Please help me unmask the mysteries of unsharp masking

This morning I got up and decided that I'd be like the other boys and girls, and try using RAW. After all, the Olympus engineers go to a lot of trouble to put RAW in their products, and then give all of us free Olympus Workspace software to work with RAW, so there has to be some reason for having RAW.

I made several nice photos, that I tried messing with in Olympus Workspace, and found I really couldn't improve them, giving my limited skills and calloused eyeballs. Here's one of my car.





And another of a tree in my backyard.





For reasons I cannot understand, those two photos are darker when converted to JPEG than when they are displayed in Olympus Workspace.

There are a bewildering amount of options to Olympus Workspace, but I'm going to specifically ask about "unsharp mask".

Why, if a photo was sharp, would I want to unmask the sharpness?

I'm learning all this as I go along, with some help from my friends here.

And any help, is always much appreciated.

--
Humansville is a town in the Missouri Ozarks

The answer to the darker picture is purely the action that the RAW converter has taken. I convert RAW using either ACR or Affinity. Affinity results are a tad darker than the ACR versions. It doesn't mean that either is right. Two people will probably disagree over which looks best. MY ACR version is close to the version I see when viewing in Faststone but Faststone itself is making an arbitrary decision.

There are plenty of examples of what unsharp mask is on line but I've given up thinking about it. Sometimes unsharp mask will improve your picture and sometimes it won't it's a personal decision made from experience. Once again different products give different results. I have used PS elements for years and virtually never used unssharp mask. I have used Affinity for less than a month and find myself using unsharp mask regularly.

Humansvillian said:

This morning I got up and decided that I'd be like the other boys and girls, and try using RAW. After all, the Olympus engineers go to a lot of trouble to put RAW in their products, and then give all of us free Olympus Workspace software to work with RAW, so there has to be some reason for having RAW.

I made several nice photos, that I tried messing with in Olympus Workspace, and found I really couldn't improve them, giving my limited skills and calloused eyeballs. Here's one of my car.



And another of a tree in my backyard.



For reasons I cannot understand, those two photos are darker when converted to JPEG than when they are displayed in Olympus Workspace.

There are a bewildering amount of options to Olympus Workspace, but I'm going to specifically ask about "unsharp mask".

Why, if a photo was sharp, would I want to unmask the sharpness?

I'm learning all this as I go along, with some help from my friends here.

And any help, is always much appreciated.

Click to expand...

The same with me, but I suffer from lack of curiosity.

--
If you want to be equal, you have to be better...

Un-sharp means not-sharp. Un-sharp doesn't mean "blurry", from camera shake or out of focus. For my uses, it meant for sharpen up "edges" that are slightly soft, or could be sharpened, such as, eyelashes, bird beak, wrinkle, etc... I think the term started when digital age photography was invented. I first learned how to use it with Abode Photoshop version 2

To sharpen edges, the program looks for edges that are "un-sharp" then applies sharpening. If the edges that are already sharp, over a threshold value, the program won't include those in the sharpening process.

Before the sharpening starts, the program "masks away" areas don't need to be sharpened; hence the term "unsharp mask". LR automatically put in some values of unsharp mask to RAW files imported; Workspace doesn't. I apply unsharp mask on every RAW imported.; some are more than the others, such as high ISO shots. Typical values are strength 45%, threshold 1.4, radius 4 (pixel).

I typed this before I could look up on Wikipedia. This is based on my understanding or the way I remember. I could be blowing smokes all along so don't take it seriously

PS, in Workspace, change "Gradation" from "Normal" to "Auto" on your tree shot.

joeletx said:

Un-sharp means not-sharp. Un-sharp doesn't mean "blurry", from camera shake or out of focus. For my uses, it meant for sharpen up "edges" that are slightly soft, or could be sharpened, such as, eyelashes, bird beak, wrinkle, etc... I think the term started when digital age photography was invented. I first learned how to use it with Abode Photoshop version 2

To sharpen edges, the program looks for edges that are "un-sharp" then applies sharpening. If the edges that are already sharp, over a threshold value, the program won't include those in the sharpening process.

Before the sharpening starts, the program "masks away" areas don't need to be sharpened; hence the term "unsharp mask". LR automatically put in some values of unsharp mask to RAW files imported; Workspace doesn't. I apply unsharp mask on every RAW imported.; some are more than the others, such as high ISO shots. Typical values are strength 45%, threshold 1.4, radius 4 (pixel).

I typed this before I could look up on Wikipedia. This is based on my understanding or the way I remember. I could be blowing smokes all along so don't take it seriously

PS, in Workspace, change "Gradation" from "Normal" to "Auto" on your tree shot.

Click to expand...

Thanks so much for your information.

I cranked in a little unsharp mask to the tree photo, without much result.

But using Auto Gradation, made a difference that at least I think, I could see.





That tree is still sitting out there, and I'm going to go get a cup of coffee and shoot that thing again. This time, I'll use my normal settings, except Vivid and Autogradation and no noise reduction.



Who said, cowardly self isolation from a rampaging coronavirus, couldn't be fun?



--
Humansville is a town in the Missouri Ozarks

s_grins said:

Humansvillian said:

This morning I got up and decided that I'd be like the other boys and girls, and try using RAW. After all, the Olympus engineers go to a lot of trouble to put RAW in their products, and then give all of us free Olympus Workspace software to work with RAW, so there has to be some reason for having RAW.

I made several nice photos, that I tried messing with in Olympus Workspace, and found I really couldn't improve them, giving my limited skills and calloused eyeballs. Here's one of my car.



And another of a tree in my backyard.



For reasons I cannot understand, those two photos are darker when converted to JPEG than when they are displayed in Olympus Workspace.

There are a bewildering amount of options to Olympus Workspace, but I'm going to specifically ask about "unsharp mask".

Why, if a photo was sharp, would I want to unmask the sharpness?

I'm learning all this as I go along, with some help from my friends here.

And any help, is always much appreciated.

Click to expand...

The same with me, but I suffer from lack of curiosity.

Click to expand...

While the pandemic rages unseen outside, and we all feel our mortality, I've decided from now on to let others be curious about such things as RAW and unsharp mask and all such as that.

In order to get RAW to work on One Drive and on Windows 10 photos, one must download a RAW extension. I've found from bitter experience that Olympus Workspace works like a charm on Olympus RAW files, and the Windows extension sucks, and sucks very badly. It makes the pictures dark. It slows down the speed of the computer, which mine wasn't very fast to begin with. But, I've found out how to remove the Windows 10 raw extension, and never again will I mess with that, no not ever.



And I did manage to kind of, sort of, figure out how unsharp mask is supposed to work, I think. After creating a massive 15 megabyte file of a tree in my backyard, I messed with it and managed to improve the same 3 megabyte JPEG taken at the same time,,,,just a wee little bit, maybe.



You be the judge.




Unsharp masked tree in the backyard, from RAW




Plain old normal compression backyard tree taken in JPEG at f5.6 instead of f4




Same shot as RAW but the extra JPEG in Large Normal

Sometimes a tree, is just a tree.

From now on I'll let somebody else be curious about RAW and just take photos.

Auto gradation, seems to be a nice feature, but if my grandkids ever try to mess with my photos, I want to them to have a sporting chance to use JPEG instead of some kind of RAW converter that's going to be obsolete before long.

RAW, is a raw deal, if you ask me.

--
Humansville is a town in the Missouri Ozarks

Nice explanation, thanks, I’ve always wondered about the origin of the name, unsharp mask.

Humansvillian said:

s_grins said:

Humansvillian said:

This morning I got up and decided that I'd be like the other boys and girls, and try using RAW. After all, the Olympus engineers go to a lot of trouble to put RAW in their products, and then give all of us free Olympus Workspace software to work with RAW, so there has to be some reason for having RAW.

I made several nice photos, that I tried messing with in Olympus Workspace, and found I really couldn't improve them, giving my limited skills and calloused eyeballs. Here's one of my car.



And another of a tree in my backyard.



For reasons I cannot understand, those two photos are darker when converted to JPEG than when they are displayed in Olympus Workspace.

There are a bewildering amount of options to Olympus Workspace, but I'm going to specifically ask about "unsharp mask".

Why, if a photo was sharp, would I want to unmask the sharpness?

I'm learning all this as I go along, with some help from my friends here.

And any help, is always much appreciated.

Click to expand...

The same with me, but I suffer from lack of curiosity.

Click to expand...

While the pandemic rages unseen outside, and we all feel our mortality, I've decided from now on to let others be curious about such things as RAW and unsharp mask and all such as that.

In order to get RAW to work on One Drive and on Windows 10 photos, one must download a RAW extension. I've found from bitter experience that Olympus Workspace works like a charm on Olympus RAW files, and the Windows extension sucks, and sucks very badly. It makes the pictures dark. It slows down the speed of the computer, which mine wasn't very fast to begin with. But, I've found out how to remove the Windows 10 raw extension, and never again will I mess with that, no not ever.

And I did manage to kind of, sort of, figure out how unsharp mask is supposed to work, I think. After creating a massive 15 megabyte file of a tree in my backyard, I messed with it and managed to improve the same 3 megabyte JPEG taken at the same time,,,,just a wee little bit, maybe.

You be the judge.


Unsharp masked tree in the backyard, from RAW


Plain old normal compression backyard tree taken in JPEG at f5.6 instead of f4


Same shot as RAW but the extra JPEG in Large Normal

Sometimes a tree, is just a tree.

From now on I'll let somebody else be curious about RAW and just take photos.

Auto gradation, seems to be a nice feature, but if my grandkids ever try to mess with my photos, I want to them to have a sporting chance to use JPEG instead of some kind of RAW converter that's going to be obsolete before long.

RAW, is a raw deal, if you ask me.

Click to expand...

Wow, what a frothy post. I incline to attribute this to a worldwide war with virus.

Just a few notes:

1. RAW is a big deal when you have missed WB, exposure, or you have an idea beyond the photo

2. JEPGs will be obsolete long before RAWs.

3. I do not use unsharp mask just because I do not need it: I'm used to take sharp photos. When sh^t happens and photo went not sharp, I kill it

--
If you want to be equal, you have to be better...

Back when my hair was brown and curly, I met this girl, and I took a picture of her.





She's even more beautiful today, I tell her all the time.

But still memory to a gray haired man, are all those JPEGs I took with my first Kodak digital camera.

They don't need RAW, they don't need sharpened, and they still work on any computer you use today the same as they did twenty years ago.



True, you have to get the exposure right using JPEG, but JPEGs are forever.



After an Olympus P5 is just a memory, who can open their RAW photos then?



--
Humansville is a town in the Missouri Ozarks

Humansvillian said:

Back when my hair was brown and curly, I met this girl, and I took a picture of her.



She's even more beautiful today, I tell her all the time.

But still memory to a gray haired man, are all those JPEGs I took with my first Kodak digital camera.

They don't need RAW, they don't need sharpened, and they still work on any computer you use today the same as they did twenty years ago.

True, you have to get the exposure right using JPEG, but JPEGs are forever.

After an Olympus P5 is just a memory, who can open their RAW photos then?

Click to expand...

Exactly!

For each - his own

--
If you want to be equal, you have to be better...

Workspace can open any of Olympus RAW file if you have them. I have tried Workspace with the E-3 RAW file and it worked. I am sure it should work with the EP-5 as well.

joeletx said:

Un-sharp means not-sharp. Un-sharp doesn't mean "blurry", from camera shake or out of focus. For my uses, it meant for sharpen up "edges" that are slightly soft, or could be sharpened, such as, eyelashes, bird beak, wrinkle, etc... I think the term started when digital age photography was invented. I first learned how to use it with Abode Photoshop version 2

Click to expand...

Actually, it's a darkroom technique that's much older than digital photography. Adobe applied the same basic concept when it created Photoshop.

joeletx said:

To sharpen edges, the program looks for edges that are "un-sharp" then applies sharpening. If the edges that are already sharp, over a threshold value, the program won't include those in the sharpening process.

Click to expand...

Unsharp mask is doing literally what the term says. It's creating a blurred version of the original image. When that blurred version is subtracted from the original version (in the film world, this was a blurred positive created from the negative) it creates a "mask" that defines the regions that constitute the high contrast edges in the original image. With this (unsharp) mask you can then overlay a high contrast version of the original image over the original image. The mask, which ideally only allows the edges from the high contrast version to be used along with everything else from the original to be used creates the illusion of a sharhper image than the original. That's because the soft edges in the original have been replaced by the contrasty edges in the high-contrast version, but the rest of the high contrast version has been masked out.

joeletx said:

Before the sharpening starts, the program "masks away" areas don't need to be sharpened; hence the term "unsharp mask". LR automatically put in some values of unsharp mask to RAW files imported; Workspace doesn't. I apply unsharp mask on every RAW imported.; some are more than the others, such as high ISO shots. Typical values are strength 45%, threshold 1.4, radius 4 (pixel).

I typed this before I could look up on Wikipedia. This is based on my understanding or the way I remember. I could be blowing smokes all along so don't take it seriously

PS, in Workspace, change "Gradation" from "Normal" to "Auto" on your tree shot.

Click to expand...

Humansvillian said:

For reasons I cannot understand, those two photos are darker when converted to JPEG than when they are displayed in Olympus Workspace.

Click to expand...

Sounds like color management is taking place. If your JPEG viewer is is not color managed, but Workspace is, then the image will look different. Can you open the exported JPEG file back to Olympus Workspace? How does it look compared to when viewed in your default viewer?

Nobody has been able to explain color management to me so that I would fully understand it.

Humansvillian said:

joeletx said:

Un-sharp means not-sharp. Un-sharp doesn't mean "blurry", from camera shake or out of focus. For my uses, it meant for sharpen up "edges" that are slightly soft, or could be sharpened, such as, eyelashes, bird beak, wrinkle, etc... I think the term started when digital age photography was invented. I first learned how to use it with Abode Photoshop version 2

To sharpen edges, the program looks for edges that are "un-sharp" then applies sharpening. If the edges that are already sharp, over a threshold value, the program won't include those in the sharpening process.

Before the sharpening starts, the program "masks away" areas don't need to be sharpened; hence the term "unsharp mask". LR automatically put in some values of unsharp mask to RAW files imported; Workspace doesn't. I apply unsharp mask on every RAW imported.; some are more than the others, such as high ISO shots. Typical values are strength 45%, threshold 1.4, radius 4 (pixel).

I typed this before I could look up on Wikipedia. This is based on my understanding or the way I remember. I could be blowing smokes all along so don't take it seriously

PS, in Workspace, change "Gradation" from "Normal" to "Auto" on your tree shot.

Click to expand...

Thanks so much for your information.

I cranked in a little unsharp mask to the tree photo, without much result.

But using Auto Gradation, made a difference that at least I think, I could see

Click to expand...

The unsharp mask adds micro-contrast along edges and increases the perception of sharpness. The amount of unsharp mask you need depends on the display medium. You need to set amount, radius, and threshold. As a beginner, use only amount and radius. Once you have those down add threshold. A good starting point for printing is a radius of 1 or 1.5 pixels. The amount required varies and you find it empirically. You may find it easier to start out with a high value and back off until the sharpening artifacts disappear. Images that are to be printed require considerably more sharpening than do images for monitor display. This is especially the case if the image is going to be printed with an inkjet printer.

--
http://www.flickr.com/photos/photography-by-thomas/sets/

The point of Workspace is that is produces the same jpeg from the raw that the camera does. You can tweak further of course.

If you want something better than that jpeg then use raw with Dx0 and learn the tricks to get an even better jpeg than the camera or Workspace can manage.

But in saying that, in most general shooting the out of camera jpeg is perfectly OK and a little better than OK can be done with minor tinkering in any edit program like FastStone Viewer.

As for unsharp mask, as explained in another post is it named after a cumbersome darkroom technique in film days. In FastStone I stick to unsharp mask with 0.3 for the pixel dimension and slider to taste for the amount, often in the 30 to 60 range. The trick is to err on the side of ever so slight under-sharpening as it is all too easy to get the horrible digital crunchy look of over-sharpening.

While our little county is experiencing a breakout of the Coronavirus caused by a meat packing plant operating with people standing shoulder to shoulder, I've been working remotely, staggering my secretaries, and to my great relief and surprise making a living in spite of it.

And I've been playing with my cameras, too.

Everything and anything the PL-1 or P-5 can do, the M5 II can do a whole lot better.

It has it all, electronic shutter, gee gaws and foo fraws without end, and best of all it's an excellent movie camera.

It's a bit too big, but I can live with that.

What I need is more lenses, and native ones that don't require an adapter and autofocus.

I've learned by experience and with your help and others on this forum, that a 3MB file taken in Normal compression produces a wonderful image for everyday purposes.

And today I learned that if you want to take movies, you'll never pick up anything but your latest and best camera again, once you see the difference.

I'll keep my PL-1 and P-5, but I want another M5 II body to have a matched pair, with different lenses.

When this coronavirus passes, I'm going to be a better photographer, and not worry at all about my gear.

The Olympus OMD M5 II is all the camera I'll ever need or want.

I just need to learn how to use it.

Humansvillian said:

This morning I got up and decided that I'd be like the other boys and girls, and try using RAW. After all, the Olympus engineers go to a lot of trouble to put RAW in their products, and then give all of us free Olympus Workspace software to work with RAW, so there has to be some reason for having RAW.

I made several nice photos, that I tried messing with in Olympus Workspace, and found I really couldn't improve them, giving my limited skills and calloused eyeballs.

Click to expand...

That cost time. The oocjpegs are a result of a longtime enhanced incamera development which they allowed to tweak abit by your self, saturation, contrast, denoise, sharpening. Wb correction, EV . presets. The rest does the magic incamera.

So practise and you will get better in this, maybe develop your own style.

Humansvillian said:

Here's one of my car.



And another of a tree in my backyard.



For reasons I cannot understand, those two photos are darker when converted to JPEG than when they are displayed in Olympus Workspace.

Click to expand...

This, i think, is something about gamma correction aplied in camera when the jpeg is developed. Wile most rawdevelopers use a neutral gamma correction, the camera does 1.8 or 2.2.

Humansvillian said:

There are a bewildering amount of options to Olympus Workspace, but I'm going to specifically ask about "unsharp mask".

Why, if a photo was sharp, would I want to unmask the sharpness?

I'm learning all this as I go along, with some help from my friends here.

And any help, is always much appreciated.

Click to expand...

Unsharp masking is a manual way of sharpening.

It's applying contrast (blackpixels) to create more visible edges so it looks sharper.

I used it sometimes to dehaze images, but now a day's most developers have dehaze/clearview tools so i don't use it any more.

As far as i remember, radius is the diameter of the applied blackspot and the threshold is about the level of effective range, on black or almost black.

Most modern rawdevelopers has more automated version's for sharpening and such.

Microcontrast for instance is a sharpener same as fine contrast.

Dehaze tools are using microcontrast (smal black spots) around edges and details to create a clearer look.

Contrast in general are different settings of unsharpmasking.

Most rawdevelopers have "intelligent" sharpening like panasonics I-res for ooc jpegs. It looks for (small) edgesbetween colors to apply the contrast and leaves the bigger more feadered parts ( mostly shadows) alone.

Good to know is that Sharpening is mostly done by the developer in combination of the lens and camera type as a preset. And Sharpening and denoising are working against each other and the developerengine is balancing that act using exposure level and iso and some more data to set both.

Sharpening settings is visualising noise more and more/stronger denoising settings is decreasing detail and thus sharpnes.

Vibrance and saturation are another way to give a image more "pop" , contrasty look.

Start with all other tools contrastsliders, saturation and vibrance before you crank up the sharpening levels in lensmodules or other tools which has "sharpening".

And most developers are applying by export also some sharpening before converting to jpeg.So check your exported jpeg.

And most of al: raw converters and developers are nondestructive on the file so you can fool around as much as you like.

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
knowledge is addictive, every time i get some i want more.....
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(If i can remember 1/1000 of everything i learned/read in the past i will be happy as a monky with........)

knickerhawk said:

Actually, it's a darkroom technique that's much older than digital photography. Adobe applied the same basic concept when it created Photoshop.

Click to expand...

knickerhawk said:

Unsharp mask is doing literally what the term says. It's creating a blurred version of the original image. When that blurred version is subtracted from the original version (in the film world, this was a blurred positive created from the negative) it creates a "mask" that defines the regions that constitute the high contrast edges in the original image. With this (unsharp) mask you can then overlay a high contrast version of the original image over the original image. The mask, which ideally only allows the edges from the high contrast version to be used along with everything else from the original to be used creates the illusion of a sharhper image than the original. That's because the soft edges in the original have been replaced by the contrasty edges in the high-contrast version, but the rest of the high contrast version has been masked out.

Click to expand...

Thanks for coming up with the proper definition, you saved me the work of looking up or trying to remember the way it was done. It was indeed originally a darkroom technique. I must say it's much easier to do digitally, because all of the steps can be rolled into one.

pannumon said:

Humansvillian said:

For reasons I cannot understand, those two photos are darker when converted to JPEG than when they are displayed in Olympus Workspace.

Click to expand...

Sounds like color management is taking place. If your JPEG viewer is is not color managed, but Workspace is, then the image will look different. Can you open the exported JPEG file back to Olympus Workspace? How does it look compared to when viewed in your default viewer?

Nobody has been able to explain color management to me so that I would fully understand it.

Click to expand...

Ideally color management would be taking place automatically in the OS, and would be applied consistently to every image you display. But that's not the way Windows did it, and I'm not sure about other operating systems. For sure Adobe is a universe unto itself and has its own way of doing things.

The reason you can't find a coherent explanation is because I don't think it's possible. Theory and practice diverge pretty quickly.

Humansvillian said:

There are a bewildering amount of options to Olympus Workspace, but I'm going to specifically ask about "unsharp mask".

Why, if a photo was sharp, would I want to unmask the sharpness?

Click to expand...

As explained a few times, the name "unsharp mask" is a hangover from darkroom days, and it effectively does the same job way easier. In general it looks for edges and then enhances those edges to make things look sharper.

If it was a dark stick against a light sky then the edge is found and the darker part of the edge made a little darker, and the light bit of the edge made a little lighter. Micro contrast enhancement if you like.

Taken too far and you get serious edge halos and the whole thing looks nasty and "crunchy" and digital.

Here's an example of black printing against white paint, left is camera jpeg, right is over-enthusiastic unsharp mask to reveal what happens...



Look at it Original Size and you can see (400% view) the black print of the BRAVO has become a bit blacker and an edge whiter bit surrounds it, also can see that with the black hair of the girl bottom left. That was with FastStone Viewer with Radius 2 and Amount 24 to make a horrible result. I tend to stick to Radius 0.3 and keep the amount low enough to make a little improvement without getting to the obvious edge halo effect. Olympus already has edge halos out of the camera so that's why I like to use the raw file to eliminate that.

Just for no reason at all here is the whole image from the camera jpeg...



It looks like I focused on that plane and used f/4 instead of my usual f/5.6 so the background suffered a little. It also needs levelling, sigh.

Taken on the steps of the Chiang Kai Shek memorial in Taipei Taiwan just after National Day in 2018 and they have all the parade floats being exhibited. Restoration work going on with the steps on the left. Big marquee had stage performances and traditional native dancers etc. Nice country, really friendly and helpful people, 100% proud of the fact that they are a democracy.

Naturally they have a sense of humour, here's a bear taking a selfie....


Bland overcast sky made for not so bright photos.

The "camera" flashed every 15 seconds or so.

Somewhere in Taipei I also saw a bronze statue of a tourist taking a selfie and of course real tourists everywhere taking selfies.

Hey, I wandered off the track a little, but what else to do when house-bound.

Regards..... Guy