unsharp mask vs. clarity. vs structure. vs. regualr sharpness, vs...

bribrius · May 6, 2015

in camera sharpness blahblah blahh

since i use somewhat less than great lenses i have spent more time using these. And i don't really know what i am doing. Especially with unsharp mask, or all of them actually. i just move sliders until i think it looks right. I dont quite grasp the differences between a clarity selection and sharpness selection. Basically just not grasping this here with the different options, even though i have been using them to SOME success. The photos have little consistancy.

Can someone give me a brief overview, so i get the concept of the differences of what i am doing so i use them more effectively? would save me some time in post process as well. Where as right now i might try clarity for a certain photo, realized it didnt achieve what i wanted, try structure, nope. move on to the next maybe unsharp mask and play with sliders......

pretty much what is going on with me. Using them, but taking longer and probably not using them the most efficiently. In camera sharpness too, i usually always bump up a little for jpegs.
My images are taking a big hit fro this, as i am dragging them from one to the next, one program to the next, almost guessing. And the quality of them is dropping the more i guess. I have started zooming in on them, which seems to help.

tecboy · May 6, 2015

Based in my experience, I zoom in 100% and look at the edge. I use sharpening in Lightroom or unsharp mask in photoshop. Sharpening gives the edges more contrast. Depending how much resolution and how much portion has been cropped off, you may not need to sharpening. When you use the sliders, you have to put in a right amount, otherwise you will over sharpened and the photo will lose quality.

tecboy · May 6, 2015

Oh yeah, I wasn't clear. Depending the photograph is low resolution or large portion has been cropped off, you may not need to sharpening. Higher resolution works best in sharpening, because you don't worry about the losing details as you zoom out to see the whole image.

bribrius · May 6, 2015

tecboy said:
Oh yeah, I wasn't clear. Depending the photograph is low resolution or large portion has been cropped off, you may not need to sharpening. Higher resolution works best in sharpening, because you don't worry about the losing details as you zoom out to see the whole image.

something to think about. so if i sharpen one of my low res images zoomed in, i lose details when it is actually zoomed out for normal viewing. That makes a difference, i shoot a lot of low res images. I should pay closer attention to that.

Ron Smith · May 7, 2015

So here are a few point about what I do.

Although Clarity does "sharpen" an image - it is doing a lot of other things that are a lot like posterizing (shortening the transitions in gradients). I like it for when I want technical stuff to look more precise or to make an image punch more. I've been shooting with a crop sensor camera, and find with any cropping I usually need to use noise reduction (luminance) to control it in the smooth areas, and then use sharpening to crisp up the edges. I always use the sharpening mask (again i'm shooting technical stuff a lot) and hold down the alt key while sliding the mask slider till it only shows the outlines of object. This way you don't reintroduce the noise when you are crisping up the edges.

BTW - I also will just slide them around until they look good.

This is just what i do in Lightroom. There is a whole 'nother level of crazy sharpening in Photoshop using the high pass filter, but that is another story.

(edited for clarity, I hope)

bribrius · May 7, 2015

Ron Smith said:
So here are a few point about what I do.

Although Clarity does "sharpen" an image - it is doing a lot of other things that are a lot like posterizing (shortening the transitions in gradients). I like it for when I want technical stuff to look more precise or to make an image punch more. I've been shooting with a crop sensor camera, and find with any cropping I usually need to use noise reduction (luminance) to control it in the smooth areas, and then use sharpening to crisp up the edges. I always use the sharpening mask (again i'm shooting technical stuff a lot) and hold down the alt key while sliding the mask slider till it only shows the outlines of object. This way you don't reintroduce the noise when you are crisping up the edges.

BTW - I also will just slide them around until they look good.

This is just what i do in Lightroom. There is a whole 'nother level of crazy sharpening in Photoshop using the high pass filter, but that is another story.

(edited for clarity, I hope)

appreciate the comment. The differences and effects when using more than one has been confusing the living **** out of me and i'm not afraid to admit it. LOL

unpopular · May 7, 2015

highpass on overlay and just be done with it.

bribrius · May 7, 2015

unpopular said:
highpass on overlay and just be done with it.

no chit. Not really sure how to do that but i have seen the menu for it...

whats the difference from the others?

unpopular · May 8, 2015

It's simple, strightforward, has a natural quality to it and it just works - period. It is less inclined to halo or accentuate noise.

All you need to do is make a duplicate or a smart layer from the background layer, apply a high pass filter. Adjust the radius until the edges are just barely visible and apply the layer on "overpass" mixing mode.

Experiment with radius, opacity and stacking in differnt mixing modes. I will often times stack in 10/30/50/100% in soft light mode with decreasing radius settings. Very large radius can have interesting effects on b/w images.

Further control can be achieved with a curves adjustment, ensuring that middle grey remains unaffected.

You can also soften the image by doing the same on an inverted layer, and careful control will modulate noise in a more pleasing and natural way. Stacking on an inverted layer though can get kind of weird.

-----

You CAN build your own unsharp masks just as you would have done in the darkroom with lith film. I've done it in Blender composite editor. Doing so will get you mountains of control.

To do this, take image, duplicate to a new document, convert to LAB, copy the L channel to it's own layer, duplicate this layer, place the top layer in "difference" mode. The image should now be completely black. Apply a gaussian blur. Apply a curve adjustment to the mask such that the areas of desired sharpness adjustment is white and areas to be excluded (non-edges) are black. Flatten the unsharp mask you've just created. You may want to apply another gaussian blur to the mask.

Back in the original image, copy the unsharp mask to a curves adjustment layer mask onto the image and adjust contrast with an s-curve to desired effect.

As you can see, there is a lot of control here - in how the mask is generated, in how the mask is blurred, in what channel information you start with and how the mask in ultimately used. Unfortunately, because layer masks are "fixed" and cannot be adjusted, it's not very practical in Photoshop. But, this should give you an appreciation for what USM is actually doing.

sashbar · May 8, 2015

It looks like Clarity tool, while really useful, uses different algorithms and means different things in different RAW convertors. Capture One Pro seems to employ deconvolution for Clarity adjustments, so Clarity becomes a way of sharpening as well as accentuating mid tone contrast. Lightroom has Detail slider in his Sharpening tool for deconvolution control, so Clarity in LR must be something different, probably just mid tone contrast. Correct me if I am wrong.

KenC · May 8, 2015

There's also Unsharp Mask with an edge mask. The following is a long explanation of sharpening, but has a procedure for this in the middle:

Sharpening 101

runnah · May 8, 2015

In thing "in-camera" should be shut off.

bribrius · May 8, 2015

wow. you all just went WAY over my head. I am going to have to look at this later and break it down into something i can digest while i do it. I am using capture nx2, elements, nik collection, view nx2.nxd, photoscape and photomatix, photofun and another freeware program kicking around somewhere.
Appreciate the comments, again. help me wrap my head around this.

bribrius · May 8, 2015

runnah said:
In thing "in-camera" should be shut off.

i use it for jpegs, not sure i makes a difference either way on the raw files. Jpegs i adjust for color, bright, contrast, sharp in camera ahead of time. Same with bw adjustments.