nicolas claris
OPF Co-founder/Administrator
I have been first very impressed when LR (Light Room) and ACR 4 came out, but I would like to introduce a discussion about the power and the + and - of 2 of their new tools that seems to be now really fashioned to a lot of us (in the mean time I've returned back to my preferred raw processor C1 V3.7)
1/ Clarity (this is a copy of a post I made earlier in a "sharpening thread")
Yes, Clarity "is a great and useful rendering tweak"
but as all tools it must be carefully used, and checked viewing at 100% in the raw processor, as it very easily produces halos when overused (as many contrasting and/or sharpening techniques)…
I do prefer to adjust midtone contrast and sharpening, after all WB/color/resize process just before converting to output space and switching from 16 to 8 bits…
2/ High Light recovery
It is a very nice and usefull tool, but I can see posted here in OPF a lot of pictures where this function has been overused, yes some highlights are back, but the overall tone of the image is flat and colors moreless washed-out. They look like bad HDR renderings…
I come to the conclusion, that it is always better to achieve a good shot, in camera than in post-processing, the "adjust to the right" law is still alive!
As usual, it seems that all the powertools can and do help photographers but must be used with a lot of caution, looking carefully what has change in the ALL image before pushing the "OK" button as we usually are focused on one little part of the image when looking for a local enhancement…
1/ Clarity (this is a copy of a post I made earlier in a "sharpening thread")
Yes, Clarity "is a great and useful rendering tweak"
but as all tools it must be carefully used, and checked viewing at 100% in the raw processor, as it very easily produces halos when overused (as many contrasting and/or sharpening techniques)…
I do prefer to adjust midtone contrast and sharpening, after all WB/color/resize process just before converting to output space and switching from 16 to 8 bits…
2/ High Light recovery
It is a very nice and usefull tool, but I can see posted here in OPF a lot of pictures where this function has been overused, yes some highlights are back, but the overall tone of the image is flat and colors moreless washed-out. They look like bad HDR renderings…
I come to the conclusion, that it is always better to achieve a good shot, in camera than in post-processing, the "adjust to the right" law is still alive!
As usual, it seems that all the powertools can and do help photographers but must be used with a lot of caution, looking carefully what has change in the ALL image before pushing the "OK" button as we usually are focused on one little part of the image when looking for a local enhancement…