20 Replies Latest reply: Aug 30, 2012 6:30 PM by station_two RSS

    Q. for T. Knoll, E. Chan or J. Schewe

    station_two Community Member
    station_two Aug 29, 2012 2:22 AM

      Kindly refresh my memor on the subject of noise reduction applied to raw files (only) in ACR not being reflected in thumbnails and/or preview panel in Bridge.

       

      I posted this question originally in the Bridge forum in a thread that contains relevant screen shots.  Here's the link to that thread:

       

      http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1056532?tstart=0

       

      Here's the text of the original post there:

       

      A major senior moment leads me to ask for help in refreshing my memory regarding the Noise Reduction applied in ACR not being reflected in the Preview panel within Bridge after clicking the Done button in ACR.

       

      My recollection was that Noise Reduction and Sharpening applied to a raw image in ACR are not reflected, or at least not fully reflected in the Preview panel nor in the thumbnail in the Bridge Contents panel.

       

      I've been trying to do a forum search for a post where one of the high gurus (Knoll, Chan or Schewe?) confirmed this fact in this forum, but due to the aforementioned major senior moment, I've been unable to find the right keywords for my search, so I've come up blank.

       

      Thanks in advance.

       

      If any member of the ATM team or Jeff Schewe cares to comment, I'd be much obliged.

      • 2269 Views
      • Tags:
        • 1. Re: Q. for T. Knoll, E. Chan or J. Schewe
          RASouthworth Community Member
          RASouthworth Aug 29, 2012 6:25 AM (in response to station_two)

          Don't know about the original post, but you aroused my curiosity.  Opened a raw file from Bridge (ACR 7.2RC), applied very crunchy sharpening, and then clicked Done.  Back in bridge using the loupe set to 100%, the preview clearly showed the excessive sharpening.  Nothing apparent in the thumbnail or in the preview without the loupe.  Preview set to "Always high quality".

          • 2. Re: Q. for T. Knoll, E. Chan or J. Schewe
            RASouthworth Community Member
            RASouthworth Aug 29, 2012 8:35 AM (in response to RASouthworth)

            Continuing to experiment, cropped a small section of the image so that the preview in Bridge would be at 100%,  No sharpening visible in preview, and also the loupe no longer shows sharpening.  Seems somewhat inconsistent.

            • 3. Re: Q. for T. Knoll, E. Chan or J. Schewe
              station_two Community Member
              station_two Aug 29, 2012 10:13 AM (in response to RASouthworth)

              Thanks for posting, Richard.  What I'm after though, is the Noise Reduction not being applied.  I mentioned Sharpening only tangentially, just in case my memory betrays me as to the discussion we had years ago.

               

              I still hope the ACR engineers and/or Jeff Schewe chime in.

               

              Message was edited by: station_two

              • 4. Re: Q. for T. Knoll, E. Chan or J. Schewe
                station_two Community Member
                station_two Aug 29, 2012 10:10 AM (in response to RASouthworth)

                Actually, what you describe makes 100% sense.  The thumbnail in the contents panel show what's in the preview, as does the Preview panel naturally. 

                 

                The Loupe at 100% however, MUST access the original raw file, not the preview.

                • 5. Re: Q. for T. Knoll, E. Chan or J. Schewe
                  RASouthworth Community Member
                  RASouthworth Aug 29, 2012 11:02 AM (in response to station_two)

                  Yes, except that when I create a small cropped area such that I obtain a 100% preview, the loupe bottoms out at 200% and it's hard to determine what's going on.  BTW I repeated the experiment for noise reduction, and after applying very heavy NR in ACR and cropping a small portion, the 100% Bridge preview did reflect the NR.  So my first guess is NR gets thru to the preview and sharpening doesn't.

                  • 6. Re: Q. for T. Knoll, E. Chan or J. Schewe
                    station_two Community Member
                    station_two Aug 29, 2012 11:15 AM (in response to RASouthworth)

                    RASouthworth wrote:

                     

                    …So my first guess is NR gets thru to the preview and sharpening doesn't.

                     

                    That would be 100% contrary to my experience, my contention   and all my tests.

                     

                     

                    At 100%, both Noise Reduction and Sharpening show.  Of course, at 100%, my raw images are at 4672 x 3104 pixels. 

                     

                    At Monitor-Size previews, neither Noise Reduction nor Sharpening are applied by Bridge in the Preview Panel nor to the thumbnail in the Content panel..

                    • 7. Re: Q. for T. Knoll, E. Chan or J. Schewe
                      station_two Community Member
                      station_two Aug 29, 2012 11:48 AM (in response to RASouthworth)

                      RASouthworth wrote:

                       

                      …except that when I create a small cropped area such that I obtain a 100% preview, the loupe bottoms out at 200%…

                       

                      That also makes sense.  Since no later than at 100% the loupe is actually looking at the original raw as adjusted in ACR. I guess they figure less than 200% (the 100% preview) is already showing in the preview, and it would not make any sense for the loupe to zoom out in order to go below 100%. in any case

                      • 8. Re: Q. for T. Knoll, E. Chan or J. Schewe
                        station_two Community Member
                        station_two Aug 29, 2012 11:55 AM (in response to station_two)

                        I now think I was right in posting in the Bridge forum initially.

                         

                        This is definitely a Bridge issue, not a Camera Raw one.

                        • 9. Re: Q. for T. Knoll, E. Chan or J. Schewe
                          ssprengel Community Member
                          ssprengel Aug 29, 2012 4:08 PM (in response to station_two)

                          Is ACR set to Sharpen For None and this affects the preview sharpening?

                          • 10. Re: Q. for T. Knoll, E. Chan or J. Schewe
                            station_two Community Member
                            station_two Aug 30, 2012 12:42 AM (in response to ssprengel)

                            Thank you for chiming in, ssprengel.

                             

                            In my case, ACR is set to apply sharpening to all files.  It also applies to CS4 and CS5 as well as CS6.

                             

                            Screen shot 2012-08-30 at 12.34.58 AM.png

                             

                            But again, this is a Bridge issue not an ACR one.  We are talking about how Bridge displays the preview and the thumbnails.

                             

                            Most importantly, my query is concerned primarily with Noise Reduction, and Sharpening is only a tangential issue which seems to comport to the same Bridge rules as Noise Reduction.

                            • 11. Re: Q. for T. Knoll, E. Chan or J. Schewe
                              ssprengel Community Member
                              ssprengel Aug 30, 2012 6:34 AM (in response to station_two)

                              Bridge would be using ACR w/o a UI to create the high-quality previews. 

                               

                              I was asking the question about the situation where RASouth said that NR seemed to be applied whereas Sharpening was not, and station_two says that neither was.  If the same version of Bridge and ACR are being discussed then something must be different locally.  Perhaps it is just the size of the raw file that is different.  If both RASouth and station_two have Sharpen For All Images set then this would not be the difference.

                               

                              I wondered if a misguided Bridge programmer had taken the Sharpen For Previews vs All to mean Sharpen Previews Yes/No when they created the render-recipe to pass to Bridge when creating previews.

                               

                              It seems reasonable that Bridge might be doing different things between Preview and Loupe mode, but not that its treatment of raw files is inconsistent between one system and the next.

                               

                              If it helps the initial question of there being a senior moment about how NR and Sharpening worked previous compared to know, I remember that in Lightroom the handling of whether LR’s preview image shows sharpening and NR did change in a recent version to show more of the sharpening/NR at smaller than 100% sizes,  so maybe ACR’s policies did change as well.  It also used to be in LR that different sized RAWs showed or didn’t show the sharpening/NR—it was a camera-by-camera or size-by-size decision, which could explain the inconsistency between two different users’ experiences, unless the same RAW file is being experimented with.

                              • 12. Re: Q. for T. Knoll, E. Chan or J. Schewe
                                RASouthworth Community Member
                                RASouthworth Aug 30, 2012 6:53 AM (in response to ssprengel)

                                Just to make sure, I shot a very noisy image and examined in ACR 7.2RC.

                                 

                                Given that I cropped the image so that the Bridge preview was a 100% view (i.e., each pixel in the image mapped to one pixel on the monitor), sharpening did NOT carry over to the preview,  but noise reduction did.  I did no further loupe examinations, only preview.

                                 

                                I have ACR preferences set with "Apply sharpening to" :  "All images".

                                • 13. Re: Q. for T. Knoll, E. Chan or J. Schewe
                                  station_two Community Member
                                  station_two Aug 30, 2012 9:16 AM (in response to ssprengel)

                                  You can see the three screen shots of the Bridge Preview panel I posted at:

                                   

                                  http://forums.adobe.com/message/4653332#4653332

                                   

                                  That the NR did not carry over to the preview of the raw image file in Bridge is self evident.  Compare that with the preview of the PSD.  Night and day.

                                   

                                  The size of the image straight out of the camera is 4672 x 3104 pixels.

                                   

                                  Also, this behavior has been duplicated in CS4, CS5 and CS6 on three (3) different Macs and on CS5 on a Windows box with a variety of raw images from three different cameras, one Nikon DSLR and two Pentax DSLRs.

                                  • 14. Re: Q. for T. Knoll, E. Chan or J. Schewe
                                    station_two Community Member
                                    station_two Aug 30, 2012 9:24 AM (in response to RASouthworth)

                                    RASouthworth wrote:

                                     

                                    Just to make sure, I shot a very noisy image and examined in ACR 7.2RC.

                                     

                                    Hehehe.. "very noisy" does not begin to describe my sample image.  The image, as per screen shot #1, was practically black, and with the extreme ACR adjustments necessary to make it visible, the image became extremely noisy.

                                     

                                    What were the pixel dimensions of your raw image, Richard?  Well, I guess it doesn't matter, because you generated a crop to show the pixels 1:1, at 100% in the Preview panel.  Apples and oranges.

                                    • 15. Re: Q. for T. Knoll, E. Chan or J. Schewe
                                      station_two Community Member
                                      station_two Aug 30, 2012 9:33 AM (in response to ssprengel)

                                      ssprengel wrote:

                                       

                                      ...I was asking the question about the situation where RASouth said that NR seemed to be applied whereas Sharpening was not, and station_two says that neither was.  If the same version of Bridge and ACR are being discussed then something must be different locally...

                                       

                                      Indeed, Richard Performed a crop to show the pixels 1:1 at 100% in the Bridge Preview panel. In effect, he was using the Loupe!

                                       

                                      My image was 4672 x 3104 pixels, so it was showing at much reduced percentage in the Bridge Preview panel..

                                      • 16. Re: Q. for T. Knoll, E. Chan or J. Schewe
                                        ssprengel Community Member
                                        ssprengel Aug 30, 2012 9:45 AM (in response to station_two)

                                        So your current theory is that the difference in Preview NR or not is whether the pixels are 1:1 or not.  I forget if you did this, already, but if you perform the small-enough-for-1:1 crop on your example in the other thread, do you get NR or not?

                                         

                                         

                                         

                                        Another reason for the difference could be that the amount of noise in your image is there because of the extreme exposure increase—maybe the underlying ISO is actually still rather low and ACR is using the ISO as a threshold to decide if the preview has NR applied or not, rather than the actual adjusted-image noise which would be much harder to characterize correctly.

                                        • 17. Re: Q. for T. Knoll, E. Chan or J. Schewe
                                          station_two Community Member
                                          station_two Aug 30, 2012 4:43 PM (in response to ssprengel)

                                          Well, we can come up with all kinds of theories and experiments, but what I really need is for Thomas Knoll, Eric Chan or Jeff Schewe to confirm or deny that this issue had been discussed here years ago.

                                           

                                          My hope is that they have not chimed in because they are on vacation.  I'll try again after Labor Day.

                                          • 18. Re: Q. for T. Knoll, E. Chan or J. Schewe
                                            station_two Community Member
                                            station_two Aug 30, 2012 4:52 PM (in response to ssprengel)

                                            The thing is, I had experienced the same thing in the past and I had posted the examples at the time.  My (vague) recollection is that one or more of the ACR gurus had given me a definitive answer with which I was satisfied at the time.

                                             

                                            I'll do the 1:1 crop experiment on the image in the next 30 minutes.

                                             

                                            Thanks for your contributions so far, ssprengel. 

                                            • 19. Re: Q. for T. Knoll, E. Chan or J. Schewe
                                              station_two Community Member
                                              station_two Aug 30, 2012 6:25 PM (in response to ssprengel)

                                              ssprengel wrote:

                                               

                                              …, but if you perform the small-enough-for-1:1 crop on your example in the other thread, do you get NR or not?…

                                               

                                              Confirmed!  If the crop applied to the raw file is small enough so that the Bridge Preview does not have to zoom out at all, then the Noise Reduction is indeed reflected in the Preview.

                                               

                                              Here's the screen shot of the Bridge preview panel:

                                               

                                              Screen shot 2012-08-30 at 5.29.37 PM.png

                                               

                                              Message was edited by: station_two

                                              • 20. Re: Q. for T. Knoll, E. Chan or J. Schewe
                                                station_two Community Member
                                                station_two Aug 30, 2012 6:30 PM (in response to station_two)

                                                MY FINAL CONCLUSION:

                                                When in doubt about noise reduction or sharpening in the Bridge preview panel, just call up the Loupe!