recently someone asked is the filter ordering on one photo is important let's
find out what I want to do today is show you the test to say whether or not that
order is really important on screen at the moment you can see the test image
we're going to start by duplicating the image onto two separate layers
we're then going to select one of these layers and we're going to apply some of
the edits to it in on one
now I'm using on one photo effects raw 2019 and we're going to apply some of
the filters that I typically believe caused problems if you don't get them in
the right order we're going to start with a test between contrast adjustment
using the tone enhancer and also the color adjustment and saturation
my own personal rule is to do any tone enhancements prior to color enhancement
and the reason for this is because saturation gets affected when you were
just a contrast in the image now I'm going to apply very strong adjustments
here so we can check quite easily the difference
an immediately just from the curves adjustment there you can see that we've
really boosted the contrast and the saturation in the image
no let's apply one of the preset adjustments in the color enhancer and
that again has made the image very extreme I'm now going to save this back
to the lair
though you can't see it at the moment because there's another layer on top of
it so we'll just check it has worked as you can see it has we'll know take the
second layer and we'll apply the same adjustment but we'll switch the order of
the filters
On one has picked up the same adjustments that we had previously so
we'll take this tone enhancer and we'll now drop it at the top of the filter
stack and let's see if that's made any difference
now that we've got both layers adjusted all we can do is hide the top layer and
we should be able to see if there's any difference
and from that I can see that there is watch this area of the rock here when I
turn off the top layer
so with the top layer what we had was the tone enhancement after the color
adjustment so by switching the filters round in that way what you can see is
that the area here is brighter and more saturated
and you can also see it in the histogram up here when I turn the layer off
let's now try another I'll delete the layers first
and create two more test layers and then we'll go back into on one
and let's reset all the adjustments next I want to test two of the other filters
I've always applied a tone adjustment before the glow adjustment
let's start by enhancing the tones and I'm going to use a
detail enhancement and a clarity enhancement on this and I'm going to add
a little bit of contrast
and a curves adjustment though the reason that I've always added the tone
enhance the first is that the glow effect should counteract the sharpening
effect or the detail enhancement in the image
use the strong soft light again because we want an extreme example so here we
can see the details being enhanced by the tone enhancer and the glow enhancer
is then being used to add a glowing effect over that
so let's apply that we'll check our lair worked and they will repeat it with our
other tests layer
let's swap round the glow and the tone enhancer
and now let's check if the change in order has had any effect on the result
again there is some effect if you watch the pebbles down here when I turn off
the top layer
so the detail enhancement in the tone adjustment has actually affected the
glow layer when it was below it but again it's marginal let's check the
histogram and you can see very little adjustment
is taking place in the histogram the impact of this is not quite as large as
you might have thought let's get rid of these layers and let's do another test
but this time we're going to check dynamic contrast and glow
I'm going to delete our tone adjustment and we'll leave the glow in place I'll
add the dynamic contrast I'll just make sure that the glow appears on top I've
always used glow after the dynamic contrast adjustment I'll just turn off
the glow effect while I do this I'm going to add in quite a strong
adjustment
and you can see there that that's really brought out a lot of detail in the image
I'll just turn that off it's very strong I'll now at the glow effect
just make that a little bit stronger
I'm now back in photo raw I'm just going to switch the two layers
around I'll sorry the two filters around in their order
and we'll go back and look at it in Photoshop so on top we've got the glow
effect being applied first and then the dynamic contrast and the next layer down
we've got the dynamic contrast being applied before the glow effect
so this time there is a difference you can see in this area of the pebbles
where we've got all the fine detail much more of that detail is evident when
we've applied the dynamic contrast filter after the glow effect let's now
have a look at the next set of filters this time we're going to look at tone
and sharpening let's start by adding our home
adjustment
and then we'll apply a sharpening adjustment I'll turn off the sharpening
adjustment whilst we adjust the tone enhancer and what I want to do here is
use it to bring out some of the detail and clarity in the fine details of the
image I'm also going to apply some contrast adjustment to it again I'm
making these very strong so we can see and judge the effect now let's go to the
sharpening adjustment
and I'll use unsharp mask
I'll just zoom in so you can see the effect
very very over sharpened but that's the effect we want to try to judge any
differences
we'll probably just reduce that hey Waldo a little bit further make it
easier to judge that looks good back to photoshop let's no repeat that but we'll
switch the order this time we'll have the sharpening before we have the tone
enhancement let's now compare the two
she's a less pronounced than I would have thought let's zoom into a hundred
percent just to check the detail
so in the top layer we have the tone enhancement after the sharpening
and you can see that there's a slight difference in the way the highlights of
the sharpening halo are being treated when we've applied the sharpening first
they seemed less pronounced as an effect but having said that they don't seem
extremely different let's do one final test and we'll look this time at the
vignette effect
let's reset our filters and this time I'm going to use a preset that's already
been created and I'll go for probably this sunshine filter now that's very
very strong but that's exactly what we want to see and we'll just reduce it a
little bit in terms of the overall audacity my rule of thumb is that I
always apply the vignette effect last because the adjustments that we make can
actually affect the vignette in terms of its darkness let's now start by adding a
vignette to the top of the layers
and we'll use the big softy effect and immediately you can see the effect of
the vignette lets up that now and we'll go back to photoshop
I'm now working on the second layer from Photoshop and this time let's move the
vignette down in the stack of filters
we now have our vignette on the very bottom of all the filters let's apply
that and check the results in Photoshop the top layer has the vignette applied
at the bottom on the first filter and as you can see it's quite dark
let's now check it where we had it applied on the top layer as you can see
the effect is more pronounced when we put the vignette at the bottom of all
the filters so what do we make of all this what we've seen is that there is a
difference when you move the order of the filters but and this is the big but
when you're just editing actually it doesn't seem to matter about the order
it's only when you apply extremely strong effects and then move the order
of the filter that you see the result change and let's be honest the the
results have been quite minor now if I had taken this last example where we had
the vignette effect first had I applied subsequent adjustments I would probably
have made different choices about how I would have used each of those adjustment
filters and I would have probably still ended up with an image that looked good
at the end of it none of these tests am i seeing anything that says this is
ruining the image so in upshot I was wrong
I don't actually believe that the filter order is important what is important is
to get the image looking right but then don't change the order of the filters
when you change the order that's when things start to look different I've
certainly found this enlightening I hope you've enjoyed it I'm Robin Whalley
you've been watching Lenscraft I'll see you next week for another video