# Excessive sharpening on CR2 import



## Denix8 (Jun 23, 2018)

Hello!

From day 1 when I bought my new Canon 80D camera last year I've been having problems in lightroom with photos in RAW format. Whenever I import a photo, Camera RAW automatically applies sharpening on it. That sharpening does not completely go away if I put sharpen slider to 0. On photos where ISO is 100 that is not much of a problem, but at photos with high ISO that becomes a real pain. Id rather have a little blurry photo than completely ruined one by noise sharpen brings. And I'm talking A LOT of noise. Of course I understand that high ISO brings noise but if I open photo with i.e. Irfan View there is a lot less noise present. I am attaching two files, one exported with LR and one with Irfan View so that you can see what I mean (they've been cropped due to file size constrains). I would really appreciate if somebody knows how to turn that off as sharpen slider only has minor effect on this. Thank you!

Denix8


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## Jimmsp (Jun 24, 2018)

I have an 80D as well, and have looked at a lot of photos of varying ISOs.  You and I are seeing different things here.
The LR photo looks pretty unprocessed to me, the one labeled Irfan has been post processed.
One of the things I like about the 80D is that a lot of the noise you see at low ISOs is shot noise, and LR noise reduction does a better job on it than it did on some of the earlier Canons.

What was the ISO of this photo? What white balance did you use when it was imported and displayed?
Were any tonal changes made to the LR photo before you exported it?
Did you export it with no output sharpening added during the export process?
The noise I see in the LR photo looks like standard 80D noise with no sharpening or noise reduction applied.

The  LR does apply some capture sharpening upon import. That can be changed to zero if you want, and it will go to zero when you move the sharpening slider to zero.  Trust that slider. Sharpening does not add noise. It might enhance some of the noise that you have, especially after you apply some noise reduction. You may see it better.

When I look at your Irfan photo, I can see that noise reduction has been applied to it. There also looks like other tonal processing has been done.  For instance, the vibrance looks bumped up, perhaps some clarity added.  At the magnifications I can use from this insert, neither photo looks sharpened. In fact there are a couple of places where the Irfan has lost some detail due to the noise reduction that might be brought back some with sharpening.

Bottom line - you should be doing some capture sharpening during the initial conversion of the RAW. This will not add noise. I tend to use slider values around 20 in the current LR, not the default 40.  Later, I will do some creative sharpening; sometimes outside LR, sometimes with the adjustment brush.


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## Jimmsp (Jun 25, 2018)

Tony Jay has written a few nice pieces on sharpening.
Take a look at Export - Sharpen at Export vs. Develop
and
Zoom in Sharpness


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## Denix8 (Jun 25, 2018)

Jimmsp said:


> I have an 80D as well, and have looked at a lot of photos of varying ISOs.  You and I are seeing different things here.
> The LR photo looks pretty unprocessed to me, the one labeled Irfan has been post processed.
> One of the things I like about the 80D is that a lot of the noise you see at low ISOs is shot noise, and LR noise reduction does a better job on it than it did on some of the earlier Canons.
> 
> ...


So if I understand correctly, that horrid noise is actually part of the original image and Irfan View makes some post-processing on images, thus removing it before showing it to the user. I will attach another image, which was shot at ISO 100 (sky). Is that what you mean by shot noise (this is a crop)?
It's true I didn't add any noise reduction filters on photos because I thought original photo was like the one from Irfan View and LR just added something that causes noise to be much worse. So instead of stacking another filter to cancel out LR's original filter, I wanted to remove the filter that caused this in the first place. That was my (obviously wrong) understanding of the situation. I'm actually quite disappointed if that horrid noise is part of original image.

Here is the relevant EXIF info I copied from Irfan View when opening CR2. The only thing I did is open/import it and then export, no changes done. I left sharpening at default (before I think it was 40, after update its 25 if I'm not mistaken), but I'm attaching another image with sharpen slider to 0 (LR only).

```
Filename - IMG_3846.CR2
ImageWidth - 6000
ImageLength - 4000
BitsPerSample - 8 8 8
Compression - 6 (JPG)
Make - Canon
Model - Canon EOS 80D
StripOffset - 71592
Orientation - Top left
StripByteCount - 3637733
XResolution - 72
YResolution - 72
ResolutionUnit - Inch
ExifOffset - 446
ExposureTime - 1/100 seconds
FNumber - 8
ExposureProgram - Manual control
ISOSpeedRatings - 16000
Recommended Exposure Index - 16000
ExifVersion - 0230
ComponentsConfiguration - YCbCr
ShutterSpeedValue - 1/99 seconds
ApertureValue - F 8.00
ExposureBiasValue - 0
MeteringMode - Spot
Flash - Flash not fired, compulsory flash mode
FocalLength - 10 mm
SubsecTime - 52
SubsecTimeOriginal - 52
SubsecTimeDigitized - 52
FlashPixVersion - 0100
ColorSpace - sRGB
ExifImageWidth - 6000
ExifImageHeight - 4000
InteroperabilityOffset - 42790
FocalPlaneXResolution - 6514.66
FocalPlaneYResolution - 6734.01
FocalPlaneResolutionUnit - Inch
CustomRendered - Normal process
ExposureMode - Manual
White Balance - Auto
SceneCaptureType - Standard
Lens Info - 10  22  0  0
Lens Model - EF-S10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM

Macro mode - Normal
Self timer - 20/10 sec
Quality - RAW
Flash mode - Not fired
Sequence mode - Single or Timer
Focus mode - One-Shot
Image size - Large
Easy shooting mode - Manual
Digital zoom - None
Contrast - Normal
Saturation - Normal
Sharpness - Low , -32769
ISO Value - Auto
Metering mode - Center weighted averaging
Focus type - Auto
AF point selected - 0
Exposure mode - Manual
Focal length - 2.2 - 23.5 mm
Focal units - 10/mm
Flash activity - Not fired
Flash details -
Focus mode 2 - 65535
Auto ISO - 100
Base ISO - 12800
White Balance - Auto
Sequence number - 0
Camera Temperature - 38 C
Flash bias - 0 EV
Subject Distance - 512.00
Image Type - Canon EOS 80D
Firmware Version - Firmware Version 1.0.2
Sharpness (EOS 1D) - 255
Directory index (EOS 450D) - 5888
File index (EOS 450D) - 1
AF point selected - Flexizone Single
Num AF Points - 45
Valid AF Points - 1
AF Image Width - 6000
AF Image Height - 4000
File number - 000 - 0000
Sharpness (A0) - 0

Thumbnail: -
JpegIFOffset - 53340
JpegIFByteCount - 18251
```

Actually it was weird that moving sharpen slider had such little effect on overall noise. It must be because sharpen has nothing to do with it like you said. So what is left is then only for me to apply noise-reduction like Irfan View does to get rid of that noise and try to find balance between loss of detail and amount of noise?

Many thanks for your response, you have clarified a lot for me.


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## Johan Elzenga (Jun 25, 2018)

You are shooting at *16,000 ISO* according to these metadata.


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## Jimmsp (Jun 25, 2018)

I do not use Irfan, so I can only analyze what I can see.  It does appear that you shot at 16000 ISO - which will produce a lot of noise. You also uploaded a .png for the sky - with no Exifs attached.
Why don't you put the raw file of the sky shot on dropbox, and send me the link and I'll take a look and comment.

Jim


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## Denix8 (Jun 25, 2018)

JohanElzenga said:


> You are shooting at *16,000 ISO* according to these metadata.



Yes but I was under the impression that this camera has pretty decent high ISO performance. This amount of grain makes image almost unusable for anything more than Intagram :\ Unfortunately I have no stabiliser on lens so I can't drop shutter under 1/100 while hand-shooting. But even then, what about the example Dropbox - IMG_0175.jpg. It has been shot with 1250 ISO, 1/40 shutter and 6.44 aperture. It still has a bit too much grain in it for my taste. At the moment you zoom in a bit you can see horrid grain. Unfortunately I cant post entire image because there are people on it from which I didn't get permission.



Jimmsp said:


> I do not use Irfan, so I can only analyze what I can see.  It does appear that you shot at 16000 ISO - which will produce a lot of noise. You also uploaded a .png for the sky - with no Exifs attached.
> Why don't you put the raw file of the sky shot on dropbox, and send me the link and I'll take a look and comment.
> 
> Jim



Sorry, I quickly cropped with paint. Here are the full images: New folder

Could the camera have a problem? Once I got this in a photo: Dropbox - IMG_3769.CR2 (notice that vertical line)
Note: if I open pic with Dropbox it does some kind of post-processing and its not so clearly visible anymore, so I have attached a jpg with this observed.


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## Jimmsp (Jun 26, 2018)

Denix8 said:


> Yes but I was under the impression that this camera has pretty decent high ISO performance. This amount of grain makes image almost unusable for anything more than Intagram :\ Unfortunately I have no stabiliser on lens so I can't drop shutter under 1/100 while hand-shooting. But even then, what about the example Dropbox - IMG_0175.jpg. It has been shot with 1250 ISO, 1/40 shutter and 6.44 aperture. It still has a bit too much grain in it for my taste. At the moment you zoom in a bit you can see horrid grain. Unfortunately I cant post entire image because there are people on it from which I didn't get permission.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I need to spend a little time here, but I am busy at the moment. But a quick summary - the camera looks like it is behaving normally. I think your expectations are too high for a crop sensor. But LR can deal pretty well with these shots.
I'll post more later tonight.

Jim


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## Denix8 (Jun 26, 2018)

Jimmsp said:


> I need to spend a little time here, but I am busy at the moment. But a quick summary - the camera looks like it is behaving normally. I think your expectations are too high for a crop sensor. But LR can deal pretty well with these shots.
> I'll post more later tonight.
> 
> Jim


It's completely possible I have too high expectations, I was just so shocked when I saw so much noise it seemed worse than a phone photo :\
Okay, thank you for taking the time


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## Jimmsp (Jun 27, 2018)

I have looked closely at 3369 and 3897.
3369 was underexposed by about 2 stops. You could have easily had gone to a shutter speed of 1/200 sec  and/or  a higher ISO near ISO 200 and gotten a real good photo.
As it is , LR can bump up the exposure by 2 stops, and add a bit of noise reduction, slider about 35, and the photo looks good. Again, look at the noise reduction at 100% - don't pixel peep beyond that.

3897 is in fine shape. Bump the exposure just a bit, add contrast and clarity, and noise reduction to 25, and it is fine.

These are much  better than a iphone would have given you. You can expand the magnification to 100% and still see a lot of detail. Not so with a phone. The noise ratios are much better with the 80D; ie, lower noise with better detail.

Keep using the 80D with ISOs below 1200 or so, and a little noise reduction with LR, and you will be very happy.


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## Denix8 (Jun 27, 2018)

Jimmsp said:


> I have looked closely at 3369 and 3897.
> 3369 was underexposed by about 2 stops. You could have easily had gone to a shutter speed of 1/200 sec  and/or  a higher ISO near ISO 200 and gotten a real good photo.
> As it is , LR can bump up the exposure by 2 stops, and add a bit of noise reduction, slider about 35, and the photo looks good. Again, look at the noise reduction at 100% - don't pixel peep beyond that.
> 
> ...


3369 was part of HDR, sorry I failed to mention it. I showed it because it has a vertical line to the left of the tower which might indicate a camera problem (only this one in all bracketed photos has it).

Thank you for the tips, but what bugs me at 3897 is it seems weird to me that with ISO 100 the sky still has some grain if you look 100% zoomed. I really didn't expect that with lowest ISO possible. It's minuscule though so maybe I'm just nit picky.

I wish I could always keep ISO under 1200 but without a stabilizer on my wide lens only thing remaining is to buy a better flash and use that :\ That first photo I posted with 16000 ISO, I was on a small wooden staircase, it would have been fairly difficult and time consuming to configure the tripod. I wish I had more time to set it up. Other photos which I took on a tripod turned out pretty well with 100 ISO. As it is, I thank you for broadening my horizons, now I at least know what I'm dealing with and I'll try salvaging the photo with some noise reduction. It will primarily be used in video with 1080p resolution so loss of detail will probably not be visible much.


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