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Which degree of sharpening do you prefer?

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As is commonly understood, the first level of sharpening should happen before any re-calculating on an image, and the second before print, but I use proofing (maybe to religiously) to check for gamut errors whilst I am working - and naturally USM effects this greatly. In order to bring things back into gamut further adjustments are necessary - meaning that I generally end up having to make further small level/curve/balance adjustments after any USM before print.

Does anyone have comment on this, and whether there are better workflows?

Jules.
 
No, I haven't. That's part of what I'm trying to figure out. Do I want to get Fred Miranda's sharpening program or this FlexSharp one? I just used USM in P.S. on the first one.
 
Juli Valley said:
Thanks. I found the Microsoft article on sharpening very
interesting. I'll try to remember to refer newbies complaining of
soft photos a link to it.
Click to expand...
Yes, it's a good article...

Let me urge you to try the Chroma sharpening - it is a variable mask - starts at 0 and increases with a slider - apparently concentrating on contrast areas. One can actually preview the mask itself, and also preview the final result, before choosing to execute. The amount of sharpening is also controllable with a slider. It gives an incredible control over the amount and location of sharpening, which can easily be previewed and set for optimum results for the individual image.

It is both intuitive, easy to use, and fabulous in its results. I have been using computers for 20 years and Photoshop since V3 - and this is probably the best plug in or action I have ever seen. And on a free 30 trials basis, too.
 
I hope this works but a lot of times, my images don't show. Does #3 qualify for splitting the difference, Trop?
  1. 1

  1. 2

  1. 3
 
Howdy, I took your photo #1 and ran it thru FM's 10D CsPro on the "low" and "medium" levels without any tweaking. Here's what I got. Looks to me like FM's action is very similar to FLEXSharp (and the CSPro allows a lot of tweaking, if that's an important factor).

Cheers!




Juli Valley said:
No, I haven't. That's part of what I'm trying to figure out. Do I
want to get Fred Miranda's sharpening program or this FlexSharp
one? I just used USM in P.S. on the first one.
Click to expand...
 
Dear Juli:

FLEXSharp is currently being used by a siginficant number of users and professionals who do photography mostly for living. It was originally developed for Fuji's S2, and does an excellent job too with images from 10D, D60, 1D, 1Ds and Nikon's D1x.

It has the ability to hunt and detect a wide range of spatial frequency (e.g. detail), even though it has a natural preference for mid-frequency stuff,
this providing an impressive boost of textured surfaces and micro-contrast.

It also detects areas that are low or null in spatial frequency, and leaves them pure, clean, thus allowing you to handle your ISO 400-800 shots as well, while still boosting mid-frequency detail.

FLEXSharp has been coded as a 45Kbytes+ Photoshop action, and comes with a unique masking thechnique called FLEXMasking. It runs with as many as 13 one-click levels, or 16 "undoable" levels, thus accomodating virtually any sharpening needs, preferences, and any image size, including those upsampled up to 2.5x their original size. Also, the "Texturizer" set of Intensity Levels has also been designed for people's shots, mostly.

Just post a sample here (please avoid a shot like the one shown above, which is plagued with compression crystals), and we will kindly show you what good sharpening is all about (for on-screen, for printing, for fun, etc.)

Also, feel free to use any sharpening tool you may have access to (Nik's, Fred's, etc.), so you can compare vis-a-vis the results.

Here's an S2 ISO400 as an introductory example:



Best regards,
Juli Valley said:
The man who sharpened #2 used FLEXSharp. It's available for $25
from [email protected] via paypal. I am trying to decide if I
want to buy it, continue using USM in PS, or get Fred Miranda's
action.
Click to expand...
 
It is going to depend a lot on the monitor the image is displayed on. But to me the first image looks the best. However, I am a fan of no sharpening whenever possible.

Abu Mumia

--
'He's out there operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond
the pale of any acceptable human conduct.'
  • Apocalypse Now
 
Ferenc,

I'm not sure what kind of image you are asking for. Here's one that has had a tiny bit of USM done to it.

 
I think the middleground to those two... but maybe on a computer screen number two and on paper number one... or something like that....
 
Dear Juli:

I need to be able to show results at 100% (and optionally) at 200% of original size. Here is when you will be able to evaluate and choose the Sharpening tool that will better suit your needs.

Therefore, this is what I would suggest:

1. Look for one original image from your camera that was shot with the lowest sharpening setting (preferably OFF), but still "lens-sharp" (e.g. no hand-shaking, motion blurring, properly focused). ISO100/200 is Ok, but if ISO 400 or larger, in-camera sharpening needs to be set to OFF.

2. Select an area (no bigger than 1024x768), and crop it/cut it.

3. Save the selected are with the highest .JPG quality in photoshop (level 11 and above).

4. upload it in Pbase (or your site of preference), and post the image's link here, so I can download it, and walk you through the process and some alternatives.

Best regards,

Ferenc
Juli Valley said:
Ferenc,
I'm not sure what kind of image you are asking for. Here's one
that has had a tiny bit of USM done to it.

Click to expand...
 
I have a rough time with USM, what are the settings you generally use ?

Amount %

Radius pixels

Threshold: levels

Many thanks Juli, great pictures

Francis
 
No doubt about it. #1 the black around the eyes really shows what to much usm or sharpening can do. The wiskers show much more jpg artifacts. If you have a good printer the image the print will emphasize the oversharpening effect. It will usually look dull, flat, fake and lose most of the 3d and warmth that it might otherwise have. GE
Gary Coombs said:
  1. 2 is so oversharpened that, to me, it looks like a plastic whisk
broom. You would never see anything like that in real life.

--
Gary Coombs
My Profile contains my Equipment List
http://GaryCoombs.com/10D/New
http://GaryCoombs.com/10D/Test
Click to expand...
--
Those that believe they can, can because they believe.
 
Juli Valley said:
Which of these two images do you prefer? One has been sharpened
some but not as much as the other. I'm not sure what I think and
various people have disagreed on this. What's your opinion?
  1. 1
Click to expand...
Chroma Smart Sharpen



Since other people have done it and it seems to be acceptable I took the liberty of sharpening this with Chroma Smart Sharpen http://www.chromasoftware.com/ I have no interest in Chroma other than as a very satisfied customer.

This is not really a perfect demo image since there is so much detail. But you will see I took your #1 and sharpened things like the ear hairs and eyelashes just a tad, while leaving, for example, the flat part of the nose untouched.

The effectiveness of the mask is much more apparent on most images, where one has large areas (like smooth skin on a person) where you do not want pixelization or artifacts) - while allowing sharpening of hair, eyebrows, eyes, ears, etc.

And of course, say, in a landscape, you can sharpen leaves and grass while leaving water, sky and clouds either untouched or sharpened to a lesser degree.

My routine is a modest overall sharpening and then finish up with Smart Sharpen.

God bless all here - GBear
 
Dear Juli:

This is another example of the dramatic improvement in detail rendition (and thus, effective resolution) that is possible to obtain via FLEXSharp:



The image on the right is a 100%-original size crop, UNSHARPENED, and the right is the same one, sharpened with FLEXSharp's Texturizer set, Intensity Level 9.

This little log is in the back of my yard, and the left-hand is true-to-live (very close to how it looks when you get this close to it).

Look at the black hole, shadows and high-frequency surfaces. Notice how detail was detected, and pulled out gracefully with no increase in Luminance and Chrominance channels (critical for high-ISO activity).

Best regards,

Ferenc
Juli Valley said:
Ferenc,
I'm not sure what kind of image you are asking for. Here's one
that has had a tiny bit of USM done to it.

Click to expand...
 
what this forum used to be about, and what it needs more of now.

I have no problem with helping newbies, or even posts to explain the problems/issues of 10D focusing - but mostly the search function (for all its problems) will give more info on that than anybody can use.

But this kind of thing is really really informative and interesting.

And (probably) will not produce flaming or idiotic back-and-forth yap-yap bickering of - well, you know who does this, completely taking over many posts.

Good for you for a REAL post - technical, but about photography.

Hooray for Juli !!!
 
Juli Valley said:
Ferenc,
I'm not sure what kind of image you are asking for. Here's one
that has had a tiny bit of USM done to it.

Click to expand...


Juli - I applied a good bit of sharpening to this (though there is MUCH more available. The thing to note is the base subject is much sharpened, and the bokeh in the background is entirely untouched.

Best regrards - GBear
 
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