brimacx

The best way to make selections by far is good-ole' channel manipulation. Katrin Eismann's

book "Photoshop masking and compositing" is one of the best for learning detailed and

intricate masking techniques. I tried out Knockout 2 a while back for some hair masking and

didn't take to it very well. Using blending modes on alpha channels while dodging/burning as

needed is so powerful and quick. The Calculations command is also a powerful masking tool

that at first can be intimidating. However, once you work with it it becomes less scary and

your compositing/selecting work will be that much better...

Has anyone had body/lens calibration done by Canon outside of warranty? just wondering

what the rates might be. I had a 300D and two lenses (kit lens and the 70-200 f4L (which

backfocused)) calibrated a couple of years ago under warranty but no rates appeared on the

invoice.

Can't beleive no one mentioned changing to LAB mode and applying USM to the Lightness

channel. Start with .3 radius and Amount of 300%. Raise Amount until desired edge

sharpness is achieved then go down to Threshold and raise a little until the image noise is no

longer sharp. Alternative to this without having to go into LAB mode is to apply the USM and

immediately choose "Fade/USM" (COM+SHFT+F on a Mac) and select Luminosity from the

drop down menu and adjust opacity to suit.

I did some more testing - this time with JPEGs that were sharpened in-camera and some that

were Adobe RGB vs. RAW files that were Adobe RGB and some that were sharpened in-

camera. These tests were totally inconclusive. Some of the supposedly sharpened JPEGs were

less sharp than my unsharpened RAW shots. Leading me to believe that my focus was dead-

on for the previous tests with RAW in-camera sharpened files and was a little soft for the

Adobe RGB RAW files. So probably no sharpening going on with the RAW files. It must have

been just real good focus...

ACR is the program inside of Photoshop - Adobe Camera Raw. DPP is Canon's own RAW

processing software available from their website called Digital Photo Professional.

Ken,

Read my posts, see my examples and test for yourself. ACR does apply in-camera sharpness

settings to RAW files.

Attached are the three images I took - CRW7711 at 0 sharpening, CRW7712 at 1 sharpening,

and CRW7713 at 2 sharpening. Based on the picture it looks like ACR only recognizes that

some sharpening was applied in-camera, since sharpening 1 and sharpening 2 look identical

out of ACR. Oh yeah, it just came to me - the reason I had DPP open in the previous image

was to verify which image had which amount of in-camera sharpening applied since ACR

doesn't give you that information.<div></div>

yes, they were both opened in ACR. I had DPP open also to look at the images because I know

it uses in-camera parameters when rendering RAW images. When I tried it with CS1 a year

ago, I only used color saturation as the changed parameter and ACR 1 didn't seem to keep

the changes to the RAW files while EOS's FVU did keep the parameter in rendering it's RAW

image. Try it out and let us know if you get the same results with the sharpening...

Also forgot to mention that I used the on-camera 10 sec. timer to take the shots since I don't

have a remote.

Okay, went to the garage and did a more controlled test... results confirm my first post

that in-camera sharpening is applied by ACR.

conditions of my test: 10D with 28-70 f/2.8L, tripod mounted, EXIF: 1/25 sec., f/2.8, ISO

200, 70mm focal length. Shot a standard back-focus test chart at about 24"

I'm posting a screenshot of the two images side-by-side in CS2. note that files are the

same size and haven't been resampled. CRW_7711.CRW was shot as an Adobe RGB (no in-

camera sharpening by definition) CRW_7713.CRW was shot with sharpening set to +2.<div></div>

Something must have changed with CS2 because I also thought that in-camera settings

had no effect on RAW images in Camera Raw, but they apparently do now. Coincidentally, I

was doing the exact same test this afternoon with about 100 images shot with different

in-camera sharpening settings comparing the same shots with no in-camera processing

and putting them through Adobe Camera Raw. I also compared all shots by processing

them through Canon's Digital Photo Processor program (which does apply in-camera

settings to RAW files) and they were identical.

My test kept all camera and exposure settings equal with the exception of in-camera

sharpening. The images straight from the camera without any in-camera sharpening had

the typical Canon slightly soft look. Taking the same shot with Sharpening +2 and

processing through ACR opened the same image but it was as sharp as in Canon's DPP

software (they were actually incredible looking - no halos, or other sharpening artefacts)

Conclusion: ACR does apply in-camera sharpening settings to RAW files. The only

downside is you'd have to give up Adobe RGB as a color space since in-camera settings

only work for the sRGB color space.

Given that this conclusion goes against my past experience with in-camera settings and

ACR, I'll retest through ACR and DPP and report back