Long time lurker and appreciate the wealth of learning experiences posted here. For starters I had just installed v1.1 and it is running fine on my XP system. Fingers crossed after seeing all the issues reported with v1.1 stability. My v1.0 had never crashed during the last couple of months of moderate use and hopefully v1.1 will remain that way.

Pretty excited by what I am seeing so far.

Played around with the 'clarity' slider and it seems to turn up the image quite nicely. I am wondering whether it is a smart local contrast algorithm, similar to what vibrance does to colors? Thanks

According to Jeff, it is based on a large radius USM application and does therefore enhance the local contrast.

Regards,
Bernard

I like the effect, but is the raw conversion the time for this? I usually done the USM local contrast technique as one of the last steps in my workflow.

Tim
I don't know the technical reasons but Michael always used his Local Contrast Enhancement early in his workflow. Probably does not make a great deal of difference.

As for Lightroom being a raw converter - it certainly is but perhaps not in the traditional sense. A raw converter was something you used to convert your raw files out of your camera to something useable like a tiff or jpeg. I think of Lightroom as more of a 'Raw Workflow Tool'. I think the idea is that you can do 'everything' you need to do in Lightroom on a majority of photos without resorting to another application. It's definately getiing there with 1.1.

Lastly 'Clarity' is on a slider which shows you pretty good real time results (USM is a bit more fiddly)

Regards,

Jon

Clarity is very similar to Mac Holbert's Mid Tone Contrast adjustment technique he uses in Photoshop (which is invaluable!).

Clarity is a form of local contrast enhancement. It works primerily in the mid tones and therefore accidently blowing highlights is prevented.

They way that LR and CR work is that virtual adjustments are made in the processing pipeline when a file is exported in the most appropriate order, so the order in which they are performned doesn't much matter. It's best though to work down the right hand column in Develop for the most efficient workflow.

At this point the only things that I still need to do in Photoshop are sharpening (I still prefer Photokit Sharpener) and soft proofing. Soon Photoshop will only be needed for complex masking tasks, stitching, HDR and the like.

Michael

Yup, my Photoshop work has been reduced dramatically. I agree, soft proofing and sharpening are still the primary reasons I go there. Of course, one still needs to do pixel retouching from time to time and complex cloning is still easier and more precise in Photoshop.

Guys, thank you for the responses.

Same here with LR, I am also seeing not much use of Photoshop now except for Photokit sharpening and Noise Ninja. Having used C1 and RSP before this, I think LR offers a lot more in terms of intuitive controls

Read all about the clarity here:
http://photoshopnews.com/2007/05/31/about-camera-raw-41/