This blogpost has nothing whatsoever to do with colormanagement or editing. It originated purely out of frustration and bewilderment of the online photo community. You might call it a rant, and it should be read that way: Take it with however many grains of salt you like.

“Great Image”

… That’s a phrase I see quite a bit variations of when browsing photo sharing sites and forums and, lately, Twitter.
All to often though, I look and the image and think: “No, it isn’t great”. Heck, in some cases, the image isn’t even what I’d call “good”.
Why these comments then? It might be because people don’t understand the value criticism can have and want to be nice…
Well, guess what: In my opinion, about the worst comment someone can make about my photos is “nice image”: I know it’s “nice”, otherwise I would not have posted it. But I also know it isn’t perfect. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee that I see flaws myself in every image I make. I see them, and because of that I can hopefully avoid them next time. But because I’m not perfect, I might overlook other flaws. Since I want to continue learning, I’d like to have them pointed out: I prefer input over praise.

What’s criticizing then?

According to Merriam-Webster:

Definition of CRITICIZE
intransitive verb
: to act as a critic
transitive verb
1
: to consider the merits and demerits of and judge accordingly : evaluate
2
: to find fault with : point out the faults of
— crit·i·ciz·able\-?s?-z?-b?l\ adjective
— crit·i·ciz·er noun

If you look at the first definition, you’ll see criticism needn’t necessarily be unfavorable. And even if it is, I still think it’s a good thing.

Why is giving criticism good?

Seems like a lot of people think that criticising must be negative, since you are pointing out what you don’t like. What they fail to take into account is that by giving criticism, you are analysing an image. Looking for “merits and demerits” according to the above definition. And by doing that, you learn: You don’t just look at an image, you think about it. And by thinking about images, you also learn to recognise certain things, not only in the image you are looking at, but also in images you are going to shoot yourself in the future. On one hand, you look more analytical at composition, exposure, whitebalance and other technicalities, but on the other hand you probably have a “gut feeling” about an image. You might just be able to figure out what causes that feeling, so you’re later able to use it to your own advantage. Fundamentally, it’s my idea that by analysing other peoples images, you learn about yourself.

Why is receiving criticism good?

Everybody learns from making mistakes, but only if you know you made mistakes. So sometimes these mistakes need to be pointed out to you. Also, you might get an idea whether you are “on the right track”: What do other people think about your style? Because they didn’t shoot the image, they have a different relation to the subject, and might be able to look more objectively.

How to be a good critic

Of course, you don’t need to only point out negatives. A bit of sugar-coating praise might help overly sensitive people deal with accepting their images aren’t perfect. If I cannot find anything positive to say about an image, I either don’t comment at all or, if I’m feeling frank, I say I don’t like it and try to explain why. Just saying “this image sucks” is about the only comment that’s worse then “nice image”.

Time to be honest

So, all go visit your favorite forum or photo sharing website, and be critical. Everybody should benefit from that.
Obviously, if you are critical about this blogpost, feel free to post a comment as well.

Simply put? Nothing.
Well, if that were all I had to say on the subject, this would have to be my shortest blogpost ever… Okay, a bit more info then:
A lot of first time DSLR users are concerned that their shiny new camera delivers files that are “only” 72dpi, while their old point and shoot delivered 300dpi files. Why is this concern unwarranted? Surely 300 is more then 72, and more is better, right?

Wrong

The old wisdom saying is that “300dpi is for printing and 72dpi is for screen”.
There are a few things wrong with that.
First and foremost, the term “dpi” stands for dots per inch. In a digital file there are no dots, only pixels. So the correct term is pixels per inch (ppi).
Also, 72ppi originated as it was the resolution of an ancient Mac monitor. Current monitors have a much higher pixel density: My old 12″ PowerbookG4 for instance has a screen resolution of about 100ppi. Most current screens are somewhere between 80 and 120ppi.

Do the math…

for your screen: Simply measure width and height and divide the number of pixels by the measured values… Tip: Once you found the figure for your screen, be sure to enter it in the PSCS4 preferences under “Units and Rulers, Screen resolution”: That way, the “Zoom, Print size” will show an accurate sized preview.
So, is a 300ppi file better then a 72ppi file?

No difference

If you hadn’t gathered as much from the above, for display on screen, only the display you’re using will determine the “resolution”.
So, a file that contains for instance 500×750 pixels will be displayed at a different size (in inches, centimeters, or whatever you prefer), depending on the screen you’re using to view it. The arbitrary ppi figure set in the file has no relevance whatsoever.

To illustrate that, here is an example: Each file is 500×750 pixels. One is 72ppi, the other 300ppi.

Notice the difference? No? That’s because there isn’t any.

Why use it then?

Because you have to put something in the box: There is no way that Photoshop will allow you to not fill in a value. However, what you put in there is pretty arbitrary. Use whatever you like basically for display on screen.
I prefer to use 300ppi for general use, since then the “image size” dialog box will quickly tell me about how large I can print an image at decent quality. For web, I mostly use 72ppi (unless I forget) since, well, that’s what some people expect…

Some more reading: here

Never thought I’d blog about something as individual as PS Color Settings… Then again, there is so much conflicting, incomplete or downright inaccurate info on the web, I thought it might be time to set the record straight.

Individual

First of: Like more things in photography life there is no “Magic Bullet”. If that’s what you are looking for, better get used to this idea: You need a basic understanding of Color Management.
On the bright side: The settings in the Color Settings dialog box affect a number of things. However, unless done totally wrong, how your images are displayed is not one of those things.

Settings nobody should use

There is no “Magic Bullet”, but there is a “one size fits no-one”: The setting called “Monitor Color”.

What does it do? Let’s go through the main problems step by step:

It sets your monitor profile as default working space. So every time you calibrate your monitor (you do that regularly, right?) your default working space changes. And your default working space is limited to your monitors gamut. Not good if you are on a laptop for instance.
One additional problem is that equal values for R, G and B might not give a neutral gray. And there are other problems.

One of those problems is, that it sets all color management policies to “off”. Note that, contrary to popular belief, setting “monitor profile” does not turn off color management altogether: The one good thing in all this mess is that you are presented with this dialogue box when opening an image with an embedded profile:

Damage

The damage you can do here is very real:
If you tick the top option (“Use the embedded profile”), no damage is done. The image will be shown correct, and all data is retained. Not bad at all.
If you pick option #2 (“Convert to working space”), irreversible damage is done: The pixels in the image will be converted (changed!) to your monitor profile. Color numbers are converted (so colors will display correctly), but all colors out of your monitors gamut will be clipped. Poof! Gone. Forever.
If you pick option #3 (“Discard the embedded profile”), at least you won’t be damaging the file on import as in option #2 (it’s reversible by assigning the correct profile). But you will not be seeing the image correctly. So any “color correction” you do will be incorrect. The fact that the color numbers aren’t changed is a moot point because of this: What you see definitely will not be what others see.

Other problems

Yet another problem is that, even if you use embedded profiles, you will get no warning when you copy-paste an image into a new document (which by default will not have an embedded profile), or into an image with a different working space: The colors will change. See option #3 above.

So, I see no reason for anyone to use it. Not even web designers. Yes, I know that lots of browsers are not color managed. However, there are not lots of people using your screen, are there?
The only reason to temporarily set it, is when you need to check whether Photoshop is using the correct monitor profile.

Better

Just about any of the other “presets” is better. These presets are grouped in a few categories. When you scroll trough them, you might notice a few things:

There are settings for Europe and North America. And in every region there are 3 settings: for “General Purpose”, “Prepress” and “Web/Internet”. When you tick “more options” Japan appears, which has the same trio but adds “Color For Newspaper” and “Japan Magazine Advertisement Color”. There also appear a few other “international” presets.

Rather then going into each one in depth, I’ll generally explain some differences and possible pitfalls: They are “presets”, but IMO none is perfect. You can use them as a starting point however.
I start of with “more options” unchecked. And the screenshots are for the European presets. However, the comments I give are the same for the other localisations.

General Purpose

It Isn’t. It’s really that simple. Like I said: There’s no magic bullet.
Main drawback is that you get no warning whatsoever for profile mismatches: When you open two images in a different working space, and paste one into the other, colors will be converted. Which, as said, is irreversible and might give irreversible damage. If I’m going to damage my image, I damn well want to be notified.

Prepress

Is quite a decent choice if you are doing prepress work. Profiles are preserved, you are warned when you get a mismatch, and reasonable profiles are chosen for CMYK, gray and spot. (depending on the area you chose, CMYK and dot gain are different.) Then again, if you are doing prepress work, I’d hope that you know enough about color management that you don’t need to read my thoughts on it…

Web/Internet

This is the only preset where converting to working space might make sense in my opinion: If you are just doing work for internet, anything should be sRGB. If you have to ask why: Read my blogpost on the subject. Then again, I’d like a warning if an image has no embedded profile: In some cases it might be because someone screwed up. This is largely a personal preference however.

Other presets

Are “more of the same” (two other Japanese presets only differ in CMYK, gray and spot from Japan Prepress2). The “Phase One” workflow is the odd one out: It sets a gray profile of Gray Gamma 2.2 which is quite sensible. Then again, the CMYK profile is “Euro-Catalog”, which I never need.
The other options (Colorsync (mac only), PS5) are obsolete legacy.

Create your own

Since everybody’s needs are different, it makes sense to make your own preset then, doesn’t it? Sure! But you need to know what each setting does. Some things are pretty straight forward, others not so much.

Default working spaces: RGB

Pretty much up to personal preference. The question “what RGB color space is best” I’ll leave be for now. Use whatever working space you use in your raw converter of choice. Two points I do want to make: If you don’t understand color management, do yourself a favor and use sRGB as a working space everywhere. On the other hand, if you are using a wide gamut color space (anything larger then AdobeRGB) do so in 16 bit per channel only!
Settings never to use are AppleRGB, ColorMatchRGB or GenericRGB. These are based on monitors that went the way of the dodo…

CMYK and others

For CMYK working space: Most people won’t ever print something on an offset press, so won’t ever be needing CMYK. When you do need it, make sure the printer tells you what profile to use, and set that as the default: It has some impact further down the road in PSCS4.
Don’t ever use GenericCMYK or one of the “old” Photoshop CMYK settings here: No good reason to. When in doubt, you probably won’t ever need it, so pick the “default” for your region.
Same goes for Gray and Spot working space. If you do a lot of grayscale images for web, gamma 2.2 is the best setting. If you print them to a specific Offsetpress and you know what dot gain to use, by all means do. But in that case you probably wouldn’t be reading this article… For same reasons as above never, ever use Gamma 1.8. It’s obsolete.

Policies and Notifications

Choose “Preserve Embedded Profiles”, unless as explained above, you are a web designer and have thought about the subject a bit.
I don’t see the need to tick the “Profile mismatch: Ask when opening” box, since I edit images from a known source, and the embedded profiles are what they are for a reason. So YMMV. I do tick the “Ask when pasting” and “missing profiles” boxes. The first because I want to be notified if an image profile is converted, the second because if there is no profile embedded, someone screwed up.

Note that if you choose “Discard the embedded profile (do not color manage)” here, the image will be shown as if it had the default working space embedded. This has the same effect as assigning your default working space: The image won’t display accurate, but it is reversible (by assigning the proper profile).

Another note (a big one) is that PS somehow doesn’t display this warning when pasting an image without profile into a document with an embedded color space! Colors will change.

Advanced: Conversion options

Engine: Leave at “Adobe (ACE)”. It’s the best choice, and if you have a specific reason why you would want to use another, you would not need my advice.
Rendering intent: Either perceptual or relative colorimetric for photographic images. Which is best will depend on the image. Not that this setting matters much: This is the rendering intent used by default when you go Image > Convert to profile (where you can change it in the dialog box) and it is used when going Image > Mode > CMYK for instance (which I would strongly advise against, since it offers no preview and no direct control)
The description says it all:

Always tick “Use Black point compensation” and also “Use Dither”: It makes banding or posterization much less likely.
The last option “Compensate for Screen -referred profiles” is only important if you make documents for Adobe After Effects. In that case: Tick it. Otherwise: Tick it as well, since it won’t matter then.

Advanced, but not to be used

“Desaturate Monitor Colors By” and “Blend RGB Colors Using Gamma”: Easy: Don’t tick those. They are not meant for photographers. Again: Read the description:

Possible pitfalls

As already mentioned, the settings set in the “Conversion options” will be used when changing from one color space to the next by going Image > Mode. So do not go there. Use Edit > Convert to profile instead. Yes you can also use it to convert from RGB to CMYK…

Another, less well known fact, is that the default profile is what determines the values in the info palette (Color picker) for anything but the color space the image is in. So if you use a CMYK or grayscale color picker on an RGB image, the readout will be for your current default CMYK or gray working space!

Another of the stupid less-then-brilliant decisions on Adobes part was to have the Select > Color Range > Out of Gamut selection be based on the default CMYK working space. Makes no sense whatsoever and makes the tool all but unusable for anyone who prints at home, but there it is…
Here is an sRGB image, softproofed for my Epson R2880, using glossy paper. The Gamut warning is on and shows no out of gamut colors. Notice the selection?

Conclusion

After reading this, you should know enough about the subject to create your own settings. After you did, save them as your own preset. It might also be a good idea to add a description.
Here’s mine:

If you are shooting portraits or architecture, it can be very useful to be able to view the images on a larger screen then that on the back of your camera: You can better judge focus, expression, exposure and composition for instance. Not only because the screen is bigger and of better quality (not to mention calibrated!), but also because the software you use might have some visual aids (clipping warning, grid, 100% view, stuff like that)

What do you need

Obviously a camera and the proper cable: USB for most consumer models and the Eos 1D(s)3, Firewire for the Canon 1D(2) and 1D(s)Mk2(n).
Apart from that, you’ll need some software to connect the camera to the computer and some kind of viewer or raw converter.

The software

There are a few options: Capture One Pro is highly regarded, and does all in one package, but the price is fairly steep.
Then there’s Bibble Pro. Quite a bit cheaper and supports more (older) cameras then C1Pro. Both of these support Nikon and Canon. Bibble also supports other brands. Both are available for Windows and OSX, Bibble also for Linux. Neither allow remote control of the camera, but Capture one allows you to fire the shutter remotely.

Free

Lucky for us that Canon also offers a free solution: Eos Utility. It came on the disk with your camera. If it didn’t, or you lost the disk, you can download it, following the instructions here.
Once installed, you’ll also need a viewer. I prefer to use DPP on my laptop, since that’s a dinosaur an old Powerbook G4 with a 12″ screen. Others prefer to use Lightroom. I’ll explain how to use both:

Step by step

First, start Eos Utility and go to the preferences: (Do this before connecting the camera. On my Mac (OSX 10.4.11) at least, it won’t complete start up, and needs to be force-quit otherwise)
Since I use DPP mostly for tethered shooting, I set up my Folder and filenames to be meaningful here. If you use Lightroom, you can skip this name customization.

The name is pretty self-explanatory I think. I use 3 lines for Year/Month/Date, since the preset “Shooting day” will add a few underscores I don’t want.

Again, pretty obvious naming scheme: My initials, the date and a short description.

Then set DPP as Linked Software.

Now for the shooting

Exit the prefs. That get’s you back to the main window. Choose “Camera Settings / Remote Shooting”

You get this: Note that, unlike other tethering software, Eos Utility gives you complete control over the camera. Very, very nice if the camera is at a position where you can hardly reach it (high on a tripod for instance).

Take a shot. If the “quick preview” window opens, click it away, since you won’t be needing that. It will stay gone as long as you don’t restart Eos Utility.
The image will now automatically open in DPP, in thumbnail view.

That’s not my preferred way of working. So I hit Cmd+A (select all) and Cmd+right arrow (open in edit image window; no shortcut for it on PC). That gives me this:

Cmd+T gets rid of the tools. All consecutive images will open in the edit image window now. At whatever zoom factor you choose.
You’re all set. So shoot away.

Lightroom

In Lightroom it’s a bit more complicated different.
Set everything the same in Eos Utility, except of course the linked software. As said, you also don’t need to worry about folder naming, because that is taken care of in Lightroom:

Then open Lightroom. It will open with the images you last edited / imported. Enable Auto Import, and set up a watched folder like this, in the very logically named “Auto Import Settings”:

Note that your images will get moved (not copied) by LightRoom into the folder you specify here. No way around it, so the whole naming scheme for folders in Eos Utility is kinda redundant in this case. I’d strongly recommend using a meaningful foldername. You can use either LR or Eos Utility to manage the filenames, depending on what you prefer.

Take a shot:

Note the image in the background is still the old image. If after the shot you get “No Photo Selected”, click a thumbnail in LR.
That’s it. Lightroom will now keep an eye on that folder, and import every image that lands in there. A bit slower on my laptop then DPP, but it works okay.

The drawbacks

Tethered shooting causes the battery of your camera to drain faster. With some cameras (the 1D comes to mind) that’s not something you desire…
Obviously, you also need to lug a laptop with you, but IMO that’s well worth it.
Lastly: Eos Utility does not like it when the camera goes to sleep, or is disconnected: It’ll crash. No idea why it’s buggy that way, probably because it’s free.

The human eye is most sensitive for yellow-green light. Take a look at the next gradient for instance:

To me, indeed the green-to-yellow part looks brightest. Not so to Photoshop however.

About a hundred ways to loose the color

Well, maybe not thàt much, but quite a few anyhow. The easiest way (but offering zero control) would be to go through Image > Mode > Grayscale. That’ll give you this:

Your image just became 1/3 of the original size, and that weight loss is caused because there’s now only a ‘gray’ channel instead of a red, green and blue one.
Big drawback of this method, is that it’s destructive: You indeed loose the color: It’s gone for good. Since you also have zero control, I’d never use this method.

Layers

So, we want something that’s reversible. Lots of ways to do that, using (adjustment) layers, but not all of them good… Let’s start off by naming just about the worst way imaginable: Desaturate. What this does, is that it removes all color information from an image, without the option for any user intervention. While that may or may not be important to you, this should be: All colors are treated as if they were equal.
While equality is a great thing, in this case, it isn’t, since to us different colors aren’t equal.

What does Photoshop see?

Simply put: Numbers. If you’d open the above color gradient in Photoshop, the eye dropper will show you what it’s made of: A simple gradient in each channel. The image below shows the channels:

To understand what Photoshop sees a bit better, have a look at the info palette, and in particular the HSB values there. The only thing changing there is the hue angle! Saturation and Brightness remain at 100 percent in the entire gradient.

Not vastly surprising then, that this is what you get when you do a ‘straightforward’ desaturate:

Hue and Saturation are at 0, Brightness is at 50 percent. This might be correct “by the numbers”, but it’s not what I’d want for making a nice black and white image…

A better way

As with most things in Photoshop, there’s plenty of ways to convert a color image to a grayscale. I’m going to show a few here that do a better job then desaturate, and offer more control then ‘Image > Mode > Grayscale’.

One simple way would be to use blend modes: Duplicate the background layer, desaturate the duplicate layer and set the blend mode of the top layer to color.
This can all be done using keyboard shortcuts: Cmd+J, Shift+Cmd+U, Shift+Opt+C, so is very quick.
Disadvantage of that method is that it doubles the file size.

Photoshop is acting more then a bit goofy here by the way: If you desaturate the top layer, you essentially fill it with medium gray. However, if you create a new layer and fill that with medium gray (or black or white or whatever shade of gray in between) by using the fill command, the file size does not double. Very weird indeed.

So the fastest way to go black and white without doubling the file size would be this: Shift+Cmd+Opt+N, Cmd+Backspace, Shift+Opt+C.

Control

All nice and fast, but this doesn’t give you much control. So let’s try a different method. Make a Hue / Saturation adjustment layer. Set saturation to 0. Now you have the uniform gray image of the example above. Now, set the blending mode to ‘Color’ (Or Hue, or Saturation. Doesn’t matter in this case.) Same as when you use that blend mode on a layer filled with pixels! Yet still no control.
To get control, add another hue saturation adjustment layer between this one and the background image. Set the blend mode to ‘Luminosity’. Do not touch the Saturation slider here however. Instead, use the ‘Hue’ slider to alter the grayscale image.
The example below shows the effect of a shift in hue of +40:

Alternatives

As said, in Photoshop there are more ways to do this.
You could for instance just copy the contents of one channel into the image. What works better then that, is to use either the ‘Calculations’ command or, more flexible and a bit easier to understand, a Channel Mixer adjustment layer.
Tick the grayscale box there, and PS will default to these values:

You can then drag any slider to wherever you want, creating the type of black and white image you want. For instance for a portrait, using more red will result in lighter skin tones, using more green will give more contrast… As can be seen in the screenshot, Channel Mixer will warn you when the total of channels goes over 100 percent. However that does not mean that you must never go higher. Depends on the image really… The Histogram is your friend here.

The two gradients made with channel mixer: First default setting, then the altered setting:

Channel mixer has the strangeness that if you untick the ‘Monochrome’ box, the values for all channels stay at what you set (83, 24 and 5 percent in the above example). If however you then tick the ‘Monochrome’ box again, you’re back at the default values! Not the brightest decision Adobe ever made I think.

New to CS3

In PSCS3, Adobe introduced the ‘Black and White’ adjustment layer. It’s quite a bit like a Channel mixer, but is adjustable for 6 colors, instead of 3 channels. So it offers more control (and more options for the user to screw up).

Apparently, someone at Adobe must have been watching Spinal Tap, since the sliders of this adjustment layer range from -200 to +300. ‘Goes to eleven‘ indeed. For the adventurous: There’s also an ‘Auto’ button.

New to CS4

In PSCS4, Adobe included the new ‘Vibrance’ adjustment that was first introduced in Lightroom and ACR. That adjustment also features a ‘Saturation’ slider.
If you use that slider to desaturate an image, it quickly becomes clear that this is working different then the ‘Hue Saturation’ adjustment. You could say it’s actually working nice.

This is whet you get if you drag the Saturation to -100: A contrasty version of what you get using ‘Channel mixer’.

Some tips

If you set any of these adjustment layers to blend mode ‘Color’, you get the exact same result as in the above example with a gray pixel layer set to blend mode ‘Color’: A standard B&W conversion.
This can be useful as a quick way to compare your conversion to a ‘standard’ grayscale conversion to see if your version is actually better…
Blend mode ‘Color’ will also work for a ‘Solid Color’, ‘Gradient’, ‘Gradient Map’ or ‘Pattern’ adjustment layer. While I cannot think of a use for ‘Pattern’, the first two work similar to a gray pixel layer set to ‘Color’, while the third offers interesting possibilities. Maybe not what you’d want for your average, day to day grayscale conversion, but nice to experiment a bit.

I leave you with an example of that: A ‘Gradient Map’ adjustment layer, using the preset ‘Copper’, then set blend mode to ‘Color’, on an actual photo:

Lightroom 2 has two kinds of sharpening: Capture sharpening and output sharpening. Capture sharpening is used to neutralize the blurring caused by the Anti Aliasing filter in your camera.
Output sharpening is dependent on output (print or screen, what size) and meant to overcome the softening caused by resizing or happening when printing.

Differences

Output sharpening in Lightroom is simple: You get 4 options when you export the image: Off, low, standard or high. All else is taken care of by Lightroom. Ease of use for sure. Drawback is that you cannot preview it, so you’ll need to experiment a bit. After that, it’s “set and forget”.
Capture sharpening on the other hand, requires a bit more user interaction. The settings will depend on camera used, subject and personal preference. You can preview it, but only at 100% or higher magnification. So you either need to zoom in, or you can view sharpening in the microscopic small “preview window” Lightroom 2 has for this purpose.
(There is off course the workaround I mentioned in an earlier blog post)

The “Detail” Tab

…in Lightroom is where it’s at: You get 4 sliders for sharpening: Amount, Radius, Detail and Masking.
Some of these are quite self-explanatory if you know a bit about digital imaging, the others might be new to you. Let’s go over them one by one, using this image:
Notice I have the small “preview” window in the detail tab open. If I didn’t, Lightroom would show an exclamation mark, signifying that “a zoom level of 1:1 or greater is required to see these effects”:

Amount and Radius

These two are pretty obvious: Amount lets you set how much you want to sharpen. Scale goes from “0″ to “150″ (Which is red for a reason: In most cases it will be too much). The default setting is “25″.
Radius lets you set how wide you want the sharpening halos to spread out. Scale goes from 0.5 to 3. Default setting is 1. A higher setting will give you wider sharpening halos.
As with a lot of sliders in Lightroom, you get some “visual help” when you press the Option (Alt) key:
Press Option while sliding the Amount slider, and the image goes grayscale, to better show what the sharpening does to the luminosity values in the image.

Press Option while sliding the Detail slider, and you’ll see just the sharpening halos you are creating.

Detail and Masking

Detail (0 to 100, default 25) suppresses these halos.
A setting of 0 will undo quite a bit of what you did in the above sliders. Again, pressing Option while sliding will give you a fairly accurate idea of how much detail you’re allowing to be sharpened.

Masking does exactly what the name implies: It builds a mask on the fly (which is pretty nifty if you ask me) The default of 0 masks nothing so everything is sharpened, the maximum of 100 will sharpen only the big edges in the image. Press Option while adjusting the slider and, contrary to the other settings above, you’ll be shown the mask, not the effect on the image. Probably Adobe figured that it was less ambiguous that way. (And they were right)

Noise Reduction

… is also present in the Detail tab.
There’s a slider for Luminance NR and one for Color NR.
Color noise consists of randomly colored pixels in an image. Luminance noise is more like “film grain” and less of a problem in my opinion.
That’s good, since in most cases, Color noise is fairly easy removed in Lightroom. Luminance Noise reduction is not. At least, not without loosing detail in the process.
Unfortunately, the Lightroom engineers didn’t provide a “visual aid” for noise reduction, so you’re down to good old WYSIWYG.

Here’s the image again. First without sharpening or noise reduction (notice the “switch” in the top left of the “Detail” tab is in the “off” position):

Next, with sharpening but without Noise Reduction. Pretty big difference.

Let’s see what just Color NR does. Notice the random “blobs of color” that were present in the previous image are about gone. And that with a fairly low setting:

Finally. with both Color and Luminance NR. Notice we are already losing detail in the last, while there’s still Luminance noise present.

Finally, here is the exported image, with “standard” output sharpening for screen:

Hope this has shed some light on the subject of sharpening in Lightroom.

In the “analog” days, it used to be simple: You had a slide looking like you wanted, and that was a fixed reference point. So it was “somebody else’s problem” to make a print that matched the slide: WYSIWYG. Simple. Or at least: Not your responsibility. Negatives were a bit more complicated, but still: S.E.P.

Nowadays, you’ll have a file that looks good on your screen. Since you probably don’t want to lug your computer and monitor with you anytime you want to make a print, only to be able to show what you think the print should look like, how do you manage to get a print that looks like the image on your screen?

The keyword

…of course, is “manage”. As in: Color manage: “Out of the box” every monitor will display an image different. Ever seen a store with 20 televisions in a row? All TVs looking different? Same will be the case with computer monitors if you don’t take countermeasures.
While the TVs pretty much boil down to “personal preference”, with digital imaging it’s about accuracy.

How to be accurate?

That is your responsibility: You need to make sure your display looks the same as everybody else’s. To do that you calibrate and profile it: Calibration makes sure your screen is at a fixed state. Profiling creates an .icc profile and makes sure a certain color is displayed exactly so. The best way to do this, is to use a hardware device, such as for instance Spyder3, iOne Display or ColorMunki.

The managing

…of the colors is then done by your (color managed) software, such as Photoshop for instance.
It looks at the images .icc profile and at your display profile, and does a conversion between the two. Thus making sure that the colors are shown as they should.

The beauty of it

…is that the printer also has should have a calibrated screen, so will see the image exactly as you do. So he can see what he should get. If he then also correctly uses the software to print color managed, you’ll get a print that’s as close to the view on screen as possible. In fact, in that case it’s even easier then it used to be in the analog days!

Only remaining difference is caused by the fact that your screen is a device emitting light, while the print is reflecting light, and the fact that there are some colors that can be displayed but simply cannot be printed (and vice-versa).
That’s where softproofing comes in… But more on that in a future blog post.

for a web gallery.
Normally, Lightroom will only let you preview sharpening and noise reduction at 100% view. This is a good thing™ in my opinion, since it is capture sharpening, meant to negate the effects of an anti-aliasing filter in front of the sensor. You’d get all kinds of moiré without an AA filter, as can be seen in the hilarious story Eamon Hickey wrote about the NC2000.
Since the AA filter softens the image a bit, you need to sharpen it. This is input sharpening. So it should be judged at 100%. Unlike output sharpening, which is better judged at reduced size, at least: For print. For web view at 100% and WYSIWYG.
Or is it?

A workaround

I recently was processing a few ISO 6400 images, which had severe noise in them. Here I ran into the problem that the NR isn’t shown at “fit window” view. So I had no way to judge what the images would look like online.
(all images can be clicked for a larger version)
This is the image as shown in the develop module:

This is part of the image at 100%:

Clearly, no NR is shown in the “Fit screen” view.
What works however, is to create a 1:1 preview (In LightRoom > Library Module > Library > Previews > Render 1:1 previews), then look at your image in “Loupe” view (shortcut: “E”) at fit to screen. Bingo. Both input sharpening and NR are applied. There is no way to get LR to preview output sharpening.
This is the image at fit screen in the Loupe view before and after creating a 1:1 preview:

Web Gallery

The beauty of this is, that it also works for the web gallery: If you preview it in LR after making 1:1 previews, you will see the image as it goes online (minus the output sharpening that is)

The image in the web gallery preview in LR, before and after creating a 1:1 preview: An even bigger difference:

This is the final image as it was exported by LightRoom. Inclusive output sharpening.

Pretty neat, huh?

Ever.

At least, on my own blog (to be).
I’ve commented a fair bit on other people’s blogs, when the subject was Colormanagement, and someone presented wrong facts. For instance if it was recommended to set Photoshop to use “Monitor color” as working space, since then anything would look the same in Photoshop and the (not color managed) browser. Color management just went right out the window, as well as any chance at consistency…

Therefore, I believe this to be *bad* advice, so often I’d comment something along those lines, or sent the poster an email. I can’t stand misinformation. I’m kinda funny that way.

Because I’m kinda funny in other ways as well, I also like to know how stuff works. (And if possible, also why)
That sometimes leads to hours of searching as to why something doesn’t work as expected, instead of just accepting the fact and get on with what you were doing… So probably not the best practice, both for your social life, and in the business kind of way. For the last, I couldn’t care less, and my social life is okay, thanks very much. Also, it is satisfying my curiosity has the added advantage of getting to understand the problem better, which gives an advantage when you engage other (peoples) “irrational” problems.

So, what to expect here then?

I have no idea yet. I don’t even know if it’s going to be a regularly updated blog, or more “website-like, static” approach. I’m not completely without a clue however:

First, I plan to post a few simple posts on the “how and why” of color management. Just to cover the basics. I’ve posted the same (or similar) on POTN.

Incidentally, that forum is probably what inspired me to start all this: I started a thread there a few years back about color problems. Due to my lack of organisation, limited knowledge at the time (and not locking the thread), it became what was lately accurately referred to, a “Huge meandering thread”. This blog is my penance, and an effort to bring some order to that chaos.

Later on (when I get comfortable with blogging), I’ll probably also post solutions whenever I encounter a problem (For instance: PSCS4 seems to have a bug regarding color managed printing, looking in to that as I have time to spare, I’m using PSCS2 until then)

I sincerely hope that later posts gain in structure compared to this one, and also are a bit more relevant. But this is at least better then the default “Welcome” post by WordPress… (And there’s no-one around to see it anyway).