A Squirrel, a Rabbit, and Lightroom Selective Sharpening!

Hey all!

I know I'm not alone in lamenting the low light scenes and the high ISOs we have to resort to when chasing the critters, and the less-than-satisfactory noise and such.

So, I've been a Lightroom user since, well, the early days of LR and quickly came to rely on it rather than habitually resorting to Photoshop, but of course that meant going without the layer/mask tools for selective sharpening and softening that Photoshop offers.

Well then LR2 and now LR3 came with local adjustment brushes, and you can actually use them for that!

I put off going back into my critter archives for a long time, but last Saturday I was out with my 5DC and the 24-105 for a walkabout, not my wildlife kit, but I encountered a squirrel and I got off a few shots before it skittered away.

Well, because it was on pavement the background was one of those "yuck" things, and finally I got motivated to giving the Sharpening local brush a serious try on the squirrel and the softening effect a stab on the background!

Here's the shot with my "usual" global Lightroom sharpening and such:

Great work Tony! Not sure why but I have never put the adjustment brush's sharpening and clarity sliders to work. Seeing some great results here. Will definitely give it a try.

Cool, give it a go!

And feel free to post some results here in this thread!

Or, you could make a "project" for our RAW Conversion Thread, but that takes a bit of work!

You know, it occurs to me that instead of suggesting that you (or others) post samples here, in a way that could throw this sub-forum off-topic, maybe you could post them in one of the two threads I started on this:

Part 1:

https://photography-on-the.net …/showthread.php​?t=1127481

Part II:

https://photography-on-the.net …/showthread.php​?t=1128385

What a great tip, I use the brush all the time, but mostly for exposure in harsh light.
I also use the graduated filter a lot for the same.

Tony, I may be misunderstanding you, but you did a pass on the squirrel at +100 and then did 2 more passes both at -100? Where these on the squirrel also or on the background? And why two passes? I'm familiar with the adjustment brushes but not following the thinking here?

Really nice change though?

huntersdad wrote in post #13578727
Tony, I may be misunderstanding you, but you did a pass on the squirrel at +100 and then did 2 more passes both at -100? Where these on the squirrel also or on the background? And why two passes? I'm familiar with the adjustment brushes but not following the thinking here?

Really nice change though?

So, the brushes are "additive". I did the one pass of +100 Sharpening in the squirrel itself, and thought that was sufficient. On the background, I did one -100 Sharpening brush, and then decided to give it another pass and so created a "New" brush, again at -100, which added to the effect of the first one.

You can see a bit more of the details in my PBase collection here:

http://www.pbase.com …ativeselective_​sharpening

On the rabbit, I only did one -100 pass on the background.

WOW!!!!! Thanks for the great tips. KUDOS.

Cucamonga Al wrote in post #13579568
WOW!!!!! Thanks for the great tips. KUDOS.

Hey, it's a very cool feature that seems to be under-used, and for the critters I think it's great!