Creative/Selective Sharpening in Lightroom!

Hey All!

Yesterday I had an errand to run and decided to use the occasion to combine it with my pursuit to be a "Biking Photog" (if that doesn't ring a bell you can check out our Biking Photog Thread)!

Anyway, I also like to "capture" any kind of wildlife I see! So, even though I didn't have my "wildlife kit" in my backpack, when I saw this squirrel, I grabbed the walkaround kit I did have, the 5DC and the 24-105 lens, and grabbed what I could before he skittered away:

Thanks for the info. What slider are you referring to when you state you used "two doses of softening"? Thanks.

shadowdancer wrote in post #13564525
Thanks for the info. What slider are you referring to when you state you used "two doses of softening"? Thanks.

When you open a Brush tool in LR, you will see the Effects panel with a drop-down list of pre-sets or the Custom choice, and then the sliders for setting your brush effects.

One of those sliders is for the "Sharpness" effect -- if you put it to a positive number, it locally does some sharpening (I set it to +100 for the squirrel)

If you put the sharpening setting to a negative number it softens. For the background I set it to -100.

As I said, I went over it twice for the softening, using two softening brushes each set to -100. The effects are "additive", as they would be with two sharpening bruches.

Add in some negative Clarity too and it's even better. Adobe compares it to the Lens Blur tool in PSCS. With some practice you can overlap successive layers to increase the blur as backdround distance increases.

tzalman wrote in post #13564924
Add in some negative Clarity too and it's even better. Adobe compares it to the Lens Blur tool in PSCS.

This...

With the right application, you can create a near T/S effect.

Lowered clarity via gradient tool from the top down and bottom up:

Jay, I'm jealous of all the opportunities you must have for high-angle shots.

Haven't had nearly enough opportunities but I've tried to maximize the chances I have had.

Hoping for more in 2012...

Elie and Jay, thanks for chiming in, great advice!

I admit I haven't really taken the time to "master" the local adjustment brushes, so this was a nice way of motivating myself as well as sharing with POTN!

Oh and Jay, your shot is not showing up for me...

OK guys, thanks to your input I revisited the brushes!

For those who are following this, LR like Photoshop has the ability to revisit a local adjustment and adjust the settings and that adjustment is applied to the work that you have done to the particular adjustment. So, I had applied two layers of "Softening". When I checked back, my settings actually had positive Contrast and Clarity in them, making the background look, well, overdone!

So, I pulled the Contrast back to zero and the Clarity to about -30, and when I did that to each brush those settings were applied automagically, and here's the results!

My PBase server is misbehaving today, not cooperating when I want to link "full size" images, so to avoid that I'm linking the "large" versions (800 pixels at the widest) and these don't have the Exif, so if anyone wants Exif, it is in the larger shots above as well as available if you click to the PBase link!

Anyway, here's the "finished" shot with contrast and clarity pulled back:

tonylong wrote in post #13565158
OK guys, thanks to your input I revisited the brushes!

.....

Anyway, here's the "finished" shot with contrast and clarity pulled back:


And, for your pixel-peeping pleasure, here's the adjusted close crop:

I definitely like the adjusted version(s) better! What about you all?

Tony

I love the background effect. Well done! I just wonder whether you've run the brush a bit close along the wee fella's back. He seems to have lost some of the definition in the hairs that were standing up on the back of his neck.

Tim

That is something I tried to avoid, although the hairs that stick out the farthest probably got some of the softening.

But, since that crop is already a 100% crop, I would have had to blow it up to a much higher magnification to clean those up, and for this project I didn't want to take the time!

However, for the future I do have some shoots which I may get real serious about, ones that I may want to print large enough to actuall have those little details matter...!

And hey, thanks for looking and for your feedback!

Also note that as you look farther back on the critter, the f/4 narrow depth of field was taking effect, so as I got farther toward the rear I may have been a bit looser with the softening.

Jay, did you see my note that you image doesn't show up at least for me? "Content Protected By Owner"...

I hope that others will chime in with their own results as well!

Sorry 'bout that...

How about now?

FlyingPhotog wrote in post #13566011
Sorry 'bout that...

How about now?

Ah, yeah, sweet! Thanks, Jay!

I see what you mean about approaching the tilt-shift -- my squirrel shot shows a little of that since the DOF of the shot is fairly narrow -- I didn't soften the parts of the ground that are actually in the DOF so the softening did a good job of emphacising the in-focus parts, but really my image isn't so good for doing a "fake T&S" on...

Anyway, thanks for re-posting that! Excellent shot (as usual)!