the last word

Photography meets digital computer technology. Photography wins -- most of the time.

  • site home
  • blog home
  • galleries
  • contact
  • underwater
  • the bleeding edge
You are here: Home / The Last Word / Adobe Camera Raw 11.2 “Enhance Details”

Adobe Camera Raw 11.2 “Enhance Details”

February 12, 2019 JimK 4 Comments

In today’s update to Camera Raw and Lightroom Classic CC, Adobe introduced a new feature. Here’s some of what they have to say about it:

Enhance Details is introduced in Adobe Camera Raw 11.2. Powered by Adobe Sensei, Enhance Details produces crisp detail, improved color rendering, more accurate renditions of edges, and fewer artifacts. Enhance Details is especially useful for making large prints, where fine details are more visible. This feature applies to raw mosaic files from cameras with Bayer sensors (Canon, Nikon, Sony, and others) and Fujifilm X-Trans sensors.

I tried it on some of my informal lens test shots, and was unimpressed. The good news was that it appeared to do no harm. The bad news is that it didn’t do much good.

Then I tried it on a Siemens star image. Here are some highly magnified shots:

Nikon 180-400 on Nikon Z7

 

 

Nikon 180-400 on Nikon Z7, Details enhanced

That is very impressive. Most of the false color has been removed, with absolutely no loss in sharpness of unaliased detail.

Here’s another pair:

Nikon Z7 with 50 mm f/1.8 S

 

 

Nikon Z7 with 50 mm f/1.8 S, enhanced detail

Next up was some fabric:

GFX 50S

 

GFX 50S, enhanced detail

 

GFX 50S

 

GFX 50S, enhanced detail

Wow! It’s not perfect, what what in improvement.

The correction is processor intensive. It takes about 10 seconds for a Z7 conversion, and uses a lot of GPU cycles:

I don’t know how Adobe is doing this, but this could really be a help in some situations.

It doesn’t do everything. Here are a couple of versions of a shot with some Z7 PDAF banding, and the banding is unaffected.

Plain

 

Details enhanced

 

 

 

The Last Word

← Take More Crappy Pictures in 2019! ACR 11.2 Enhance Details — effect on sharpness →

Comments

  1. Stephen Starkman says

    February 12, 2019 at 6:25 pm

    Jim, I also applied LR’s Enhance Details to a fairly random selection of images I had handy – Sony A7r3, Nikon D850, E-M1MkII. All shot with good glass for their mount. Also found what you did – no real improvement, no harm done AND reduction of false colour! So, tentatively, that’s my use case…. 🙂

    Hopefully more info will be forthcoming. It’s a resource intensive process (time and storage).

    Reply
  2. Matt Anderson says

    February 13, 2019 at 10:47 am

    The enhance image sampling is trippy.
    Try taking a regular image, put the enhanced version on a layer above, change blend mode to difference. Then put a levels adjustment layer on top and crank the highlight from 255 to 10. You can see an interesting sampling algorithm they are using for detection. Looks like a pixel direction estimation, analyzing the neighbors texture and edges, and picks a smart “block” demosaicing algorithm depending on the prior analysis.

    https://imgur.com/gallery/z4562rB

    Reply
  3. Kirk Thompson says

    February 13, 2019 at 8:34 pm

    It seems to make much more improvement in the GFX files. Effect varies with pixel pitch? Other explanations?

    Reply
    • JimK says

      February 13, 2019 at 8:49 pm

      The G lenses are in general sharper, and the GFX micro lenses are relatively smaller. That makes for sharper images and more visible artifacts.

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

February 2023
S M T W T F S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728  
« Jan    

Articles

  • About
    • Patents and papers about color
    • Who am I?
  • Good 35-70 MF lens
  • How to…
    • Backing up photographic images
    • How to change email providers
  • Lens screening testing
    • Equipment and Software
    • Examples
      • Bad and OK 200-600 at 600
      • Excellent 180-400 zoom
      • Fair 14-30mm zoom
      • Good 100-200 mm MF zoom
      • Good 100-400 zoom
      • Good 100mm lens on P1 P45+
      • Good 120mm MF lens
      • Good 18mm FF lens
      • Good 24-105 mm FF lens
      • Good 24-70 FF zoom
      • Good 35 mm FF lens
      • Good 60 mm lens on IQ3-100
      • Good 63 mm MF lens
      • Good 65 mm FF lens
      • Good 85 mm FF lens
      • Good and bad 25mm FF lenses
      • Good zoom at 24 mm
      • Marginal 18mm lens
      • Marginal 35mm FF lens
      • Mildly problematic 55 mm FF lens
      • OK 16-35mm zoom
      • OK 60mm lens on P1 P45+
      • OK Sony 600mm f/4
      • Pretty good 16-35 FF zoom
      • Pretty good 90mm FF lens
      • Problematic 400 mm FF lens
      • Tilted 20 mm f/1.8 FF lens
      • Tilted 30 mm MF lens
      • Tilted 50 mm FF lens
      • Two 15mm FF lenses
    • Found a problem – now what?
    • Goals for this test
    • Minimum target distances
      • MFT
      • APS-C
      • Full frame
      • Small medium format
    • Printable Siemens Star targets
    • Target size on sensor
      • MFT
      • APS-C
      • Full frame
      • Small medium format
    • Test instructions — postproduction
    • Test instructions — reading the images
    • Test instructions – capture
    • Theory of the test
    • What’s wrong with conventional lens screening?
  • Previsualization heresy
  • Privacy Policy
  • Recommended photographic web sites
  • Using in-camera histograms for ETTR
    • Acknowledgments
    • Why ETTR?
    • Normal in-camera histograms
    • Image processing for in-camera histograms
    • Making the in-camera histogram closely represent the raw histogram
    • Shortcuts to UniWB
    • Preparing for monitor-based UniWB
    • A one-step UniWB procedure
    • The math behind the one-step method
    • Iteration using Newton’s Method

Category List

Recent Comments

  • Brian Olson on Fuji GFX 100S exposure strategy, M and A modes
  • JimK on Picking a macro lens
  • JimK on Picking a macro lens
  • Glenn Whorrall on Picking a macro lens
  • JimK on What pitch do you need to scan 6×6 TMax 100?
  • Hatzipavlis Peter on What pitch do you need to scan 6×6 TMax 100?
  • JeyB on Internal focusing 100ish macro lenses
  • JimK on How focus-bracketing systems work
  • Garry George on How focus-bracketing systems work
  • Rhonald on Format size and image quality

Archives

Copyright © 2023 · Daily Dish Pro On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

Unless otherwise noted, all images copyright Jim Kasson.