- [Theresa] The Detail panel is used
for sharpening and noise reduction.
I'm viewing the chapter seven 0704 folder,
and I've opened the Detail panel in the Develop module.
Most raw images require some input sharpening
beyond this default setting of 40, which we see here.
How much will depend on your camera,
the lens used, and the image itself.
Many photos also benefit with some noise reduction.
Noise is typically found in images
that are captured with a high ISO
in a low light setting like this one was.
This picture that we see at the top of the Detail panel
is a zoomed in preview area of the image.
And if you click and drag, you can move this around.
I don't find this that helpful, though.
So I'm going to click on this triangle to collapse it.
And notice when I collapse that preview,
we get this exclamation mark.
This is telling us that in order to see
what we're actually applying to the image,
we need to zoom in on it.
So I'm going to click on the left edge
of the bird feeder here to zoom in.
And now we can see that grainy noise.
It's across the whole image,
but particularly on this left edge over here.
So I like to start with noise reduction
on an image like this,
because noise reduction is going to soften up the image
and then require even more sharpening to compensate.
I'll crank up the luminance noise reduction
until that left edge is nice and smooth looking.
That helped the whole image a lot,
but now even this area is a little bit soft
where the paint is.
So let's crank up the amount of the sharpening
to sharpen those edges back up.
And then for the next setting is the radius
and the detail and the masking.
I really recommend that you hold down your Option
or your Alt key while you're moving that slider.
I'll try that with the radius and you'll see what I mean.
So I'm holding down my Option key,
and as I crank up the radius,
we'll see a halo start to grow around the sharp edges.
That's the radius of the area that's going to be sharpened.
So by putting it in this gray scale view,
you can get a pretty good idea what's happening.
I'm going to go ahead and back it back down,
maybe to one and a half,
and then you could do the same
with the detail and the masking.
It's really important to do it with the masking, though.
It's the only way to really understand what's happening.
So I'll hold down my Option key
and I'll drag the masking up.
What we're looking at here is a mask for the sharpen effect.
So everything that's black will be protected
from getting sharpened.
And everything that's white,
which is all the edges,
will get the sharpening.
So I'm going to crank this masking up a bit
and then take my finger off the Option key.
And we'll see that the left edge here,
where the bokeh is, is still nice and smooth,
while the edges of the paint details are nice and sharp.
So that worked really well.
I'm going to click on this
to zoom it back out to the full picture.
I can't give you a recipe, though, for sharpening,
because every image is going to be different.
If the image will be printed,
you may have to reevaluate the sharpness
after you see a proof.
Let's take a look at the second image here
in the film strip so that we can talk about color noise.
Color noise happens in the dark areas
and it's really common in cell phone images,
like this photo of me at Adobe MAX.
I'll click down here on my dark pants,
so that we can see that color noise.
By default, some color noise
was already added to this image.
If we come over here to the Detail panel,
we'll see this color slider is set to 25.
If I take this down,
we'll really see all that underlying color noise.
Yikes.
I'm going to drag this way up.
Let's crank this way up to get rid of all that color.
And then also take up the noise reduction for the luminance
and that smooths that out really nice,
but it's starting to soften the entire image.
Let's drag this up so that we can see
the letters on my name tag.
And then to compensate for that,
I'll crank the sharpness amount up,
and then take the masking up as well,
so that it protects the smooth, dark areas
and only sharpens the edge of the text.
So you can see this isn't a great quality image
to begin with because it was shot with really low light,
but by using the noise reduction and sharpening together,
we can improve it quite a bit.
Most images will benefit with a little sharpening
and maybe even some noise reduction.
And how much you use will depend on the image.
Remember to zoom in to at least one to one
while you're making these adjustments.