This week’s Friday image comes from my recent trip to the UK Lake District. I post this not because it’s a great image but because I started playing around with the RX10 image to see how much detail I could pull out of the image and also how much I could enlarge it by. The results have surprised me but I will save them for another time.
In the course of this processing “play time” I applied Topaz Detail to emphasise the detail in the grass and rocks. It made an amazing difference to the image detail but it also allowed me to make some adjustments to the colour that really lifted the image. I then went on to convert the image to black and white, first using Alien Skin Exposure 7 and the my old favourite, Nik Silver Efex Pro. Sometimes it just great to play with some of the wonderful software tools we now have.
I hope you like the images and have a great weekend everyone.
The Lightweight Photographer 
Interesting set. The Nik version has more contrast than Alien Skin and I prefer it. The color version has more emphasis on the rocks and grass in the foreground while the b/w seems to bring out the entire vista in a more cohesive way. Question- Why Topaz Detail and, say, not Clarity or Piccure+ used? And when was Detail applied in your workflow and was any traditional additional sharping used?
Hi John. All are very good questions and will be answered in a further blog post. On the subject as why Topaz Detail, no reason other than I like it and I was experimenting. I could equally have used Piccure+ to achieve the same thing except that I found a really nice light temperature adjustment in Topaz Detail. Trying to use a Clarity adjustment wouldn’t have achieved what these two programs can do though. Keep an eye open for the blog post.
Thank you. My main reason of trying to sort out all these detail/sharpening tools is especially evident in using average lenses vs. high quality ones. A good example is the Lumix kit lens 14-45mm f3.5-5.6 which has good quality but not exceptional like the Olympus 12-40mm f2.8. Reviews of Piccure+ indicate that its program is more effective on mediocre lenses than high quality ones and seems to shine on wide angle lenses often used in landscapes. The impending Olympus 7-14mm f2.8 vs. the average 9-18mm f4-5.6 might be a good scenario in the near future. If one can achieve better detail/sharpening via software perhaps the need for more expensive lenses may be somewhat moot unless speed, build, or other advantages are desired in the more expensive ones. I will look forward to more info on this subject in future blog posts. John
I understand. I think one of my future posts will shine some light on the process I used which is a little unusual.