Looking through my catalog in Lightroom, I’ve noticed that almost all of my favourite shots taken in the past few months full under the “Architecture” category (er, keyword). I’m sure there’s some sort of explanation for this, but I’m not exactly sure what it is right now… Whatever the reason may be, I noticed a common thread while browsing through the shots: they all had a high dose of clarity applied to them in Lightroom.

Why? The clarity tool’s efect of “increasing local contrast” is perfectly suited to make a building’s lines—beams, girders, columns, windows, etc.—stand out from its neighbours and lead your eye through the image. And due to the inorganic nature of the subject, the human eye & brain have difficulty detecting inconsistencies or other unnatural artifacts caused by the tool’s effects.

Below are two samples of an image I took of the Gerkin in London; the top half has no Clarity applied, while the lower half has Clarity bumped up to 74:

You can see the sharper contrast between the glass and the diagonal lines while little to no detail is lost in the shadows & highlights in other parts of the sample (you can see the full–sized shot here)

The tendency for shots such as the one above to accept a large clarity enhancement contrasts sharply—no pun intended—with shots of organic subjects, where too much clarity can cause the subject to look odd or unnatural (see James Duncan Davidson's post on the matter here). I don’t mean to say that all architectural photos will be able to endure a large dose of clarity, but give it a shot and see what happens. You may be surprised at how much you can get away with.