Detail

Sharpening and noise reduction pull against each other: sharpening emphasises fine differences between pixels, and noise is exactly that. The Detail panel gives you enough control to sharpen the parts you want without amplifying the grain in a night shot.

Sharpening

• Amount — how much sharpening is applied.
• Radius — how wide the effect spreads from an edge. Small radii suit fine detail; larger ones suit soft subjects.
• Detail — how much fine texture is included rather than just strong edges.
• Masking — the important one. It restricts sharpening to edges and leaves flat areas alone, so a portrait gets sharp eyes without a sharpened, noisy background.

Noise reduction

There are two kinds, because there are two kinds of noise.

• Luminance noise is the grainy speckle in brightness. Reduce it with luminance, then use detail and contrast to claw back some of the texture the smoothing removes.
• Colour noise is the blotchy red and green mottling in shadows. Reduce it with colour, tuned by detail and smoothness. Colour noise reduction is nearly free visually, so be more generous with it than with luminance.

Judge both at 100% zoom. Noise reduction and sharpening are invisible on a fit-to-screen view, and it is very easy to smooth a photo into plastic while looking at a thumbnail.

If heavy noise reduction has left the image looking waxy, a little grain from Effects puts believable texture back.