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Hi Robert Johnson, 

 

Welcome to the Forums :)

 

This isn't possible in the app at the moment but it has been requested a few times in the past so it may be considered for future versions :)

 

C

Please tag me using @ in your reply so I can be sure to respond ASAP.

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  • 6 months later...

I treated myself to Affinity Photo for Christmas and am still exploring the app however I also noticed there is no negative clarity feature in the RAW Persona.

This something I use quite a lot in Lightroom; especially for photographs of my baby grandson as it nicely softens skin tone and suppresses any blotchiness but seems to keep the eyes sharp - all without masks or local edits - just by using a simple slider.

 

This would be great feature to have in the RAW Persona.

 

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'Clarity' is essentially just another sharpening method. Does negative clarity do anything that you can't do by applying a small amount of Gaussian blur? :unsure:

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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In answer to Alfred - yes, it does in Lightroom's RAW processing. Adobe's negative clarity feature seems to detect and act on skin tones in a very useful way whilst it also seems to detect eyes and does not soften them. For a quick develop session, I find it very useful and is my 'go to" tool for cleaning up minor blemishes and blotchiness on a baby's face for example. Occasionally, I may go back in and paint some positive clarity back over the lips but again, this is seldom needed as the Adobe algorithm seems to also preserve sharpness on lips as well as the eyes ... although it is not quite as reliable as the eye preservation.

 

In answer to MBd, I wish I had had more time to perform 'proper" photography for my family - but I simply don't. The best I can do in very limited time slots is either seek a northish facing window and/or use a bounced flash with possibly a diffuser over the flash head.

Babies grow up so fast and whilst you can plan a shoot to some extent, the subject matter may not be his or her best on the day; typically blotchiness associated with teething, minor colds or tiny self inflicted scratches, or they're just simply tired and grouchy!

If you get 10 to 15 mins of co-operation from your subject you're lucky! From a capture of maybe 30 or 40 frames there's maybe 4 or 5 decent frames with eye contact and ideally a smile ... it's even more difficult when you have both parents in the frame as well!

Once the shoot is done, everyone wants to see the pictures and maybe put them on social media postings as soon as possible - this is where negative clarity in the RAW studio environment is a real time saver for me.

 

So in summary, yes of course there are other ways to achieve the same effect, but not as easily in my experience.   

 

Happy new year to you all and thanks for your input. 

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In answer to Alfred - yes, it does in Lightroom's RAW processing. Adobe's negative clarity feature seems to detect and act on skin tones in a very useful way whilst it also seems to detect eyes and does not soften them.

 

That's a good point, GEEB. As MBd hinted, bilateral blur is probably better than Gaussian blue for something like this (because it preserves edges, which Gaussian blur doesn't).

 

Babies grow up so fast and whilst you can plan a shoot to some extent, the subject matter may not be his or her best on the day; typically blotchiness associated with teething, minor colds or tiny self inflicted scratches, or they're just simply tired and grouchy!

 

Or you are! :D

 

Happy new year to you all and thanks for your input.

 

Happy New Year to you, too.

 

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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applying any blur globally to someones face should be prohibited by law  :ph34r:  ok I´m out here 

You have apparently not seen some of the faces I have ... including my own in the mirror.  :lol:

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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  • 5 months later...

This is the only feature that keeps my raw production line in Photoshop or light-room.

I use it so much.

 

It would be really good to have it here as well.

 

As previously said, it's smart, works on backgrounds and skin tones, but leave eyes and lips alone for the most part.

 

Ben

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  • 2 years later...
On 1/1/2017 at 3:51 AM, Alfred said:

'Clarity' is essentially just another sharpening method. Does negative clarity do anything that you can't do by applying a small amount of Gaussian blur? :unsure:

Absolutely. Gaussian blur is a very different thing from negative clarity. All types of blur I'm aware of do what the name implies, but in slightly different ways. Negative clarity keeps hard edges crisp but blurs soft edges more. The effect is a very romantic glow, and it tends to reduce blemishes of any sort, whether wrinkles on someone's face or spots on the sky from rain-spots on your lens. I've used it extensively for years, and taking away that ability would make my work unrecognizable.

I've stayed with Photoshop CS6 for years, unwilling to tolerate their hands in my pocket every month, but saw Affinity on the App Store a couple days and bought all three apps, hoping I could make the switch from Adobe to Affinity. And I still hope I can, but the RAW converter in general and negative clarity in particular look like deal-killers if I can't figure out workarounds. I just so hate to think of having to "upgrade" to Adobe CC! Help for a rank newbie, please!!

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Weird... I could have sworn that last week, there was no negative setting on clarity, but now I see it. Was there an update over the weekend? But when I test it out on the same photo, the +100% setting on AP is similar to what it is on PS CS6, and the zero setting is of course the same. But the -100% in AP isn't nearly so pronounced as it is in PS. It would be great if it produced the same results.

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6 hours ago, Steve Mouzon said:

But the -100% in AP isn't nearly so pronounced as it is in PS. It would be great if it produced the same results.

Hi Steve, I haven’t tested this myself and can’t at the moment. Some sliders allow you to type in numbers greater than the ones in the box, it might be possible with clarity. Alternatively you could try using the clarity filter in the photo persona, you can add a second clarity filter and control the effect with the amount slider and the opacity slider. This should work in theory, again I have not tested it. I will add that for me the clarity filter does slow down the export process, it will get there but a bit of patience is needed, this might not suit your workflow 

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Clarity will only go to -100% trying to add -200% will just default to -100%

Not sure if this is intentional but if you click on the down arrow to move the clarity slider to the left, as in a Minus value, the slider remains at 0%, if the slider is at -100% and you click on the down arrow it jumps to 0% (This is in Develop Persona)

Screen-Shot-2019-07-09-at-08-09-43.png

When clicking on the down arrow the histogram changes briefly almost like a glitch then goes back to it's original shape. 

Dev-Persona-and-clarity-slider-glitch.gi

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
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  • 2 weeks later...

After seeing to what use fellow members of my photo club put negative clarity in Photoshop, I must say that the softness that Affinity Photo produces with clarity set to -100% is so subtle as to make me wonder whether this is Serif's final word on the matter.  In general, unsubtle effects should be possible with all filters and adjustments, subtlety being the user's choice, not a limitation of the software.

Richard Liu

MacBook Pro 16" 2021 M1 Max | macOS 12.3.1 | BenQ SW271 | Affinity Photo 1.10.5

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On 7/23/2019 at 3:59 PM, Richard Liu said:

After seeing to what use fellow members of my photo club put negative clarity in Photoshop, I must say that the softness that Affinity Photo produces with clarity set to -100% is so subtle as to make me wonder whether this is Serif's final word on the matter.  In general, unsubtle effects should be possible with all filters and adjustments, subtlety being the user's choice, not a limitation of the software.

If 100% isn't enough you can duplicate the clarity layer and continue blurring / softening.  I dont know how the layers interact / accumulate, but it's something to play with :).

AP, AD & APub user, running Win10

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Thanks, @IanSG.  Yes, I had noticed that I could stack multiple layers of negative clarity to overcome the -100% limit.  You might be interested in this thread that I just started:

Wondering how negative clarity is achieved, hoping to find a scientific article, I ran across a blog posting that simulates negative clarity in Photoshop -- where, presumably, no simulation is necessary, since it is already present and, by some reports, can achieve stronger results than Affinity Photo -- by somehow "inverting" a high pass mask and overlaying it on the original.  I tried that in Affinity Photo and have come to the conclusion this does not mean to simply invert, say, a high pass live filter layer, and I don't know how to invert just what one sees in AFP when one twiddles the Radius control of the high pass live filter and sees more and more details of the image appear, seemingly embossed, on the grey back ground that only disappears when the blend mode is changed from Normal to Overlay.

Richard Liu

MacBook Pro 16" 2021 M1 Max | macOS 12.3.1 | BenQ SW271 | Affinity Photo 1.10.5

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