Koray wrote:
deconvolution?

I may have missed that term since I dont have a stable connection.

what is it about?

Deconvolution is taking the known source of blur and using a sophisticated algorithm to rebuild information to reverse it. If you look at the smart sharpen command, it employs some basic deconvolution to remove motion, lens, and Gaussian blur. Most of the dedicated plugins for this are expensive since it's mostly for forensic post processing.

I think what you're talking about is tone mapping, which at its core is micro adjustments of midtone values, rather than finding and increasing the contrast of edges like most sharpening does.

Luminosity masks with curve adjustments may be your best bet although it is a bit rough with micro adjustments.

ASYLUM - Photo wrote:
I'm happy to report that this thread is wizzing over my head.

But it's very interesting to read.

Glad I'm not the only one!

Robert Randall wrote:
When people eschew the use of HP filters, I usually feel they don't know how to use them, for instance, create an alpha channel based on the lum value of the file. Hit the alpha channel with a HP filter of a few pixels, or even just one pixel. Apply a curve to the channel with a shadow number of 0 output and 128 input, and a highlight value of 255 output and 191 input. This will clamp off everything north of midtone so that only highlights are affected. Blur the mask a bit to taste, or not, and load the channel as a selection. Ask for a layer curve, noting the selection is now the mask for the curve, and play around with the values of the file through the curve. You will be affecting detail in a ramped continuous tone manner in the midtone through the highlight, with an emphasis on the highlight. You should suffer no degradation of the file and no visible artifacting if you control yourself.

Invert the channel before filtering to affect shadows.

High Pass is simply a tool, what you do with it can be genius, or it can be Dave Hills bastard crack whore sister... its up to you.

Interesting! I will have to try that tomorrow night.

ASYLUM - Photo wrote:
I'm happy to report that this thread is wizzing over my head.

But it's very interesting to read.

I bet you understand more then you think. Maybe a bit more step by step will help. Hopefully I get this right. Correct me if I get any part wrong Bob. This mostly for my benefit as well.

-First Bob is talking about creating an alpha channel (in your Channels palette) using the luminosity values of the image. See http://www.goodlight.us/writing/luminos … sks-2.html for an explanation on how to create one.

-Once you have the alpha channel created then you apply a HP filter to it. Then go Image>adjustments>curves and make the adjustments that Bob has recommend which will isolate the highlights. You can blur the mask to soften the coming selection if you desire or leave it as is.

-Then Control + Click the alpha channel you created to load it as a selection. Go back to your Layers palette and create a new curves adjustment layer. The selection you just loaded will now be the mask on that curves layer. Now you can play with the highlights as you see fit. You can even edit the mask once out of curves.

You can also invert that alpha channel selection to control the shadows.

This is something I should be doing to my images, but I get lazy and start doing to many global adjustments. I'm getting better though.

Gibson Photo Art wrote:

I bet you understand more then you think. Maybe a bit more step by step will help. Hopefully I get this right. Correct me if I get any part wrong Bob. This mostly for my benefit as well.

-First Bob is talking about creating an alpha channel (in your Channels palette) using the luminosity values of the image. See http://www.goodlight.us/writing/luminos … sks-2.html for an explanation on how to create one.

-Once you have the alpha channel created then you apply a HP filter to it. Then go Image>adjustments>curves and make the adjustments that Bob has recommend which will isolate the highlights. You can blur the mask to soften the coming selection if you desire or leave it as is.

-Then Control + Click the alpha channel you created to load it as a selection. Go back to your Layers palette and create a new curves adjustment layer. The selection you just loaded will now be the mask on that curves layer. Now you can play with the highlights as you see fit. You can even edit the mask once out of curves.

You can also invert that alpha channel selection to control the shadows.

This is something I should be doing to my images, but I get lazy and start doing to many global adjustments. I'm getting better though.

I actually find this quite helpful. The process seemed much more complicated, but this sounds like it's all stuff I already know how to do, or can figure out fairly easily. I do think laziness it my biggest obstacle as well.

Gibson Photo Art wrote:
Which plugin are you using Koray? Maybe we can take a look and try to reverse engineer it.

My best guess Koray talking about either Nik's Color Efex 3 Tonal Contrast, or newest Lusious Art software. Personally I like first better, although barely using it.

Black Russian Studio wrote:

My best guess Koray talking about either Nik's Color Efex 3 Tonal Contrast, or newest Lusious Art software. Personally I like first better, although barely using it.

Hey man...long time no see

Koray wrote:
Hey man...long time no see

Hey Koray! I been on temporary retired because pernanently broke list

It would be interesting to try your sugestion for difference betw Blue and Lightness channels.

Lately I barely using USM, SS or HP and rather using combination of G and B channels contrast masks (applying it on image in Luminosity mode) to increase both contrast and pre-sharpening of image, and finish sharpening by applying curves in Lab mode. This way its never any haloes, as you never create any, since all sharpening is done by incresing contrast both local and global. However theres often problem with B channel for sharpening people, low key or high ISO images: most of the noise is always there!

Btw, I found for print output sharpening Nik's Sharpener Pro is as impressive as Tonal Contrast at what it does.

Here is somewhat extreme version of such sharpening without sharpening with straight out of the camera and edited versions:

Koray wrote:
By the way I found out that the difference of Lightness channel and Blue is best for quick recovery

What do you mean by this?

Gibson Photo Art wrote:

I bet you understand more then you think. Maybe a bit more step by step will help. Hopefully I get this right. Correct me if I get any part wrong Bob. This mostly for my benefit as well.

-First Bob is talking about creating an alpha channel (in your Channels palette) using the luminosity values of the image. See http://www.goodlight.us/writing/luminos … sks-2.html for an explanation on how to create one.

-Once you have the alpha channel created then you apply a HP filter to it. Then go Image>adjustments>curves and make the adjustments that Bob has recommend which will isolate the highlights. You can blur the mask to soften the coming selection if you desire or leave it as is.

-Then Control + Click the alpha channel you created to load it as a selection. Go back to your Layers palette and create a new curves adjustment layer. The selection you just loaded will now be the mask on that curves layer. Now you can play with the highlights as you see fit. You can even edit the mask once out of curves.

You can also invert that alpha channel selection to control the shadows.

This is something I should be doing to my images, but I get lazy and start doing to many global adjustments. I'm getting better though.

That's all very interesting...

I'm at work so I can't really test it out too much, but what effect is this geared toward? General contrast? Localized contrast? Sharpening? All of the above?

Koray wrote:
Make a copy of Luminosity in lab mode...convert back to rgb...go to calculations and make a difference of luminosity copy and blue.

either make a selection of it and adjust curves...brings back exposed details...doesnt really have any advantage that I know of though

By the way surface blurring things instead of gaussian makes interesting results.

BR- What you explained makes nice results depending on the image

Thanks Koray. I'll give this a try and see what I can do with it.

Koray wrote:
Make a copy of Luminosity in lab mode...convert back to rgb...go to calculations and make a difference of luminosity copy and blue.

either make a selection of it and adjust curves...brings back exposed details...doesnt really have any advantage that I know of though

By the way surface blurring things instead of gaussian makes interesting results.

BR- What you explained makes nice results depending on the image

Ahhhh.... See, I went to PS World in Boston and sat through both parts of the "Every file has 10 channels" seminar and was thoroughly impressed by what Dan Margulis taught... I still need to play with taking channels from one colorspace and using it for masking or applying it to an image in a different colorspace...

Traciee D wrote:
koray you are so good at what you do.....you don't mask?

I'm new to the masks that are not black and white and dont have lines. I paint or pen tool those.

These are based on the image not about cutting things out and mixing together

Gibson Photo Art wrote:
This is something I should be doing to my images, but I get lazy and start doing to many global adjustments. I'm getting better though.

In most cases, global adjustments are better for maintaining a photorealistic look. It's only when you want to do some special manipulations to shift things from scene-real that localized adjustments come in handy.

OTOH, shifting from scene-real IS a common task, whether it's artificially boosting or attenuating textures, bringing out added details in shadows, or whatever.

And spending a day or so just "playing" with Calculations can be very helpful. Look at how the various RGBCYMKLABHSB channels relate to each other for your typical images (a landscape shooter will end up with very different favorites than a portrait shooter). Different blend modes, mixing different channels. Some are obvious--K is great for making neutral shadow masks; A, B, and S are good for saturation, etc--but not all of them are. (Blue can be used to add grit to skin, for example, as Black Russian Studio demonstrated above.)

Similarly, different filters can be used, especially in combination with calculated mixes. High pass and blur are extremely handy there, but so are Find Edges and some others (e.g. trace Contour can sometimes be very useful, though limited). Even the choice of which blur can make a difference.

Koray wrote:
Yes Kevin thats exactly what I found out within the last week.
I just cant beat the damn plugin without touching the brush tool

There IS a reason some plug-ins sell.

Granted, most of the common plug-ins duplicate built-in functions while providing more or easier control, but not all of them do. Many of the filters in Reindeer Graphic's toolkit, for example, use functionality that's not built-in to Photoshop. This NIK filter might be one of them.

Kevin_Connery wrote:
And spending a day or so just "playing" with Calculations can be very helpful. Look at how the various RGBCYMKLABHSB channels relate to each other for your typical images (a landscape shooter will end up with very different favorites than a portrait shooter). Different blend modes, mixing different channels. Some are obvious--K is great for making neutral shadow masks; A, B, and S are good for saturation, etc--but not all of them are. (Blue can be used to add grit to skin, for example, as Black Russian Studio demonstrated above.)

How do you gain access to HSB channels?

Ruben Vasquez wrote:
How do you gain access to HSB channels?

Photoshop ships with a HSBHSL plug-in, but it's not installed by default. Copy it to your plug-in folder, and access it via the Filter > Other > HSL/HSB.

It converts the channels of the currently selected layer to HSB or HSL, but they'll remain labeled RGB, and will display onscreen as if they were RGB, making the display a bit wonky.  (That is, Hue is labeled Red, Saturation is Green, and Brightness [or Luminosity, if you chose HSL] is the Blue channel)

Because it only converts one layer, it needs to be done on a merged copy if you want to retain other edits.

Photoshop used to have a native HSL or HSB mode, just like is does RGB, CMYK, and LAB, but got rid of it around v3 or v4.