Pixelation

[Guest]

I'm really hoping you can help!

I'm editing a newborn session and I have some portraits on a dark grey blanket that are looking completely pixelated.  I also started editing another newborns session with pixels showing up in the blanket on a light grey and a blue blanket.  This hasn't happened before and it's not banding.  I'm not sure if I've accidentally turned on something in my process that is causing this.  I start with bringing my RAWS into lightroom and do basic adjustments and then export and then take them into Photoshop to finish editing.  During the lightroom export the quality is at 100%, not resized at all.  I can't see anything I have done differently to cause this. 

I also tried looking at the straight out of lightroom picture after basic adjustments and compared it to the photoshopped file and both have pixels in the blanket.  I also tried a resizing action in photoshop compared to blogstomp to see if blogstomp had changed and they both look the same. 

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Jen

[dj_paige]

Show us a screen capture of the image in Lightroom, so we can see what you are seeing.

[Guest]

[Guest]

this one is straight out of lightroom with basic adjustments.

[dj_paige]

So, maybe I'm just looking in the wrong place, but I don't see problems with these photos. Can you be specific about where you see the pixelation in these photos?

Can you also state more clearly which photo is which, at what step in the entire process does the photos represent, and what conditions or settings were used that you call "basic adjustments"?

[Guest]

The first picture posted is my photoshopped file.  you can see the pixels behind the baby on the blanket.  I can see it on my computer but also on my iphone which lots of clients will be looking at it from and I'm also afraid that the pixels will show up in printing. 

The second picture is after lightroom adjustments of exposure, sharpening, white balance, shadows, etc.. i will grab a screen shot of that and post it.

The third picture is out of photoshop again showing the pixelations in the blanket behind the baby. 

[dj_paige]

jenniferw54878953  wrote

The first picture posted is my photoshopped file.  you can see the pixels behind the baby on the blanket.  I can see it on my computer but also on my iphone which lots of clients will be looking at it from and I'm also afraid that the pixels will show up in printing. 

Okay, I see the problem. Can you show us a screen capture of the unedited photo in Lightroom? Are you (accidentally) applying develop presets? Can you show us the history panel of the Develop Module? Can you show us the Detail panel of the Develop Module?

[Guest]

i don't see any presets picked??  I don't usually use presets.. where should I look?

[dj_paige]

There are no presets used. I'd still like to see the Details panel.

Also, please confirm this original is a RAW and not a JPG. It has all the appearance of you accidentally shooting a JPG.

[Guest]

This is the details panel of the image with the adjustments I made.  They came into lightroom as RAW files. 

Thank you again for taking the time to help me!

[Guest]

sorry here is the history pannel as well

[Per Berntsen]

I don't think this is pixelation, it looks more like that the fabric renders this way when out of focus.

Setting masking to 80 is certainly a good idea, and maybe reduce sharpening a little.

Reducing clarity should also help, may be to a negative value, which will also be good for the baby's skin.

When doing all these adjustments, make sure to view the image at 1:1.

Would also be interesting to see a screenshot of the problematic area at 1:1 in Lightroom, without any adjustments applied.

[Guest]

Here is the blanket at 1:1 without edits

and here it is with edits

I guess you can see the difference pretty good.  So maybe the solution is to not use clarity or sharpening in lightroom at all.  I'm going to take away those edits and then re-export to see if I see a difference.  I don't see the pixelation too much on my computer but when I resize and look on facebook it looks like that.  I know that facebook does compress things but I've never had it happen like this before.  I think you may be right that it is these two new blankets that I bought that are for whatever reason doing this in the natural blur. 

[Guest]

nope. not making a difference from facebook point of view (which unfortunately a lot of my clients see their images on and i don't want it to look like crap).

[Guest]

so at this point it has to be these specific blankets then i'm guessing.

[Per Berntsen]

I start with bringing my RAWS into lightroom and do basic adjustments and then export and then take them into Photoshop to finish editing.  During the lightroom export the quality is at 100%, not resized at all.  I can't see anything I have done differently to cause this.

Are you using Edit in Photoshop, or Export?

And what file format do you use?

And how are you creating the jpg that goes on Facebook, which quality setting do you use?

[Rafael Aviles]

Another thing to consider is that you don't need to export a file out of Lightroom just to edit it in Photoshop (it sounded to me like you are doing that). You are better off using the Edit In... function in Lightroom, which will take your raw file directly into Photoshop. From there you can save it as a tiff file and return to Lightroom. Then you can export it as a jpg to be seen in Facebook. Make sure you do not downsize the file too much, otherwise when you zoom in while in Facebook it may look pixelated.

[Rafael Aviles]

I really do not see the pixellation you mention, I see maybe color noise or sharpening artifacts. I would suggest increasing the Masking level in your Sharpening settings, as high as 80 or so, so you don’t apply sharpening to the blanket.

[Guest]

[Guest]

Here's another example different session, different blanket

[Guest]

YEAH!! I fixed it!  Okay so what I did was take out sharpening and clarity like you all suggested in lightroom.  then in photoshop I edited it the same way I normally would, then when I went to make a resized version to put on facebook I saved it as PNG instead of a JPG and now you can't even notice it at all!

I was exporting from lightroom and not bringing them straight into photoshop so I'll do what was suggested above in the future for that. 

I soooooo appreciate all of your help!!  I couldn't have fixed this without you and your guidance.  Now I can finish this gallery for my clients and finally have our sales session.  Thank you again for your help - you all rock!!