THE DARKROOM NOTES / 02
Sharp where it counts.
In a fast sequence, tiny differences decide which frame makes the cut. Chimp looks for clear detail on the subject, flags likely misses for review, and helps you get to the decisions that need your eye: the timing, the expression and the story.
Green: a real subject carries the frame
Green means at least one plausible main subject shows clear critical detail in a native-pixel crop. On a portrait that may be the near eye and eyelashes. At a race it could be a rider’s face, number plate, helmet edge, or another detail that proves the subject landed in the focal plane. Someone else can be soft; shallow depth of field is not a mistake.
This is deliberately more useful than asking whether the sharpest thing in the frame is sharp. Texture in a hedge, a backlit sign, or the grandstand behind the subject cannot rescue missed focus.
Yellow: slightly soft, perhaps still useful
Yellow covers a plausible subject with visible but moderate softness: a small focus offset, a trace of camera movement, fine detail softened by high-ISO noise, or a subject that is close without being tack sharp. It may be perfectly serviceable for a web gallery, contact sheet, or smaller delivery even when it would not survive a large print.
Look at the frame at the size you plan to use it. Chimp marks the technical evidence; it does not know the delivery crop or how much the moment matters.
Yellow: needs a look
Sometimes the honest answer is that the available detail does not prove the case. The subject may be tiny in the frame, hidden in shadow, partly blocked, or outside the selected crop. Treat this group as an inspection queue, not a reject pile.
Red: the intended detail appears to be behind or ahead of focus
Red means the reviewed plausible subjects clearly miss critical focus and the deeper pass did not find a usable sharp alternative. You may see the focal plane on a shoulder instead of an eye, on the background instead of the player, or nowhere that supports the photograph.
Red is still a suggestion. An unrepeatable expression, peak action, or a deliberately rough frame can matter more than perfect acuity. A local delete rule always appears in a dry run for your approval; a focus suggestion never silently erases an original or awards star ratings.
Defocus, motion, and noise leave different clues
Defocus spreads detail because the focal plane landed elsewhere. Motion blur stretches detail along movement during the exposure. A pan, spinning wheel, moving fabric, or dragged shutter can contain intentional motion while the important part of the subject remains sharp. Noise and aggressive noise reduction can make fine texture look soft without a simple focus error. Chimp records the likely blur type separately from the focus class so the two ideas do not get collapsed into one label.
Why the companion prepares native-pixel crops
A small preview is excellent for composition and terrible for proving critical focus. Resizing can hide a miss, and display sharpening can create crisp-looking edges that are not present in the file. Chimp pairs a whole-frame overview with unscaled subject crops selected from the full-resolution decode. Prepared image content goes through the cloud for inference; the original camera file, preview library, and returned result stay on your computer.
Use the labels as a first pass
Start with red when you want to inspect likely misses, yellow when you need judgment calls, or green when you want a faster route to technically sound options. Then make the edit you would have made anyway: expression, gesture, timing, composition, and client needs still belong to you.
You can change the focus classification and choose the color written on export. Your correction is kept separately from the original assessment in the local machine-readable record. Pair these labels with the descriptions and content tags when you need to find a particular moment inside the shoot.