How can I recreate Instagram’s “Structure” look in Capture One or Photoshop?

Question

I’m trying to reproduce the visual effect of Instagram’s “Structure” adjustment in desktop editing software, especially Capture One or Photoshop. Simply increasing clarity/structure seems to make the image look oversharpened and can damage overall contrast.

What combination of adjustments best approximates that gritty, high micro-contrast look? I’m interested in techniques such as layer blending, clarity/micro-contrast, sharpening, blur, curves, saturation, or opacity changes rather than a one-click preset.

user40961 · Answer

Its generally very hard to replicate any complicated filter exactly not knowing what exactly is being done by it, but the feel can be usually pretty closely matched. From what you have shown I believe that the "gritty look" can be replicated through a mixture of a duplicate layer with hard light overlay (with reduced opacity and slight blurring of the top layer), slight desaturation, and possibly slightly increased micro-contrast (using an unsharp mask with a large radius or maybe increased clarity). I don't have your original photo so this will not look quite right but, this is basically the look you will get (I used GIMP):

You can play around with other blending modes, opacity, curves, and saturation to get closer to the result you're after

other choices for achieving the high structure look

"freaky detail" method

There is also a technique by photographer Calvin Hollywood called "freaky details" that comes even closer to the high structure look, though it takes quite a bit more work. After playing around with it I managed to come even closer to the "structure" effect, keep in mind that this would probably look much better on the original image:

the downside is that it requires quite a few steps:

duplicating the layer twice
inverting the top layer's values and decreasing contrast slightly
blurring it (for example with suface blur in photoshop or bilinear in GIMP G'MIC)
setting the blend mode to "vivid light" and merging the layers
setting the resulting layer blend mode to overlay over the original layer

to mimic the high structure look, I merged and duplicated the layer, very slightly blurred and desaturated the top layer and reduced its opacity.

"false HDR" method

if you want more of an "HDR-like" effect, duplicate the layer desaturate the top one, invert the layer colors and set to overlay, finally blur the top one with a Gaussian blur. Adding an unsharp mask and slightly desaturating will bring you closer to the instagram "structure" look although this introduced quite a lot of IQ issues:

How can I recreate Instagram’s “Structure” look in Capture One or Photoshop?

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