So I know this is a bit off topic, but I know there are some resident expert PS people here so I thought I would ask. I am quite fond of the clarity slider that is in Lightroom and PS CS3, but I was wondering if you can get to it in PS after you have already converted from RAW? Lately I have been disappointed with the sharpness I have been getting from Adobe products so I have gone back to good ol DPP (which incidently gives me more natural colors too). Anyway, so far I have converted in DPP, made some slight adjustments in PS, then imported into Lightroom and adjusted clarity. Needless to say this isnt a very efficient workflow and I was just wondering if I could access the clarity slider in PS without going into Lightroom.
Hope that makes sense.
Thanks,
andy
Posted by Momo Vuyisich on April 20, 2008 at 7:50 PM
Choose Unsharp mask, set the radius to something ~40 pixels, then adjust the amount to your liking (normally from 10-30). Have fun.
Posted by Paul Wegemann on April 20, 2008 at 7:55 PM
Andy,
Local contrast enhancement has been around for awhile. Adobe just decided to call it Clarity. Check out this article -
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/contrast-enhancement.shtml
Good luck,
Paul
I was wondering if you can get to it in PS after you have already converted from RAW?
To answer your question, you certainly can open up the processed TIFF file in ACR.
In PS, go to File->Open As...
Choose your image, then in the dropdown box below the file name, select 'Camera Raw'.
This will open your image in ACR with all defaults set to '0'.
ACR in CS3 has exactly the same RAW conversion capability as Lightroom.
The other methods mentioned above work, but they don't quite duplicate the control and final 'pop' that you can get from Clarity.
You're sharpening your images in the RAW converter? I always leave sharpening as the very last step in PS (I don't use Lightroom).
Thanks for the comments. It does seem that USM does the same thing as clarity, and better yet gives you more control which is nice.
John, I dont do all of my sharpening in DPP, only "capture" sharpening. I used to do no sharpening in the RAW converter when I was using Adobe products then used PK sharpener for all sharpening. Recently I have been using the sharpening in DPP as my capture sharpener then using the PK creative sharpening in PS later and it seems to give better results. Or maybe Im just doing everything wrong!
Discussion
4 repliesHope that makes sense.
Thanks,
andy
Local contrast enhancement has been around for awhile. Adobe just decided to call it Clarity. Check out this article -
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/contrast-enhancement.shtml
Good luck,
Paul
To answer your question, you certainly can open up the processed TIFF file in ACR.
In PS, go to File->Open As...
Choose your image, then in the dropdown box below the file name, select 'Camera Raw'.
This will open your image in ACR with all defaults set to '0'.
ACR in CS3 has exactly the same RAW conversion capability as Lightroom.
The other methods mentioned above work, but they don't quite duplicate the control and final 'pop' that you can get from Clarity.
You're sharpening your images in the RAW converter? I always leave sharpening as the very last step in PS (I don't use Lightroom).
John, I dont do all of my sharpening in DPP, only "capture" sharpening. I used to do no sharpening in the RAW converter when I was using Adobe products then used PK sharpener for all sharpening. Recently I have been using the sharpening in DPP as my capture sharpener then using the PK creative sharpening in PS later and it seems to give better results. Or maybe Im just doing everything wrong!
Thanks all,
andy