Increase the detail on Ricoh GR II jpgs

If you’re a reader of the blog, you already know I love the color rendition of Ricoh GR II Positive Film, and I am not alone in that.

Many came to appreciate these colors and that’s a reason why the GR and GR II are still so popular. You can see many examples of this color effect in my Ricoh GR II Review from a couple years ago, and in other posts on the blog.

There is an issue with that effect though: it requires us to use jpg files, and the jpg files coming out of the GR / GR II are extremely compressed, to the point that lots of details are gone from the photo.

This becomes evident when comparing the jpg to the raw file.

So, is there a fast and simple way to have the colors of the Positive Film jpg and the detail of the dng file? And I mean the original Positive Film colors as produced by the camera, not some external filter or preset.

I spent some time messing around with Photoshop and well, the answer is yes! And that’s the topic of this short post.

I will split the process in steps. The process requires that you shoot Jpg + Raw, because we will be using both files.

I will use Photoshop but this method also works in other editors, provided they offer the needed (and very basic) tools.

Step 1: prepare the raw.

We don’t want the raw to have any added sharpening. By default, when we open it in Lightroom, we have a sharpening of 40% applied, and we definitely don’t want any of that. The raw file is sharp enough as it is.

So we must go and bring the sharpening to zero.

It is also important not to click on any Lens Correction. The jpg files produced by the GR / GR II aren’t corrected with software in camera, so if you choose to Enable Profile Corrections in Lightroom, the raw file won’t align anymore with the jpg.

I wonder why Ricoh chose not to optically correct the photos in-camera. They basically decided to leave vignetting and distortion in. I imagine it’s a mater of computing power: they chose to have a faster output instead of a correct one. The same goes for the jpg compression: they probably decided to compress the jpg files so much for dealing with few memory on board. But that’s just my speculation!

Step 2: open as layers in Photoshop.

If you are working in Lightroom, you just have to select the two images (dng and jpg with Positive Colors) and do Edit in… and then Open ad layers in Photoshop… : this will open them on top of each other as different layers.

If you are not using Lightroom, you can open the two files in Photoshop, then Select All in the raw one, copy, and past it on top of the jpg file. Since it is the same photo and we didn’t alter it, you don’t need to align the layers.

Make sure the raw is above the jpg.

Step 3: let’s start!

Duplicate the layer with the raw file and then make the new copy invisible: this gives us a neutral layer we can use later in case we want to make the Positive Effect less strong. This step is not necessary but it may be useful.

Now select the visible layer with raw, go to effects and choose Others and then High Pass. In the window that opens you must choose the intensity of the effect. I played with it and I think for the 16 megapixels of this camera it is ok to choose something between 1 and 1,4 depending on the photo. Click Ok.

Now change the blending mode of the layer from Normal to Hard Light.

That’s it! If you zoom, you can see that the image is now showing the exact colors of the Positive Film, but it has much more detail.

You could also use Vivid Light ad layer blending mode if you want to keep the color intensity of the Positive Film. Feel free to experiment!

As you can see in the before/after, by using Hard Light I lost a bit of color intensity, and that’s fine with me.

Step 4: optimizing the detail.

In many cases, the detail will be too much and give the image a digital look that isn’t particularly pleasing. There are a couple of ways we can approach this.

The fastest and simpler method is to just lower the opacity of the layer with the detail (the one set to Hard Light). This way we effectively change how intense the detail is.

Another solution is to mask the layer so that it is invisible, and then paint back the detail with a round soft brush only where we want it, with the intensity we want. A graphic tablet comes in handy for this.

The third option is to do both things: apply a base detail, with the Hard/Vivid Light layer set to something like 40-50%, and then paint the rest of the detail only where you need it, for instance the eyes in a portrait.

Step 5: the invisibile raw layer.

We previously duplicated the raw layer and made it invisible. The role of that file is to use it for reducing the color intensity of the Positive Film effect, if using Hard Light instead of Vivid Light as blending mode is not enough.

You just make the layer visible, have it above everything, and change the opacity according to your taste. Or you use mask + brush to bring it back only where needed.

As said before, this step is not needed, but it can be useful, especially with photos of people, when the Positive Film effect tends to give us very red skin.

Conclusion.

This is the fastest way for adding back detail to our GR jpg files. I developed this technique on my own: there are other methods I imagine, but this is what I use, and it’s more than enough for adding detail to my favorite Positive Film colors. Once you try it a couple of times, you will realize it takes just a minute per picture of less.

A final word about the need for detail: sometimes photos work better with less detail. Sometimes they only need it back on some parts. Using this technique in an effectively way means understanding if and when detail is needed.

When I came up with this method I just wanted to have a very fast way for bringing back detail to some photos, because it was lost with the in-camera jpg compression: it doesn’t mean all photos need that!

That’s all. Well we could add so much more to the mix. What happens when the raw has lots of digital noise? How can we get rid of jpg compression artifacts in the Positive Film file? And so on. But really, for the way I shoot, what I described in this post is more than enough.

I could record a video showing the steps if you want it, and add it to the post. Is anyone interested?

Thanks for reading, and have a great time!