How does the Clarity tool work?
As a relative newcomer to Capture One, I am amazed at the effectiveness of the Clarity tool. It truly does seem to make images clearer. But how does it accomplish this? Is it by sharpening, deconvolution, local contrast enhancement or some other means?
The C1 Clarity tool seems quite different from that in Lightroom, which enhances fine detail, but often in an unpleasant way. I have found that Lightroom's Clarity frequently does more harm than good. It brings out detail, but sometimes at the expense of overall image rendering. The detail can actually get in the way of the image as a whole, strange as that may seem. This does not happen in C1, even if you crank up Clarity to fairly high levels. What I do find is that it can produce clipping of shadows and highlights that is not reflected in the histogram.
I would appreciate it if someone who understands the Clarity tool would take the time to enlighten me about it.
Rob
The C1 Clarity tool seems quite different from that in Lightroom, which enhances fine detail, but often in an unpleasant way. I have found that Lightroom's Clarity frequently does more harm than good. It brings out detail, but sometimes at the expense of overall image rendering. The detail can actually get in the way of the image as a whole, strange as that may seem. This does not happen in C1, even if you crank up Clarity to fairly high levels. What I do find is that it can produce clipping of shadows and highlights that is not reflected in the histogram.
I would appreciate it if someone who understands the Clarity tool would take the time to enlighten me about it.
Rob
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certain people (Kenneth Tang Laerke and Michael Jonsson) from PhaseOne moved to create a certain Pixmantec company that was purchased by certain Adobe company and that is how clarity tool appeared in LR/ACR 🙄
PS1 : that was in 2006... you how much time did it take for Adobe to produce something suitable like LR3 ? 4 years...0 -
I don't see how the original poster gets his question answered at all. -sigh- 0 -
[quote="Henry1" wrote:
I don't see how the original poster gets his question answered at all. -sigh-
well it should be some form of a local contrast enhancement using some form of USM w/ appropriate radius/amount... there will be "negative" clarity to decrease it in the next version of C1 in addition to "positive" clarity.0 -
[quote="deejjjaaaa" wrote:
certain people (Kenneth Tang Laerke and Michael Jonsson) from PhaseOne moved to create a certain Pixmantec company that was purchased by certain Adobe company and that is how clarity tool appeared in LR/ACR 🙄
PS1 : that was in 2006... you how much time did it take for Adobe to produce something suitable like LR3 ? 4 years...
This little guessing game is interesting, but I don't like the Clarity tool in LR, and it still does not explain how the Clarity tool in C1 works, which I do like.
Rob0 -
[quote="deejjjaaaa" wrote:
[quote="Henry1" wrote:
I don't see how the original poster gets his question answered at all. -sigh-
well it should be some form of a local contrast enhancement using some form of USM w/ appropriate radius/amount... there will be "negative" clarity to decrease it in the next version of C1 in addition to "positive" clarity.
This certainly sounds plausible, but it means adding USM to the already fairly strong default sharpening (which is superb, BTW.)
In the past, I have used both DxO Optics Pro and RAW Developer. DxO uses deconvolution to correct lens softness in selected lenses, and RAW Developer has deconvolution as one of its options for sharpening, so I wonder if this may be involved in C1's Clarity as well. However, it could not be the whole story, as there is definitely a contrast boost as well.
It would be nice if someone from Phase One would enlighten us here, but that might risk revealing trade secrets (not that competitors cannot already reverse engineer C1 and figure it out for themselves.)
Rob0 -
I'm pretty sure C1's clarity basically works the same way as in ACR/Lightroom.
"Sharpening" is a kind of local contrast enhancement - usually with a small radius to enhance very fine details.
"Clarity" is basically also sharpening but with a very large radius (thus it does not enhance very fine details).
If the Lightroom setting looks more coarse to you (especially in conjuncton with sharpening) then I think the C1 setting simply uses a larger radius and a better smoothing.
But I don't know exactly - I don't use clarity in C1 as it is not refelected in the histogram (the same goes for sharpening).0 -
[quote="thowi" wrote:
I'm pretty sure C1's clarity basically works the same way as in ACR/Lightroom.
"Sharpening" is a kind of local contrast enhancement - usually with a small radius to enhance very fine details.
"Clarity" is basically also sharpening but with a very large radius (thus it does not enhance very fine details).
If the Lightroom setting looks more coarse to you (especially in conjuncton with sharpening) then I think the C1 setting simply uses a larger radius and a better smoothing.
But I don't know exactly - I don't use clarity in C1 as it is not refelected in the histogram (the same goes for sharpening).
plus clarity might be taking into consideration where it is happening - different USM parameters for shadows, midtones, highlights... etc.0 -
[quote="thowi" wrote:
But I don't know exactly - I don't use clarity in C1 as it is not refelected in the histogram (the same goes for sharpening).
This is true, and it is a bothersome quirk of C1. I usually leave some room beyond the black and white points just to take this into account. I have also learned to look carefully at the image for loss of shadow and highlight detail whenever I use Clarity, which is just about all the time. I find that I can do a reasonably good job even without the histogram
I think that the difference between Clarity in C1 and LR is too great for them to be the same basic processes. In LR, the results are often busy with detail, but still not especially clear. In C1, it's almost as though a pane of dirty glass has been removed from in front of the image. In addition, solid objects seem more three dimensional, and there is a sense of space around them. Are there technical terms to describe these qualities?
Rob0 -
[quote="robgo2" wrote:
I'd say this is not a particularity of "clarity" but of the the way C1 renders tonal transitions (light+color) in general.
In addition, solid objects seem more three dimensional, and there is a sense of space around them.0 -
[quote="thowi" wrote:
[quote="robgo2" wrote:
I'd say this is not a particularity of "clarity" but of the the way C1 renders tonal transitions (light+color) in general.
In addition, solid objects seem more three dimensional, and there is a sense of space around them.
Yes, I am sure this is correct. But I do believe that the three dimensional modeling is enhanced by the Clarity tool, which does affect tonal and color transitions.
Rob0 -
[quote="thowi" wrote:
I don't use clarity in C1 as it is not refelected in the histogram (the same goes for sharpening).
By the way, does anyone know why Capture One chose not to show the effects of Clarity and Sharpening in the histogram? It does not seem that this should pose much of a technical challenge, and having that information would be extremely useful.
Rob0
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