Use Lightroom exclusively for sharpening ?

doug b

Hi all. This question basically precedes a few others which pertain to processing and output from Lightroom, while also using PS and a few select plugins for color treatment/conversion from within LR.

First of all, I really don't want to use Photoshop, unless it's absolutely necessary. For me, that usually means for adding borders/frames and not much else. I have gotten used to doing almost everything I do in post via Lightroom, and would like to keep it that way, but every time I look up information on sharpening, the method always seems to call for Photoshop.

So I'm curious to know if anyone here does their pre sharpening as well as output sharpening from within Lightroom only ? I really want to put together a fast but efficient workflow that is seamless in terms of uploading to my SM account.

What brought this up for me was seeing the option within Smugmug's software to add sharpening to galleries. This kind of confused me a bit because I assumed that if one did their sharpening from within their DAM of choice, that not only would no further sharpening be necessary, but it might actually do more harm than good. (artifacts etc.)

Aside from using Lightroom, I've recently started using some of Nik's color conversion tools from their suite. I've been using Color Efx and Silver Efx pro, and really like some of the results I've been getting.

I shoot in RAW only, and export to Jpg. I had been using Imagemagik's resizing methods as well as their version of USM, but someone asked why I simply didn't use the sharpening or resizing from within LR, since its methods might actually surpass IM's in terms of quality.

With all of the experimenting I've been doing, I feel like I'm wasting a lot of time and really want to just start uploading a lot of photos to my SM account. However, I'd rather my photos look their best (obviously) and don't want 4 steps in between me and uploading.

I would ideally like to do everything from within LR (except for color and silver efx of course) but would like to know :

1. If sharpening in LR is just as good as it can get in PS
2. In which order should I perform certain operations etc.. I've heard that sharpening should be the last detail in processing. That's fine, but in which order should I place things like noise reduction, black and white conversions and that kind of thing. Does it matter ?

Also, when using a plugin such as Silver Efx pro, there's the option to edit within 3 different color spaces. aRGB, sRGB and Pro Color. When using RAW files does this actually matter ? I usually output to jpg for the web, so figured that sRGB is fine, but lately have been choosing Pro Color to see if it makes a difference. Not sure that it does though. It also gives an option for how much resolution to output. The default is 240ppi which I'm guessing is enough, but wondering if there are other opinions on what to use for that as well.

All in all, I'm hoping to find a comfortable method to work with, which doesn't take forever to do, and keeps the unnecessary steps to a bare minimum.

Lastly, take everything I've just said and apply it to output sharpening and such for print. My wife would like to hang some of my stuff on the walls, and so I would like to know how to handle this. Right now I'm in Budapest, so I can't send away for the usual services offered in the States. I'm planning on using a local print service near my house who does professional printing.

Should I present them with a tiff ? Jpeg or other ? And should I output with a specific colorspace or bit depth ? Or will all of this depend upon their own specific requests ?

Thanks for reading and any help. I know some of the things I've said might be a bit cloudy, but I'm just trying to get some bearings here !

For the record, I shoot with an Nikon D300 and as said I only shoot in RAW

Doug

mehampson

Couple questions here.

I do all my sharpening in LR, unless I'm exporting to PS for more serious retouching, like cut-outs or photomerging. (Or occassionally I'll bring a noisy image into PS to do a smart blur with a really low threshold.) I believe they incorporated a well-respected third-party plugin into the sharpening algorithms, but I don't remember which, or where I heard that. At any rate, it does capture and output sharpening really well. First step for me is to set the mask threshold pretty high -- I eyeball it using the alt key, so it doesn't sharpen the background. Then I fiddle with the other three sliders, again using the alt key to see what I'm doing. Generally I do this before noise reduction, because some of the noise quiets down as you increase the masking threshold, and I don't want to overdo NR. Otherwise, it doesn't matter: everything's applied in the right order under the hood, when you export, because you're shooting RAW, and then the output sharpening is done after all that. I've read that LR will consider the size you're exporting to and adjusts its output sharpening for that, so a lot of this stuff is being taken care of for you.

No comment on LR's resizing quality, but I've never had a problem with it that made me think I should get a third party product for it.

Lightroom uses its own colorspace, which is wider than AdobeRGB at least, maybe wider than Pro, so you don't have to worry about this until you export from it. How much it matters after coming out of LR depends on if you're using a calibrated monitor, soft-proofing, and a destination that can use the color space that represents your subject best. Don't upload for web display with anything but sRGB, though if you're working in a wider space I'd save converting profiles for the last step. Talk to your printer and see what color space and bit depth they can use, and get test prints and a color profile for proofing if you can. Generally they'll be converting down to a color space smaller than sRGB for the printer anyway, so this is really just what you find is most accurate.

One suggestion though, why not just upload to Smugmug, buy the prints normally, and have them delivered to your wife's address? Or have her buy directly, if you can't purchase internationally. Then it's simple: straight 8-bit sRGB, and relatively WYSIWYG compared to the others.

malch

Photoshop will always win
I think Photoshop will always be capable of producing a better result than Lightroom, assuming it's used with some skill. It simply offers more controls and options.

And, as you've suggested, many of the most highly regarded texts on the subject of sharpening are written purely in Photoshop terms.

Having said all of that, there's no doubt in my mind that Lightroom can produce very decent results. Only you can decide if they're "good enough".

Here are a couple of helpful tutorials on sharpening with Lightroom:

http://x-equals.com/blog/?p=1792
http://x-equals.com/blog/?p=1847

As far as your questions regarding printing are concerned... absolutely the best thing you can do is to talk with your local print shop and ask them how best to prepare the images in terms of file format, color space, etc. A good shop will be happy to explain how to prepare the images for the best results on their equipment/processes.

If they're reluctant to do so, run (don't walk) to another shop!

colourbox

doug b wrote: »

1. If sharpening in LR is just as good as it can get in PS

You have more manual control over sharpening in Photoshop. If you want to roll your own sharpening or local contrast control, in Photoshop you have access to all of the filters and controls that the experts use for their advanced sharpening recipes, like for example using Blend If sliders to keep the effect out of the highlights or manually generating or editing the protection mask. You can still solve specific problems better in Photoshop, like brushing in a certain kind of sharpening into a certain area.

That said, if Lightroom will get me there on its own, I don't want to bother with Photoshop.

doug b wrote: »

2. In which order should I perform certain operations etc.. I've heard that sharpening should be the last detail in processing.

If you are following the three-pass method, the answer is you apply different kinds of sharpening throughout, supported by Lightroom's capture sharpening (first pass) and output sharpening (third pass) with creative sharpening (second pass) mostly available only in Photoshop.

doug b wrote: »

...in which order should I place things like noise reduction, black and white conversions and that kind of thing. Does it matter ?

Conventional wisdom is noise reduction comes first, then you capture sharpen. Then the other passes come in.

arodney

If you think Photoshop can or will do a better job than LR, you’re probably going to lose that bet <g>.

The sharpening in LR is based on the Pixel Genius work introduced by Bruce Fraser (see http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/20357.html). The LR team introduced this into LR and ACR when LR was at version 2.0 and 3.0 is even more improved. You want to conduct as much of this kind of work on the raw linear data as possible for a number of reasons. LR doesn’t support creative sharpening, but for capture and output, it does and its totally non destructive, plus for output sharpening, the print module applies this at the size you ask for on output, making it very easy. And since the interpolating algorithm in LR for sizing up and down is more sophisticated than Photoshop’s Bicubic Sharper/smoother, this adds to the quality. And no, you don’t really have more control, just look at the on the fly masking options (press alt/option) in the various sliders in Develop and imagine the work it would take to do this in Photoshop.

doug b

Haha.... I should have known to get myself ready for a small amount of contradictory opinions. Seems this topic is always subject to such things.. In any case, I really do appreciate everyone's input. A couple of things which stood out for me:

I eyeball it using the alt key, so it doesn't sharpen the background. Then I fiddle with the other three sliders, again using the alt key to see what I'm doing. Generally I do this before noise reduction, because some of the noise quiets down as you increase the masking threshold, and I don't want to overdo NR

That's something I wasn't aware of. Interesting, and if true, very good to know! Also stated in that post was:

Lightroom uses its own color space.

Can you elaborate on this a bit ? How would this apply to processing in general ? Is there a name for this color space ? I've got a LR book by Martin Evening, so I'll try and find more info in there about that.


Also, thanks for the links guys, I'm going to be reading through those as well. There's probably only one more thing I'm going to investigate, which is part of the 'three pass method', and that is creative sharpening. You have a certain amount of control of this within Lightroom, but is it enough ? You can use the brush to select parts like the eyes and lips etc.. and then add sharpening or more contrast with the detail slider, and there's also the sharpness slider, but it's not the same type of sharpening (I think) which gets done in capture sharpening, or so it would seem.

One suggestion though, why not just upload to Smugmug, buy the prints normally, and have them delivered to your wife's address? Or have her buy directly, if you can't purchase internationally.

Sorry, I guess I wasn't very clear about that. We are both in Budapest right now. I mean, I guess I could get them shipped to a family member back in the States, but that's a long way to go since I have printer's all around me.

A good shop will be happy to explain how to prepare the images for the best results on their equipment/processes.

If they're reluctant to do so, run (don't walk) to another shop!

That made me laugh ! Thanks, will do.

Best,

Doug

arodney

Lightroom uses its own color space.
Can you elaborate on this a bit ? How would this apply to processing in general ? Is there a name for this color space ? I've got a LR book by Martin Evening, so I'll try and find more info in there about that.

http://www.ppmag.com/reviews/200701_rodneycm.pdf

BinaryFx

Doug, as you likely know, evaluating sharpening is a very subjective and personal process.

My advice would be to output to your chosen print medium the capture sharpening + automated output sharpening routines built into Lightroom or Camera Raw.

Next I would compare the same images at the same output size and method using whatever other methods you like, be they Photoshop methods, the options built-in with SmugMug etc.

Then see which you prefer! There are of course many considerations, different image content, workflow etc.


Sincerely,

Stephen Marsh

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/

colourbox

arodney wrote: »

And no, you don’t really have more control, just look at the on the fly masking options (press alt/option) in the various sliders in Develop and imagine the work it would take to do this in Photoshop.

I know what it would take. Before Lightroom/ACR I used a Photoshop action that ran the high pass, built the mask, presented a curve for the mask, and presented Blend If at the end.

The kind of control I mean is that if you are for some reason not happy with the mask that Lightroom generates, in Photoshop you can contrast-shape, re-feather, or paint that mask any way you want or manually tweak any of the myriad points in the process. However...

Ultimately we are in agreement here. While you do get more control in Photoshop, saying so is irrelevant, because 97% of users would rather not get involved in what it takes to replicate LR/ACR sharpening in Photoshop. It's like telling someone they should use Linux freeware because they can customize their own software code; most users will never come close to having the ability to benefit from that obscure and specialized advantage. I was overjoyed when I first saw the Option-slider sharpening in LR...made you go "Oh yeah...that's the way it should be." And I don't use my Photoshop action any more.

arodney

colourbox wrote: »

I know what it would take. Before Lightroom/ACR I used a Photoshop action that ran the high pass, built the mask, presented a curve for the mask, and presented Blend If at the end.

So did I. But the mask building wasn’t anywhere as fast or interactive as LR and of course, you can’t make an action to do that, you have to move the sliders yourself.

Ultimately we are in agreement here. While you do get more control in Photoshop, saying so is irrelevant, because 97% of users would rather not get involved in what it takes to replicate LR/ACR sharpening in Photoshop. It's like telling someone they should use Linux freeware because they can customize their own software code; most users will never come close to having the ability to benefit from that obscure and specialized advantage.

Yup, life is too short for extra work image processing. Another reason I continue to be amazed by those who suggest we do work in Photoshop that can be done faster and often better in a good raw processor. Zero out the raw processor and fix the resulting mess in Photoshop. The more adjustment layers, the more in and out of some odd color model, the more steps, the better for them. I guess most of these guys don’t spend much time taking pictures either.

malch

arodney wrote: »

<g>
The sharpening in LR is based on the Pixel Genius work introduced by Bruce Fraser (see http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/20357.html). The LR team introduced this into LR and ACR when LR was at version 2.0 and 3.0 is even more improved. You want to conduct as much of this kind of work on the raw linear data as possible for a number of reasons. LR doesn’t support creative sharpening, but for capture and output, it does and its totally non destructive, plus for output sharpening, the print module applies this at the size you ask for on output, making it very easy.

Your post prompted me to download and play with the new Lightroom 3 beta and the sharpening capabilities are indeed quite impressive. Thanks.

This is also very inconvenient for someone that's invested a lot of time over the past year getting to grips with Photoshop :-(

And integrating this into a workflow that currently involves Capature NX, Photoshop and some home grown tagging/cataloging functions is a ummm, non-trivial challenge! But excellent new tools are always welcome even if it's not immediately obvious where they fit in the tool chest.

</g>