Hi
Is DeepPrime too good? Thinking of portrait and face. Have not used it very much yet, but sometimes it seems that works too well as the faces become too “smooth”. Sometimes I want everything to appear, both pimples, wrinkles and natural skin structure etc. Is there something I am doing wrong? I guess that the algorithm that dxo uses constantly tries to make the images (in this case the faces) absolutely perfect and maybe therefore tries to correct things that it perceives as errors (eg pimples, wrinkles, pores etc).
Here’s a screenshot of part of an image, zoomed in to 65% in PL4. This was a DNG export of an image, taken at 10,000 ISO, that has had DeepPRIME applied.
Have you tried to use a little micro-contrast, or fine contrast maybe, depending on how close is the portrait? Micro contrast can even be used as a local adjustment.
I have not spent a large amount of time examining the results at a pixel level, but I did do a reasonable amount of testing of DeepPrime before I started using it extensively.
In general, in pretty much every use case that I have looked at in detail, DeepPrime was not being over zealous. In fact in pretty much all cases I was very impressed at the results it was achieving.
If an area did look over smoothed, then it was because that area didn’t really have any recognizable detail in the raw file.
I have only ever seen one case where it did lose some detail, and that was a small amount of the detail of some very subtle texture of a plaster wall. Even this was minimal and more than acceptable.
What I have noticed is that at very high ISO (eg 54000) where the noise level is extremely significant, that the noise reduction at the default setting becomes notably uneven, which could give the impression of over smoothing. I don’t believe this is actually an issue though, its quite literally that the noise in the shadows starts to become more significant than the noise in the highlights. In this case I tend to dial the Deep Prime noise reduction down a little, allowing some more grain in the brighter sections of the image to balance the grain in the darker areas.
Thank you for your feedback
Do not have any sample photos yet. Have so far not tried deep prime so much yet, but got a first impression that it smoothed the pictures more than desired. I miss the “roughness” in the faces of the few pictures I have tested (I do not take portraits, but sports pictures.) But as I said, I have to try it more. Joanna’s picture is very convincing even though I do not normally use such a high iso (thanks for the example picture, Joanna). Will eventually, when time allows, try to take several pictures of the same subject (face), but with different ISO values to see if there is any difference and compare with for example Prime.
JeanMontambeault: Yes, micro contrast helps a bit and not only when I use deepprime, but also use this without using deepprime.
Again, thank you so much for the feedback.
Hello…
Relatively new to PL and thought I would piggy back my question deep prime on this thread.
Is deep prime use specific to high ISO images or usable for all ISO values? E.g. is there a benefit to using deep prime at ISO 200? If not what is the cutoff point where deep prime is best suited.
Thanks in advance.
Best way to see for your situation (every camera is different) is take your camera and shoot a scene of your choosing in 200 400 800 1600 3200iso and more if you need/ like.
Fix aperture and turn iso up every shot. Then shuttertime will go down.
So exposure is less and less which incline noiselevels.
Run them through deepprime at levels you think are good.
Start with default (40) for all.
Examin the exported jpeg’s because then only the effect of deepprime is visible.
(except if you like to use the tiny previewwindow)
It can’t harm to have it default active but it can be “deleting” details which it sees as noise. So some testing is preferable.
Thanks to both of you for your responses. I shoot with Nikon D750 Raw and or Jpeg.Suggestion to test same shot different ISO makes sense. Will give it a shot. One more question … would you uses deep time on Jpeg images or is it specific to RAW files.
It depends what you are shooting, but I use deepPRIME on most of my raw images. I rarely shoot things like landscapes in good light so I find myself using DeepPRIME much more than others might… As @Joanna indicated it can be very useful at low ISO for handling noise when pulling details out of deep shadows. I do that very often using local adjustments.
Not only can it reduce noise in (or from lifting) shadows and sometime also in the sky for low-ISO files, but it also reduces moire to a quite noticeable extend since it`s a completely separate demosaicer and not a “normal” post-process denoiser!
The demosaicing is really quite a lot better in my opinion, especially with cameras without AA Filters and when you apply some sharpening like “lens sharpness”.
There are some “Wedding” D850 example files here which are used for the benchmarking sheet where the impact can be quite obvious especially when you know where to look at.
Once i noticed that i set DeepPrime as my default setting for all files regardless of ISO etc.
