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Sharpening Methods Compared...

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B, E, F, H, and I appear the sharpest, but all have some haloing along the right side of the subject's face - to me - the 'most important' edge in this photo - ie where haloing/artifacting would be the most distracting if it wasn't handled well.

Imo, it seems that in F, H and I, the light edge has been reduced enough to lessen the halo, but still is enough to sharpen. In E and B the light edge is a bit brighter, B being brighter than E, and relatively distracting.

Between F, H and I, all good imo, H seems to have the most even tone along the lighting line on that side of the face, with I being a close 2nd. F, while still good, is lighter at the chin and something going on at the eyebrow.

This is all under the assumption that 'the subject's right side of the face' is important to the photo. I'd be interested and open re: how others view this, and which methods are which.

I'll admit that at first glance without inspection, E stood out as the sharpest, but H would be in my album folder.

Kent
 
Wow Andrew What a wonderful comparison. I recently mentioned my "one step" further method for ultimate control in Dave's thread regarding Thom's methods:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1006&message=4196587

I ultimately find it the easiest method for fine tuning.. no matter what your sharpening methods are...doing your sharpening on a dup layer of the bg.. and fine tuning lastly with the lighten/darken steps to give ultimate results. Each case will be different.. as will amounts.. Great info and nicely presented and tested.. Thank you!!
Andrew Busst said:
E
Original opened in photoshop, then duplicated to form another
layer, duplicate layer then sharpened using Unsharp Mask, blending
mode of layer changed to Darken, sharpened layer then duplicated,
that duplicate layer then set to blending mode of Lighten. Opacity
of DARKEN and LIGHTEN layers then adjusted manually to give desired
result. This is not my technique but one I found on this forum
"somewhere"

I
Similar to "E" but image first sharpened using "Sharpen Control"
then loaded into Photoshop then duplicate layers with LIGHTEN &
DARKEN Blending modes applied

From your comments the majority went with "E" which employs a
sharpening technique not many have probabaly heard of but is really
very simple.

I will try and do the same for a Landscape image and post here but
won't be for a couple of days.

In the meantime if anybody has any other techniques you can try
them out on the original image A available below:- (NOTE: 654Kb)

http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~bussty/untouched.psd

Regards

Andrew Busst
Queenstown, New Zealand
http://www.imagescapes.co.nz
Click to expand...
--
Cathy
http://www.jagrdesigns.com
 
Andrew,

First, great job on the project.

On:
Andrew Busst said:
I
Similar to "E" but image first sharpened using "Sharpen Control"
then loaded into Photoshop then duplicate layers with LIGHTEN &
DARKEN Blending modes applied
Click to expand...
You mean "Sharp Control" by Vtie right? As in F and H?

Kent
 
Andrew and all,
Andrew Busst said:
E
Original opened in photoshop, then duplicated to form another
layer, duplicate layer then sharpened using Unsharp Mask, blending
mode of layer changed to Darken, sharpened layer then duplicated,
that duplicate layer then set to blending mode of Lighten. Opacity
of DARKEN and LIGHTEN layers then adjusted manually to give desired
result. This is not my technique but one I found on this forum
"somewhere"
Click to expand...
I don't know if it is the same 'somewhere' as you found, Andrew, but this technique can be found in Russell Brown's Quicktime movie "Advanced Sharpening" (which has been mentioned many times in this forum) at:

http://www.russellbrown.com/tips/moviesps/AdvancedSharpening.mov

Kent
 
Thanks for the excellent comparison. I prefered E also, so I would like to know what settings in USM did you use?
--
Ron
CP5700
 
Andrew Busst said:
I have been doing some testing of various sharpening techniques
available (and there are a lot out there!)

The following is a 300kb image showing a portion of an image
repeated 9 times with various sharpening techniques. Each separate
image is labelled "A" to "I". "A" is the original untouched image.



(please note that the image is a scale down from the original but
the differences - if viewed at 100% - are negligible)

The portion comes from this total image:-



I would be interested to see which sharpening method i.e "B" to "I"
forum members prefer.

Once I have a few replies I will post which image belongs to which
technique (I think some of you may be surprised)

Techniques used were (and in no particular order)

Sharpened in Photoshop using Unsharp mask then copies of that layer
and made and DARKEN & LIGHTEN blending modes applied the opacity of
layer adjusted to suit

Similar to ABOVE technique but image first sharpened using "Sharpen
Control" then loaded into Photoshop then duplicate layers with
LIGHTEN & DARKEN Blending modes applied

Edge sharpened using "JB Pro Sharpener" action

Fred Miranda's "CSPRO Action" on HIGH

Sharpened using Sharp Control (Settings 0.67 Radius, 1000
Strength, 0 Control, 0 Edge, 1 Iterations)

Same as ABOVE technique but loaded into Photoshop with the
original "A" then a mask added to sharpened layer and using a
"BLACK" brush on about 30% Opacity brush broad areas where no
sharpening is required.

Sharpened using Sharp Control (Settings 0.67 Radius, 1000
Strength, 40 Control, 20 Edge, 1 Iterations)

Fred Miranda's "Intellisharpen" action on Medium

I look forward to seeing your comments.

--
Andrew Busst
Queenstown, New Zealand
http://www.imagescapes.co.nz
Click to expand...
--
Dennis D
 
Andrew Busst said:
I have been doing some testing of various sharpening techniques
available (and there are a lot out there!)

The following is a 300kb image showing a portion of an image
repeated 9 times with various sharpening techniques. Each separate
image is labelled "A" to "I". "A" is the original untouched image.



(please note that the image is a scale down from the original but
the differences - if viewed at 100% - are negligible)

The portion comes from this total image:-



I would be interested to see which sharpening method i.e "B" to "I"
forum members prefer.

Once I have a few replies I will post which image belongs to which
technique (I think some of you may be surprised)

Techniques used were (and in no particular order)

Sharpened in Photoshop using Unsharp mask then copies of that layer
and made and DARKEN & LIGHTEN blending modes applied the opacity of
layer adjusted to suit

Similar to ABOVE technique but image first sharpened using "Sharpen
Control" then loaded into Photoshop then duplicate layers with
LIGHTEN & DARKEN Blending modes applied

Edge sharpened using "JB Pro Sharpener" action

Fred Miranda's "CSPRO Action" on HIGH

Sharpened using Sharp Control (Settings 0.67 Radius, 1000
Strength, 0 Control, 0 Edge, 1 Iterations)

Same as ABOVE technique but loaded into Photoshop with the
original "A" then a mask added to sharpened layer and using a
"BLACK" brush on about 30% Opacity brush broad areas where no
sharpening is required.

Sharpened using Sharp Control (Settings 0.67 Radius, 1000
Strength, 40 Control, 20 Edge, 1 Iterations)

Fred Miranda's "Intellisharpen" action on Medium

I look forward to seeing your comments.

--
Andrew Busst
Queenstown, New Zealand
http://www.imagescapes.co.nz
Click to expand...
 
I have ranked them in four groups in order of decreasing sharpening :
E and F - most sharpest
H and I - 2nd sharpest
B and G - 3rd sharpest
C and D - least sharpest

Sam
 
Ron

You seem to be able to use higher than normal sharpening settings, I used around a 0.8 radius, with amount of 200%-300%, 0 threshold but this will of course depend on your image resolution. Basically I adjusted the settings to give a REALLY sharp image that didn't look too artifically and didn't worry about increase in "GRAIN/NOISE" as long as it was regular noise. The LIGHTEN blending adjustment takes care of both the halo's and noise.

--
Andrew Busst
Queenstown, New Zealand
http://www.imagescapes.co.nz
 
Thanks Kent that's exactly where I found it!
Kent C said:
Kent C said:
E
Original opened in photoshop, then duplicated to form another
layer, duplicate layer then sharpened using Unsharp Mask, blending
mode of layer changed to Darken, sharpened layer then duplicated,
that duplicate layer then set to blending mode of Lighten. Opacity
of DARKEN and LIGHTEN layers then adjusted manually to give desired
result. This is not my technique but one I found on this forum
"somewhere"
Click to expand...
I don't know if it is the same 'somewhere' as you found, Andrew,
but this technique can be found in Russell Brown's Quicktime movie
"Advanced Sharpening" (which has been mentioned many times in this
forum) at:

http://www.russellbrown.com/tips/moviesps/AdvancedSharpening.mov

Kent
Click to expand...
--
Andrew Busst
Queenstown, New Zealand
http://www.imagescapes.co.nz
 
Anyway, Andrew, you missed the Smart Sharpening action...the better one i've ever tried!

Mike
 
Thanks for the good work

Could someone tell me where to get "Sharp Control"

I looked thru all the posts and did a google search with no luck

Thanks again

Jay
 
Andrew,
The E technique you refer to can be found at Russell Brown's site:
http://www.russellbrown.com/body.html

I did a similar test a few months back and found that this method coupled with a high pass filter blend achieved better results overall than any other method. I made up an action that allows for tweaks and I believe I had a link to it somewhere on the forum. It's been a while though.
Regards,
VG
Andrew Busst said:
Thank you all for taking the time to have a look at these.

Here are the techniques with there associated image reference:-

A
Original

B
Edge sharpened using "JB Pro Sharpener" action (note action
slightly modified to include LAB sharpening)

C
Fred Miranda's "CSPRO Action" on HIGH

D
Fred Miranda's "Intellisharpen" action on Medium

E
Original opened in photoshop, then duplicated to form another
layer, duplicate layer then sharpened using Unsharp Mask, blending
mode of layer changed to Darken, sharpened layer then duplicated,
that duplicate layer then set to blending mode of Lighten. Opacity
of DARKEN and LIGHTEN layers then adjusted manually to give desired
result. This is not my technique but one I found on this forum
"somewhere"

F
Sharpened using Sharp Control (Settings 0.67 Radius, 1000 Strength,
0 Control, 0 Edge, 1 Iterations)

G
Sharpened using Sharp Control (Settings 0.67 Radius, 1000 Strength,
40 Control, 20 Edge, 1 Iterations)

H
Same as "F" but loaded into Photoshop with the original "A" then a
mask added to sharpened layer and using a "BLACK" brush paint on
about 30% Opacity black out broad areas where no sharpening is
required.

I
Similar to "E" but image first sharpened using "Sharpen Control"
then loaded into Photoshop then duplicate layers with LIGHTEN &
DARKEN Blending modes applied

From your comments the majority went with "E" which employs a
sharpening technique not many have probabaly heard of but is really
very simple.

I will try and do the same for a Landscape image and post here but
won't be for a couple of days.

In the meantime if anybody has any other techniques you can try
them out on the original image A available below:- (NOTE: 654Kb)

http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~bussty/untouched.psd

Regards

Andrew Busst
Queenstown, New Zealand
http://www.imagescapes.co.nz
Click to expand...
 
A few things about Sharp Control. First its free which is great. Second, it is the best sharpener I have found, also great. Third, it is the slowest program I think I have ever used. I only use it for special files that require that extra touch or when I have alot of time to go back and forth to the computer.
danz said:
http://www.applied-maths.com/paul/sharpcontrol.zip

Dan
Jay Connor said:
Thanks for the good work

Could someone tell me where to get "Sharp Control"

I looked thru all the posts and did a google search with no luck

Thanks again

Jay
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
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