Creative/Selective Sharpening in Lightroom!

Tony, that last fix looks so good that I'm selling all my nice bokeh producing fast primes.

Good easy stuff suggested here you guys.

Nice shot Jay.

windpig wrote in post #13566136
Tony, that last fix looks so good that I'm selling all my nice bokeh producing fast primes.

Heh, that's funny!

'Course someone did mention above that the softening effect is similar to the lens softening tool in Photoshop...

But in the squirrel shot it really only worked well because the DOF of the f/4 was already pretty narrow -- I'd hate to try to tackle a shot with a wide DOF and pretend it was really a wide aperture instead!

Agree on all! I hope some others can pitch in with their success projects before the thread fades away!

One thing you can do to avoid sharpening the grain/noise in backgrounds (and other blurred/solid-color areas) is to pull up the Masking slider in the sharpening section. I've been pulling it up to ~40 as a starting point.

Obviously not quite the same as selective sharpening/softening, but a good bit less work as well.

That's a good point Rob but perhaps instead one should turn down the capture sharpening completely, then process the creative sharpening using the adjustment brush and then at the end, use the capture sharpening with the mask turned up to only sharpen the important bits.

Seems a bit arse about face but hope you get my drift.

rpaul wrote in post #13579947
One thing you can do to avoid sharpening the grain/noise in backgrounds (and other blurred/solid-color areas) is to pull up the Masking slider in the sharpening section. I've been pulling it up to ~40 as a starting point.

Obviously not quite the same as selective sharpening/softening, but a good bit less work as well.

Yeah, I use the Masking slider plenty when I'm sticking with global sharpening. For a lot of stuff Masking and a bit of Noise Reduction are quite sufficient.

cagenuts wrote in post #13580008
That's a good point Rob but perhaps instead one should turn down the capture sharpening completely, then process the creative sharpening using the adjustment brush and then at the end, use the capture sharpening with the mask turned up to only sharpen the important bits.

Seems a bit arse about face but hope you get my drift.

And this! When using the brushes, you can pull global sharpening back so it doesn't mess with the noisy background, and you can pull Noise Reduction back so it doesn't soften your subject, selectively apply, be happy!

cagenuts wrote in post #13580008
That's a good point Rob but perhaps instead one should turn down the capture sharpening completely, then process the creative sharpening using the adjustment brush and then at the end, use the capture sharpening with the mask turned up to only sharpen the important bits.

Seems a bit arse about face but hope you get my drift.

I'm not sure that would work quite the way you expect. Brush sharpening uses whatever Radius and Detail parameters are set in the Detail panel. If you brush in sharpness and later change those settings it will change the nature of the brush sharpening also. Something that you should at least be aware of.

tzalman wrote in post #13580926
I'm not sure that would work quite the way you expect. Brush sharpening uses whatever Radius and Detail parameters are set in the Detail panel. If you brush in sharpness and later change those settings it will change the nature of the brush sharpening also. Something that you should at least be aware of.

Ah, good to know Elie!

tzalman wrote in post #13580926
Brush sharpening uses whatever Radius and Detail parameters are set in the Detail panel. If you brush in sharpness and later change those settings it will change the nature of the brush sharpening also.

Wow, thanks for the heads up! I now need to think about this carefully.

Love this RAW section of POTN, no-one here showing off their fancy equipment, no-one with inflated egos. Dudes like Elie, Tony, René, Digital Paradise and others are so willing to help others.

Thanks to everyone really. I bought my first camera earlier this year so it's been a steep learning curve both photographically speaking and post processing wise.

I agree, this is a great sub-forum here on POTN, the first "place" I check in to from day to day!