• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Extending the sharpening limits

You can also go beyond the +100/−100 limit set by the Sharpness slider by applying multiple sharpness adjustments. To do this you need to create a new brush group using a positive or negative Sharpness setting and paint on top of an existing brush group. However, when applying a negative sharpness adjustment the effect will eventually max out and won't become any extra blurred beyond a certain point. You can't yet apply what you might call a true lens blur effect in Camera Raw.

1.

In this photograph I left the camera switched to auto focus mode. Although the photo was shot using a smallish lens aperture, the rocks ended up being more in focus than the shipwrecked boat in the background (you can see a full view of the image in Figure 4.10). Obviously I should have switched to manual focus and selected an appropriate hyperfocal distance between the rocks in the foreground and the boat in the distance. Still, this mistake did at least allow me to demo selective sharpening in Camera Raw. To start with I clicked to select the Detail panel and adjusted the sharpening sliders to obtain the optimum sharpness for the rocks, while the shipwrecked boat still remained a little soft. I didn't want to overdo the sharpening here, since to do so would create visible sharpening artifacts in the foreground of the photograph.

Figure 4.10 Here you can see a full frame view of the photograph that I was editing.

2.

In this next step I selected the adjustment brush, set the Sharpness to +50, clicked on the image and painted on top of the boat. The objective here was to use the adjustment brush to add more sharpness to this area of the image. The Amount setting for the Sharpness slider effectively added an extra Sharpness Amount using the same Radius, Detail and Masking settings as had already been applied in the Detail panel in Step 1. In this particular example I found it was best to use the adjustment brush, but in some instances you might want to use the Gradient filter instead.

Noise removal in Camera Raw

All images are likely to suffer from some degree of noise, but the amount of noise present will vary according to a number of factors. The noise we see in scans made from film originals will mainly be down to the actual film grain in the film emulsion (especially if the image originated from a 35mm film emulsion), whether it came from a color negative or chrome original, and what particular film emulsion was used. It can also be due to noise generated during the scanning process itself.

With digital images the noise seen will mainly depend on the quality of the camera sensor and what ISO setting the photograph was shot at. Some sensors definitely perform better than others when used at higher ISO speeds and with the most recent digital SLR cameras we have seen a remarkable improvement in image capture quality at high ISO settings. Another factor is exposure. On page 186 I showed how deliberately underexposing a digital photo can lead to shadow noise problems as you compensate by increasing the Exposure slider amount. In fact, the shadow areas are always the biggest problem, and you should check the shadows first to determine how successful your camera is as at handling image noise. Whenever you shoot using a high ISO setting you will almost certainly encounter some noise. The new improved Noise Reduction sliders in Camera Raw offer better than ever noise reduction for processing digital images, so much so that I reckon Camera Raw should now be able to meet all your noise reduction requirements. As a consequence of this there may be less need to rely on Photoshop or third-party products to carry out the noise reduction. Bear in mind that JPEG capture images will have already been processed in-camera to remove any noise. To take full advantage of Camera Raw noise reduction, you'll need to work with raw capture images.

Removing random pixels

Camera Raw noise reduction is also able to remove