What is your experience with LA Denoising settings, e.g for bokeh?
I found it quite useful for “taming” busy background and healing face pores and some other “skin problems” when used for Local Adjustments (LA). Tested only for high ISO photos, like 12k on Nikon Z8 (FF,45mpx) using Control Point or Selection AI masks. Depending on the input, reducing ‘Force details’ to -20, -50, or -100 sometimes produced good results.
Looks like we have another tool for local smoothing, in combination of Microcontrast, Contrast, Exposure, Sharpness, LSO, and (God forbid) Blur. However, choosing the right balance between these tools looks like a per photo challenge. After some 20 tries it was difficult for me to find any rule. Perhaps it’s too early to ask, but I would be interested in your experience. The goal would be to create a rule of thumb, which combination to use in specific cases for getting bokeh/wrinkles less distractive.
I tried using the Manual Brush tool, I used the following settings for the brush (size will be dependent on the image size) and set the mask to a minimal Blur (about 3). With a low opacity on the brush, making several passes over the same area will make the blur more pronounced.
Almost like applying a fine layer of concealer (makeup) to the face.
OK, re-read your post, hopefully with more understanding – I just lack basic LA knowledge, never being fan of. I’ll try it tomorrow, sorry for misunderstanding.
Thanks for your suggestion. Tried Manual Brush with Blur and Selective Tones settings (plus other) to remove some bad side-effect of scenic light on not photography friendly makeup. I had a deja vu, when years ago I tried to do the same thing in Photoshop. SABENA. While effective, I think the method requires several months of training, few hours a day, to get natural results in reasonable time. The main problem is that there’s no turning back if you overdo with Manual Brush, and you have to start from scratch. Had similar experience with Affinity Photo. I have too few cases to justify spending a lot of time to master this method and prefer to handle the job to professional graphic editors. I’m just a photographer trying to reproduce what I’ve seen, and these damned cameras tend to amplify all image faults . Hence I’ll stay with using Control Points to get partial results quickly, at least for now.
With societies getting older and many women being very picky about their images, the problem just cries for an easy to use solution. For example, Capture One ‘Blemish Removal’ is just the first step in this direction. Not sure, if it’s in PhotoLab “genre”. Maybe photo editing industry expects users to switch to things like Nano Banana?
Do you have forehead horizontal wrinkles in mind and using LA positive Selective Tones for Blacks and perhaps the shadows?
If you use a new mask layer each time you make a change then reversing a bad alteration will be easier, just remove the last layer.
I haven’t tried this on heavy forehead lines.
I had some success in the past with wrinkles using Pixelmator Pro (Mac) they have a hi-low pass filter that seemed to be very effective, but it was very sensitive to adjustments, and took a lot of time to get decent results.
I’ve always worked with brushstrokes of low opacity and soft edges, for example, to enhance the 3D effect by (gently) drawing in exposure corrections (around -0,3 / +0,3). A few passes quickly show when it’s sufficient. I did this with a Wacom tablet in old PS and now also in PL.
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Finally, PL has improved the layer system, and as @LVS mentioned, a correction (undo) can be easily performed by deleting the correction layer. – When possible (not too complicated), I often adjust the layer’s opacity to achieve the desired effect.
Using different settings for foreground and background (as well as smaller areas like faces → @Wlodek) should work the same way. I’ve already tried applying reduced lens sharpness etc. to the background in a few examples, but no other corrections (blurring or else), e.g. on faces.
Just coming in on this to say that in some cases it can work well reversed, too.
That is to say it’s handy to apply stronger denoising to the background and non-subjects then use a local mask to tone it down on your subject, retaining more detail.
This does depend on what you’re shooting: If it’s people and you want to try and smooth out skin then this “reversed” approach might not be great.
I’ve found it turns out good results for cars, however…
. Hence I’ll stay with using Control Points to get partial results quickly, at least for now.