HowTo: use "sharpness" to distinquish profiles?

look for ready-made device noise profiles and offer your own ones here
Post Reply
l_d_allan
Posts: 35
Joined: Thu Sep 24, 2009 3:00 pm

HowTo: use "sharpness" to distinquish profiles?

Post by l_d_allan »

Summary:
I'd like to be able to differentiate between various NI profiles for RAW/DNG images that take "sharpness" into account. I don't see how to do this.

More info:
In the "Preferences" dialog, the default priorities are:
* Match: Input device (to distinquish between different cameras)
* High: Iso rate:
* Low: Compression (distinquish between raw/dng/tiff and jpg)
* Low: Resolution
* Low: Sharpness: ?
* Low: Exposure: shutter speed

My workflow includes ACR-5.7, then NI for NR, then CS4 for manipulations and sharpening.

I try to use ACR to manipulate DNG's as much as I can, including white balance, cropping, exposure, recovery, fill, clarity, vibrance, saturation, contrast, lens corrections, etc. I do very little sharpening in ACR, as my understanding is that this should be done later, after NR.

Within ACR, I have three "settings" that I use quite a bit, for:
* indoor/people,
* outdoor clear/sunny,
* outdoor hazy/overcast.
These differ mostly in WB and the amount of clarify/vibrance that is applied.

My impression is that WB, vibrance, and saturation adjustments made in ACR don't matter much or at all to NI, but clarify matters, as it is similar to sharpening.

I'd like to have NI profiles for RAW/DNG's that can recognize that the amount of clarity added was:
* none
* low
* moderate
* high

Can this be done? Am I doing something wrong, leaving out a step, or overlooking a setting/option?

I own a Panasonic DMC FZ5 point-n-shoot. I noticed in the profiles I got from the website for this camera that the filename indicates the choices for "Sharpness" include:
Sharp:Soft
Sharp:Normal
Sharp:Hard
NITeam
Posts: 3173
Joined: Sat Feb 01, 2003 4:43 pm
Contact:

Post by NITeam »

Build a new profile using an image that came through ACR. Check what the Device mode field contains after that, it will show the relevant parameters found by NI in the image EXIF data. If there is something about sharpness then it can be used by NI to differentiate profiles. If the parameter is missing in the EXIF data then you have to differentiate them manually or use some generic profiles and additionally Auto Fine-Tune loaded/matched profile against the current input image. Auto Fine-Tune compensates for small differences between noise properties of the profile and image.

Hope this helps,
Vlad
l_d_allan
Posts: 35
Joined: Thu Sep 24, 2009 3:00 pm

Post by l_d_allan »

There wasn't anything in the EXIF information regarding sharpness that NI could see.

It might be possible to use a tool that can write EXIF info, but that is probably more trouble than it is worth. Fine-tuning seems like it will do fine.
Post Reply