Clarity - action for testing

[lutz]

Many people have been raving about the "clarity" tool in Lightroom. However, according to one of the developers it is simply the well known "high radius - low amount" unsharp mask with a twist. The twist being the restriction of USM effect to the midtones only. The midtone focus allows a stronger application of the effect because obvious halo artifacts can be avoided.
This script does exactly the same in preparing the clarity layer group. The USM working layer (recognizable through the hot peppers) remains adjustable for fine tuning. I believe the action offers another option for quick local contrast enhancement - mainly by simply adjusting the opacity of the entire "Clarity" layer group (and making use of Photoline's ability to raise the opacity to 200% for extreme modifications).

Download:
http://www.simplexx.net/actions/clarity.actions

Example (original image thanks to chilombiano via morguefile.com):

[Koyaanis]

On a somewhat related note, the "mysterious" Paint Shop Pro's Clarify filter is done by:

Image Optimize filter: Width 3-7, Gamma 30-50%. (Shadow/Light can also be used, brighten the shadows a bit.)

Then

Gaussian Blur filter: Size 50-99, Lab mode ('L'-channel only, de-select 'a' and 'b' channels.), Intensity -10% to -70(?)%, keep in mind, those are negative/minus values. (HIS mode can also be used, 'I'-channel only.)

The Median filter can be used in place of Gaussian Blur with similar settings for similar results.

You have much more control over it than you do using PSP's version.

[lutz]

Koyaanis,

thanks for the tip. Another interesting effect !!!