraordinarily useful to exclude the places where sharpening might begin to highlight the embedded noise. Where I do this to just keep the edges, I tend to push the radius higher than 1.0 (the second slider), and often finally choose to pull the degree of sharpening much higher than the "default" 25. But watch unsightly "haloing" as you so indulge. :)
You can also apply an Adjustment Brush Mask and use that to sharpen or unsharpen from the main strength parameter (the top one) on the "detail" panel. The other three remain unaffected in the mask. I find that quite useful as well. As long as the area you want to cover is not too large; too many large selective adjustment masks can bring Lightroom/ACR to its knees on even 8GB RAM dual core i5 processors or equivalent. I am hoping my new 16GB RAM quad 4850 i7 with FLASH drive will allow me to push this much further than I can today.
The sharpening in Lightroom 5.3 and Camera Raw 8.3 is just stunning, a huge upgrade over LR 4 and CR 7.x, and if you can spring for an upgrade. Not that I have seen LR 4, but I have seen ACR 7.1. Also the "Smart Sharpen" and the "Shake Reduction" in Photoshop CC are incredibly clever too, and doubly powerful if the raw file is processed first in Camera Raw.
hey there... i've been following this discussion with tremendous interest given the kind of processing i tend to do - specially with street type shots... i have never really worked my way into understanding the details of the sharpening process and have tended to use the LR5 presets for scenic or faces (depending on what i am doing), and then maybe playing with the sliders a bit to see if i can improve on the result... but never really understanding what i am doing... and now you're tossing the masking concept in which i really don't understand what it does... i've tried playing with it based on what's been mentioned above, but i'm not seeing the effects - at least not on the image i happen to be editing right now...
just wondering if anyone can point me to a book or online tutorial that runs thru this at a reasonably non-technical level?
@northy If you are talking about the sharping mask in lightroom, it is pretty subtle. To really see the effects you need to be zoomed in and run the sharping slider up pretty high. If you hold the opt (mac) or Alt (pc) you can see what the mask looks like. In masking with adobe products remember white reveals and black conceals. If you hold the opt/alt button while moving the slider you will see a black and white image. Where this image is black no sharping will happen and where the image is white the sharping with be applied. Hope this helps.
@northy It is just looking for edges and contrast, so the further you move the slider to the right the more the sharpening will effect the edges and less everywhere else. PS is much more powerful for this type of selective sharping but that would be a much longer conversation.
@soren But Photoshop Sharpen Filters are really awkward to use I find. For sure you can edit the sharpen layer mask any way you want, but it's all manual that I can find. And that is so clumsy and awkward especially if you want to greyscale it for partial transparency. Does anyone really do that for sharpening alone? And it is different technology, the base of which hasn't changed in a number of releases. ACR technology is of much later vintage. Even Mr. Photoshop himself, Scott Kelby, remarks on all this in his CS6 book.
ACR/Lightroom 8.3/5.3 (they contain exactly the same engine with exactly the same function) is superb at finding the edges automatically with the Mask slider and by simply pulling the slider more or less you effectively get the greyscale effects. For sure the Smart Sharpen and Camera Shake in PSCC are really clever new gismos, the motion correction especially, but shooting correctly at the start is surely better than correcting mistakes or problems, Yes? For sure you can apply sharpening to each layer separately in PS, and I can see where that could be useful, but what a headache to pull an image apart into layers with masks, especially just to sharpen.
@frankhymus I don't use the sharpen filters in photoshop, as I also find them to be very awkward. What I use in photoshop are the contrast layer modes with the high pass filter. To do this duplicate your image (shortcut command j) or if you have many layers to your image already make a stamp visible layer (shift option command E) then turn that layer mono (shift command U)
Next change that layer to one of the contrast blend modes (i.e. overlay, soft light) then choose filter-other-highpass which will bring up the high pass filter dialog. You can change how this affects the image using the slider and seeing the results in real time.
each contrast blend mode will give you different results so you have to do a little experimenting to see what you like. (I like overlay and soft light best) I know that it seems like a lot of steps but if you know the shortcut keys then it takes just a few seconds to get to the sharpening. After that you can use layer masks to mask where and what you want sharpened.
You can also make this layer a smart object and go back and change your high pass filter settings anytime you want.
Like most of the best parts of PS you have to learn how to use the tools in ways that are not just using automated filters, but using them in combination with blending modes and advanced blending modes. There are a million tricks to PS, I have personally just scratched the surface of what can be done in PS and now that is my go to program for editing and LR has just become my Program for organizing and very minor adjustments.
@soren Sorry one more Q as you have just introduced me to a new tool! could you just explain the highlight and shadow sliders + alt, I'm not sure what I should or shouldn't be achieving with them, all black with a little bit of white and vice versa?
@northy Some of the Serge Ramelli videos are quite good and show how to sharpen and remove noise (irrespective of whether you like his work or his workflow - personally I love his stuff). Have a look on his blog under "news" on his website - think its 'photoserge.com'.
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My work flow is noise reduction if required , curves and levels then any filters if I'm going to use them then finally smart sharpen or unsharp mask.
1. No need to convert image to B&W in Lightroom unless you want to do some basic adjustments first. My workflow is to do make the adjustments after I re-import back into Lightroom.
2. Many of the Silver FX presets (if you use them) add noise and or grain so applying sharpening or NR in advance can be counter productive. In any event, I prefer to do the sharpening and NR as the final step in my workflow excluding output.
3. Cannot comment on the Nik PreSharpener as I do not use it..
One final comment. The sharpening in Lightroom 5 is a significant upgrade and in my opinion, well worth the money. Also, keep in mind that sharpening increases the noise in an image. I find using any combination in LR5 adding up to 100% seems to work well. ie. 75% sharpening + 25% NR.
I process from RAW in LR5... Including adjusting WB, exposure, add clarity and vibrancy, tonality, sharpening, noise reduction, fix angle and lens distortion and usually crop...
Then to silver fx to convert to b&w.. I will get it as close as I can to what I want there... I usually will add vignette here because I like a lot if dark in my shots...
Then back to LR to do final tweaks on contrast and add tones - usually to shadows only...
Another useful tip, when you sharpen in LR, use the mask (hold Alt down when you move the slider as you move the slider to the right to visualise) so that it only sharpen the edges or what you want to sharpen (which most of the time is what you want - all helps to reduce the noise). For instance, you don't want to generally sharpen the sky - the mask is the ideal way to avoid this.
I have used the Nik Pre-sharpener quite a lot - it's dead easy just to apply some sharpening to the edges with the sliders which definitely gives a cleaner look to the picture. On a B&W I then often go straight into Silver Efex and get started on those wonderful Control Points - they're ace but a complete subject in themselves.
2. I try not to sharpen an image until the end. The reason for this is any artifacts created from sharpening an image can easily get amplified when making further edits.
3. I haven't used the Nik Pre-sharpener much, and I need to do some more research on it. One thing to remember is that it converts your image into a Tiff so make sure you have all of your raw edits done first (such as white balance).
One nice feature in Lightroom that many people seem to not think about is the sharpening mask slider. This can be used to focus your sharping more no the edges.
With the sharping mask slider, as well as may other sliders in lighroom, you can press option(mac) alt(pc) while moving the slider to get more information. Pressing this button while moving the mask slider will show you that actual mask that LR is creating. You can also use it on highlight and shadow sliders to see exactly when things are clipping and what channel they are clipping in.
I do all of my sharping in PS now as I fell that I have way more control. Using a combination of one of the contrast layer styles, like soft light, and the high pass filter you can get great results that can easily be masked to control where you want your sharping to be.
PS would give you so much more control but there is a learning curve.
Jo, as these folks have mentioned, last thing is sharpening/noise reduction and filters come just before that (usually). Do tonal/WB adjustments pre-converting to b&w so that you have more control...all this mentioned very well in the above thread. I do more of what Jake mentions rounding out the process with PS.
I use Photoshop Elements 11.
I always shoot RAW and I always sharpen first, but as a non-destructive layer using the High Pass filter and then the layer set to Overlay blend mode. That way I can erase the portions I don't want sharpened and adjust the opacity of the layer if I decide it's a little too strong after I do everything else.
Maybe useful to someone out there...
Your raw converter (Camera Raw) will probably have default import sharpening for raw images which I'd advise keeping. The import sharpen originally was designed to compensate for the slight blurring of the Anti Aliasing filter over the sensor, and a vendor name sometimes references this. But even if you have the newer Nikon DSLRs that have removed the AA filter, I think it is still a good idea to keep this, perhaps not the *default* value of 25. You can reset this default of course. Importing JPEGs or TIFFs will have, typically zero import sharpening applied bringing them into Lightroom/ACR since the JPEG or TIFF process that produced the file has typically sharpened the image already. Don't know about the import default sharpening of Nik. If you use the LR defaults, I'd tend to want to turn the Nik ones off.
Sharpening does not necessarily increase the visibility of digital noise, if used judiciously. But unfortunately excessive noise reduction editing can further blur your images and spoil the sharpness. It always seems a delicate balancing act to get both to play nice together. I only have seen Lightroom 5.3 and Camera Raw since 7.x, but evaluate your image to see if you need to "mask out" the sharpening from any flat or non detail space where noise can become apparent. That's what the fourth sharpening slider does. As you move this slider, hold down the ALT key (Windows) and you will see an exclusion mask in black begin to appear. I find this extraordinarily useful to exclude the places where sharpening might begin to highlight the embedded noise. Where I do this to just keep the edges, I tend to push the radius higher than 1.0 (the second slider), and often finally choose to pull the degree of sharpening much higher than the "default" 25. But watch unsightly "haloing" as you so indulge. :)
You can also apply an Adjustment Brush Mask and use that to sharpen or unsharpen from the main strength parameter (the top one) on the "detail" panel. The other three remain unaffected in the mask. I find that quite useful as well. As long as the area you want to cover is not too large; too many large selective adjustment masks can bring Lightroom/ACR to its knees on even 8GB RAM dual core i5 processors or equivalent. I am hoping my new 16GB RAM quad 4850 i7 with FLASH drive will allow me to push this much further than I can today.
The sharpening in Lightroom 5.3 and Camera Raw 8.3 is just stunning, a huge upgrade over LR 4 and CR 7.x, and if you can spring for an upgrade. Not that I have seen LR 4, but I have seen ACR 7.1. Also the "Smart Sharpen" and the "Shake Reduction" in Photoshop CC are incredibly clever too, and doubly powerful if the raw file is processed first in Camera Raw.
just wondering if anyone can point me to a book or online tutorial that runs thru this at a reasonably non-technical level?
tx! @snaggy @frankhymus @soren @mikegifford
ACR/Lightroom 8.3/5.3 (they contain exactly the same engine with exactly the same function) is superb at finding the edges automatically with the Mask slider and by simply pulling the slider more or less you effectively get the greyscale effects. For sure the Smart Sharpen and Camera Shake in PSCC are really clever new gismos, the motion correction especially, but shooting correctly at the start is surely better than correcting mistakes or problems, Yes? For sure you can apply sharpening to each layer separately in PS, and I can see where that could be useful, but what a headache to pull an image apart into layers with masks, especially just to sharpen.
What have I missed in PS, then?
Next change that layer to one of the contrast blend modes (i.e. overlay, soft light) then choose filter-other-highpass which will bring up the high pass filter dialog. You can change how this affects the image using the slider and seeing the results in real time.
each contrast blend mode will give you different results so you have to do a little experimenting to see what you like. (I like overlay and soft light best) I know that it seems like a lot of steps but if you know the shortcut keys then it takes just a few seconds to get to the sharpening. After that you can use layer masks to mask where and what you want sharpened.
You can also make this layer a smart object and go back and change your high pass filter settings anytime you want.
Like most of the best parts of PS you have to learn how to use the tools in ways that are not just using automated filters, but using them in combination with blending modes and advanced blending modes. There are a million tricks to PS, I have personally just scratched the surface of what can be done in PS and now that is my go to program for editing and LR has just become my Program for organizing and very minor adjustments.