hi i'm Robin Whalley welcome to lenscraft today i'm exploring how you can enhance
the detail in your photos to make them pop and i'll be using four
different nik collection filters to do this
you'll find all four of these filters in the nik color efex pro plugin
the image i'll be using is this misty bad weather scene
what i want to achieve is to enhance the detail in the foreground rocks to make
it more obvious but please remember as you're watching
these examples i'll be using very strong adjustments to help you see
the effect more clearly in the video when you come to do this you may want to
reduce the strength of the effect now let's look at the first of our four
nik collection filters the detail extractor filter is probably
the first filter that comes to mind when you want to emphasize the detail in a
photo the first thing i want to show you is
that the filter still has an effect even when you set all the adjustments to
zero you may find this is enough of an enhancement for many images
the effect also becomes more noticeable when i set the effect radius to large
now watch what happens when i move the detail extractor slider to the right
you can see that it's opening the shadows and emphasizing the texture in
the rock at the same time if you watch the histogram when i adjust
the filter it can give you clues as to what's happening
as i move the slider to the right the histogram draws into the center
this is because the filter is enhancing the mid-tone contrast in the image but
at the expense of the shadows and highlights
if you find the effect on the shadows and highlights is too strong
try increasing the contrast slider this causes the shadows to become darker and
the highlights lighter but it doesn't affect the mid-tones very much
it's the mid-tone contrast adjustment that's enhancing the detail
let's now switch the effect radius between fine normal
and large as i do this notice how it's creating a different effect
the large radius setting tends to emphasize the larger structures in the
image whilst the fine detail tends to enhance the much finer details
when i'm using a strong detail extractor setting
the fine radius can cause an unnatural effect which is less obvious with the
large setting using a strong detail extractor setting
can also cause the image to look under saturated moving the saturation
slider over to the right can help correct the problem there are
though a couple of things to look out for that you may have noticed whilst
i've been explaining the sliders first there's rain spots on my lens
which have become much more obvious if you have any dust on your sensor this
adjustment will emphasize the problem so be sure to carefully review your
image after applying it the other problem you may come across is
halos being created around high contrast edges
when i zoom to 100 magnification you can see an
obvious halo around the rocks one way to deal with this in the image
is by using a negative control point to remove the adjustment from the sky
remember areas of clear tone like the sky don't respond well to detail
enhancement so it's often good idea to do this
the second filter i want to look at is the pro contrast filter
as i've already mentioned a lack of mid-tone contrast is often why detail
isn't clear it's also how many of the dehaze filters
work in tools like lightroom they move the image tones from the
brighter areas of the histogram down into the mid-tone areas another problem
you often find in photos with poor detail
is that it's hidden in the shadows our eyes can find it difficult to
distinguish between the changes in shadow tones
the pro contrast filter helps to fix this by using something called a dynamic
contrast slider when i use a correct contrast slider to
make a traditional contrast adjustment what shot happens to the histogram the
dark tones in the image become darker and the light tones lighter
now watch what happens when i use the dynamic contrast slider instead
suddenly the detail in the shadows appears to pop out
and becomes easier to see if you watch the histogram as i move the slider
it doesn't push the highlights and shadows out like you see with a regular
contrast adjustment instead the shadow tones in the
histogram move into the mid-tone area making it easier to see the detail as
with the first filter you should use control points to remove
the effect from areas like the sky now let's look at another method of
making your photo detail pop
the next filter we're going to use is the bleach bypass effect
whilst bleach bypass bypasses a traditional fine art effect that
darkens and desaturates the image we can also use it to enhance detail
i'll start by removing the adjustment from the four sliders to help you see
what we're doing unfortunately there will always be a
contrast adjustment with this filter because the minimum setting is 20 if you
find this causes clipping in your image you may want to try fixing it using the
shadows and highlight sliders now the slider we want to use to make
our details pop is the local contrast slider
this creates a significant detail enhancement but has a couple of side
effects to be aware of first you might find the image contrast
suffers when you make this adjustment if it does you can correct it by
increasing the contrast slider if this then causes the image to become
too dark try lightening it with the brightness slider
the other problem you might encounter is that the saturation can become muted
this is after all a bleach bypass effect filter do try to correct this with the
saturation slider although it doesn't allow much of an adjustment
an alternative is adding a brilliance and warmth filter
then you can use the saturation and perceptual saturation sliders
it can also help you to use control points with this filter
to focus the adjustment onto specific areas
for example we could remove the effect from the sky with a negative control
point with this image the foreground rocks
might also benefit from increasing the warmth to emphasize the feeling of depth
comparing this with the original image you can see that it's made a substantial
difference to the detail in the rocks
the final filter we're going to look at is a way of making photo details pop is
the contrast only filter when you apply a contrast only
adjustment it increases the image contrast but in a way that doesn't
affect colors but it can make the image look very dark
as you can see here one easy way to fix this is using the
soft contrast slider and moving this to the left
by applying a negative soft contrast adjustment to the image you will open
the shadows and reveal the detail there we can then fine tune the effect using
the brightness contrast and saturation sliders
as before consider using a negative control point to remove the effect from
areas like the sky
if you compare this with the original image you can see the difference that
it's made to the rock detail
we've now looked at four different knit color effects filters that you can use
to make the details in your photos pop what you may not have noticed is that
whilst they all enhance details each produces a different effect it's a
good idea to experiment with these so you can pick the one that best suits the
photo you're editing so next time you have a photo where you
want to make the details pop try using one of these knit collection
filters i hope you found this video helpful
if you have please take a moment to share it with others and don't forget to
subscribe to this channel i'm Robin Whalley you've been watching
lenscraft i'll see you next week for another video