# LR4.4 is this noise or something I have missed in my processing.



## Bonnarn (May 13, 2013)

Hi, first time post and hoping somebody can help me decide if what I am seeing at 1:1 in LR4.4 is noise, focus or what. When I process for online things are fine, nice clean edges and sharp as as pin, when I zoom in LR4 to 100% I see the following loss of detail, with each subsequent increase in size produces ever greater amounts of some form of pixelation.

Image details are:

ISO 100
105mm
f22

Exposure 60s

LR4.4 is running on Lion 18.8.3

Have I missed something basic or is this no more than noise and standard PP will resolve - whatever help given would be greatly appreciated.

Neil

This is a section scrape of the image at 1:1.


----------



## clee01l (May 13, 2013)

Welcome to the forum.  What you are seeing are artifacts introduced by your post processing settings.  The snippet looks over sharpened to my eye. You may have then over corrected this by using NR.  
Did you shoot RAW?  What does the unprocessed image look like in this same area?
Every camera should be able to capture ISO 100 essentially noise free.  Was this underexposed or was this a dark corner of the image that was boosted in post process?  You can not correct an OOF image with post processing sharpening and you can't fix in camera processing mistakes with post processing. Without knowing more about the image and how it got to this state, I can only guess at the cause of the problem.


----------



## Bonnarn (May 13, 2013)

Hi Cletus, that you for your reply, this was indeed a darker corner of the image that I was trying to correct in a night time long exposure using the graduated filter to selectively up the exposure = I import the image from my 5D MKII choosing to convert to DNG at this stage (I assume this does not create any issues) - I went back to the original DNG file created a virtual copy and can see no issue with the image, so I think you are spot on and these are 'artifacts' created by my attempt to correct something that contained little detail.


----------



## Jason DiMichele (Jun 3, 2013)

Your assumption is correct that converting camera RAW files to DNG does not introduce any issues in terms of image quality. 

Cheers!


----------



## Tony Jay (Jun 3, 2013)

Bonnarn, Cletus is right, the image is hugely oversharpened to the point where any noise present has been made so obvious.
Try sharpening in Lightroom at 1:1 until you just start see those haloes that have ruined your posted image and then back off just a little.
The other tool to consider using is the masking slider to be found in the detail subpanel - this will allow one to preferentially sharpen edges rather than areas of similar tone and hue (which just accentuates the noise in your image).
We haven't even mentioned the radius or detail slider either.
Also in Lr 4.x you have the amazingly handy option of regional sharpening.

If you want some pointers to good tutorials to help with both sharpening and noise reduction (these work interactively) I will provide them.

Tony Jay


----------



## Bryan Conner (Jun 3, 2013)

Tony Jay said:


> Bonnarn, Cletus is right, the image is hugely oversharpened to the point where any noise present has been made so obvious.
> Try sharpening in Lightroom at 1:1 until you just start see those haloes that have ruined your posted image and then back off just a little.
> The other tool to consider using is the masking slider to be found in the detail subpanel - this will allow one to preferentially sharpen edges rather than areas of similar tone and hue (which just accentuates the noise in your image).
> We haven't even mentioned the radius or detail slider either.
> ...



Great advice Tony.  I am always looking for new sources of information on the subject of sharpening and noise reduction (probably my favorite topics).  Would you be so kind as to share yours?  I have "Real World Image Sharpening with Adobe CS2" by Bruce Fraser, Jeff Schewe's "The Digital Negative", "Real World Adobe Photoshop CS5" by Schewe/Fraser, Martin Evening's "Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers" as well as a boatload of other books/ebooks that touch on the subject.  I also have a Ben Wilmore series on DVD that I have yet to watch.  Oh, I also have the Luminous Landscape videos "Camera to Print" as well as the Lightroom 4 series.  All of the aforementioned works (except for the not yet viewed Ben Wilmore series) are ones that I highly recommend to anyone interested.


----------



## Glenn NK (Jun 3, 2013)

Last night I re-read the chapter on sharpening in Martin Evening's book on LR4; very good exercise.

The book can obtained online as hard copy, eBook, or both.

http://www.peachpit.com/promotions/promotion.aspx?promo=138777

Tony's comment about regional sharpening is good to keep in mind (using the adjustment brush I believe).  OT, but the brush is my most used tool in LR.


----------



## Tony Jay (Jun 3, 2013)

My favourite tools for teaching sharpening and noise reduction are actually the Luminous Landscape tutorials you mentioned Bryan - CPS and Lr4.
The topic is squarely in the domain of Jeff Schewe's extensive expertise and been able to watch him in real time demonstrating and explaining what he is doing and watching the effect cannot be beaten.
Lynda.com has several tutorials as well.

Once one has the gist of the process then that is the time to go back to a good tome such as Martin Evening's book that you mentioned, or again Jeff Schewe's soon to be double header: The Digital Negative and The Digital Print (soon to be released).
Both give extensive treatment to sharpening - capture sharpening, creative sharpening, and output sharpening, and also explains noise reduction in terms of the fifth sharpening slider.

Tony Jay


----------



## Glenn NK (Jun 4, 2013)

Tony:

Thanks for the heads up on Schewe's book.


----------



## Victoria Bampton (Jun 4, 2013)

I'll add a vote for Schewe's book too - I really enjoyed it.


----------

