It’s possible that yes, you are applying too much adjustment with the shadows.
typically digital photo shots can have extreme amounts of noise in the shadows, most of which appears in the blue channel.
try preview the before image, and in the channels palette view each channel individually.
I agree with jason (wouldn’t dream of disagreeing with him, except on football!). Just wanted to make clear that the S&H adjustment didn’t create the noise, rather brought it out, or made it more apparent.
So is there any advantage in using Shadow Highlight in terms of noise over good old fashioned levels or curves to lighten shadow areas?
Shadow highlight is much superior to curves to lighten shadow areas and maintain good colour, but the quality of the image will depend on the quality of the shadow pixels. Cheap cameras will have more noise in shadows than better ones.
Can anybody recommend any good reviews, comparisons, tutorials on SH then?
Thanks Pope. That’s a good review of a lot of new PSCS features. I did a Google search and came up with a few other bits as well.
I’m actually diggin the new shadow/highlights.
too bad it doesnt work in CMYK mode.
Too bad there isn’t an SH adjustment layer. I like to keep my options open indefinitely. Guess I’ll have to get into new habits if I want to benefit from this.
Too bad there isn’t an SH adjustment layer.
Ditto. Thats almost a showstopper as far as I am concerned (but hey, I dont have CS so my problem is moot).
Too bad there isn’t an SH adjustment layer
Amen brudda!
Ok a totally related post here – what is the tablet Katrin is using in her biography pic?! Is it 12×18 Intuos 2 with a photo in the cover or something with a screen?
"Too bad there isn’t an SH adjustment layer."
I know, I put it in the FR (mac side) last week!
Along with the adjustment>photo filter.
Hm? There is a Photo Filter adjustment layer. It’s in the middle of the Adjustment Layer menu, but it’s there.
Don’t expect Shadow/Highlight to be an adjustment layer any time soon. What it’s doing is more complicated than what an adjustment layer is allowed to do.
-Scott
Along with the adjustment>photo filter.
Thanks for the info Scott and may I say aww! I’ll just have to start working with duped backgrounds I guess.
Don’t expect Shadow/Highlight to be an adjustment layer any time soon.
No problem. March or April is fine! Whenever you can get to it! 🙂
Scott, yes sorry, I didnt see the photofilter adjusment layer the first go around.
Thanks for the replies… I went in and did some more experimentation about the shadow(s) and noise and all such…
What I’m finding odd is that if I go into the shadow/highlight and bring up some detail from the shadows I get a LOT of grain/noise EVERYWHERE, not just in the shadow area. The highlight adjustment doesn’t seem to cause noise, just the shadow. So, I’m now being VERY judicious in the amount of shadow manipulation I’m doing. Keeping it down as much as possible seems to minimize the noise.
In one case I brought up the shadow detail and then used Neat Image to clean up the noise. It worked but its hell on sharpness… So, now I’ve worked by tail off to get a clean, SHARP photo and than I use a tool that softens it to remove the noise that I caused earlier! Good grief! Oh well, nobody said this was gonna be easy!
SH adjustment layer.
I have 7 not CS, but can’t this be approximated by new layer (copy merged if needed), performing the adjustment, then moving the sliders to lower the opacity/partially erase where not wanted/etc?
Bill
It’s not an adjustment *layer*, and according to the folks at Adobe it likely never will be one.
But – you can FADE the adjustment, very similar to what Bill is referring to.
regarding dkperez’ comments above, "What I’m finding odd is that if I go into the shadow/highlight and bring up some detail from the shadows I get a LOT of grain/noise EVERYWHERE, not just in the shadow area. The highlight adjustment doesn’t seem to cause noise, just the shadow. So, I’m now being VERY judicious in the amount of shadow manipulation I’m doing. Keeping it down as much as possible seems to minimize the noise. "
This is just a shot in the dark (if you’ll forgive the pun), but I imagine that your camera’s ISO is pretty high. 200 or 400+? Is that the case? Reducing that, whether through the use of a tripod, flash or more light will help the most with this. S/H isn’t "causing noise", but rather making existing noise visible. I hope that helps. Thanks, -Bryan.
Bryan, you’re correct. I was shooting at ISO 400 because I was shooting birds and needed to keep my shutter speed fairly high and still keep some depth of field… So, Yeah, I suspect that it IS noise that’s being made visible… When I can I use ISO 100 but that just isn’t always possible.
In GENERAL, if I’m careful with the shadow fiddling its possible to keep the noise down, although it’d be nice if it only made the noise visible in the shadow where I’m trying to get detail rather than everywhere…
The adjustment can’t do anything about exisiting noise….
To get rid of some of the grain I find it helpful to convert to L*A*B mode and slightly blur the a and b channels, then convert back to RGB-it can help reduce the high ISO noise quite a bit, then run your shadow/highlight.
I too would like to see shadow/highlight as an adjustment layer, then it could be targeted to an individual channel using layer styles. It would make this feature a lot more flexible then applying directly to channels!
Blurring the a and b channels would help with chromatic but not luminosity noise. If you have significant noise, consider Neat Image or Noise Ninja.
I too would like to see shadow/highlight as an adjustment layer,
Yea! That would be awesome! 🙂
