Need advice on 'best' ON1 adjustments for some flower details
Plant with white fronds, yellow centers. I want to have those very distinct and prominent. Tack Sharp seems as if it should help them. I'm struggling a bit.
Google Drive link to raw file:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cTlBLECBbuqsrR6wlhMDrmFfTe_3rwNw/view
I can zoom in and see noise in the green leaves and shadows. Trying 'Both' settings I seem to keep raising up the noise as I try sliders helping the fronds. If I achieve reducing the noise I lose detail on the fronds. Maybe I'm being too fussy about the noise. Just because I can discern it when zoomed in deep I don't see big impact viewing reasonable crop on 24 inch screen.
Would you accept the noise? Would you not use NoNoise for it and instead try Effects later? Would some mild blur for background (mask out the fronds and flower centers) be better approach?
-
Hi Richard, won’t be able to download your file and take a look until this evening. Just to let you know, I’m not ignoring you.😀
0 -
I find the Tack Sharp feature of little use and, besides, unless you do some masking, it is applied globally, which you wouldn't want for the out-of-focus areas on your shot.
Maybe play around with vignetting to draw the eye more to the in-focus flowers. And use Colour Adjustment to increase the vibrancy in the centre. Or apply Dynamic Contrast with the vibrancy slider
0 -
First some background. There are 3 basic types of sharpening that we do with our photos.
The first is to compensate for the inherent loss of detail caused by capturing the image with a digital sensor. This is where Tack Sharp AI is best used.
Second is to direct the viewer's eye towards specific areas and away from others. This is a creative decision and is where Dynamic Contrast works well.
Third it to try to correct for incorrect focus. This can only be done to a certain degree. Photo RAW has the Sharpening filter and to some degree Tack Sharp AI but as Ray observed, its affects are global. Topaz Sharpen AI works well for fixing focus issues and it can be masked. So can Tack Sharp if you create a new Layer, sharpen that layer, then mask out the sharpening from any areas you don't want it working on.
Your photo is sharp but it has a shallow depth of field and the focal point is far forward of the yellow centers you mentioned. Trying to bring those areas into focus is going to over sharpen the fine details in front of them. Remember that 1/3rd of the in focus area will be in front of the focal plane and 2/3rds behind that. Focusing too far forward as your camera seems to have done (so does mine) will affect the overall area of focus. That's why we have depth of field preview buttons on our cameras, to stop down the lens to the actual ƒ-stop used for the exposure so we can verify what is in focus and out.
There is some noise but NoNoise AI took care of that. You can see how I set the sliders in the screen shot below.
I would try to work with the depth of field you have. You can still bring out those centers without their needing to be tack sharp to coin a phrase to make this photo work.
This would be a good subject for focus stacking to gain a better depth of field.
0 -
Oops, forgot the screen shot. Sorry.
0 -
I really appreciate your explaining tech background, and working on some adjustments. With your screen shot I could see the number values and do the same on my system. Yes, I get the same results. :-) At first I was wrongly sliding only approximately to match text positions of the dialogue box. Nope. Different font sizes. I like the image with the values you showed.
I think I was over reaching to eliminate 'all noise'. Yes, viewing super zoomed in we can see some still there, but as you and others have pointed out: we should aim for good results for intended viewing size.
I've submitted an ON1 enhancement request already describing my interest in several levels of TS, sort of like how DC give us the choices. I'd want to achieve improved edges/borders of larger elements and leave alone the tiny ones that are so similar to 'noise'.
Thanks, also, for discussing depth of field and focus point. With my setting of f/9 I expected the yellowish centers of the fore front flowers and their white fronds to both be in focus. I use focus magnifier assist on my Sony A6000 and try to refine beyond what auto focus thinks is right. Sure, the other entire flowers to the left or right were beyond the depth. My Sony A6000 doesn't have a built in feature for focus bracketing, so I'll have to practice that manually. I've also been reading books and articles that suggest the focus point of 1/3rd in, and others suggest 2X the distance of the nearest element you want in focus.
I need to take more time and try variations of shots in the field, rather than one or few and hope to make better later in post. :-)
0 -
Another topic you might want to check out is hyperfocal distance.
0
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Comments
6 comments