Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Digital Image Processing => Topic started by: bjanes on September 27, 2007, 12:53:44 pm
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In the Nikon forum I came across an interesting post regarding a method devised by Dan Margulis for sharpening of RGB images. It uses an artificial black channel derived from a CMYK conversion to make a sharpening mask which restricts the sharpening to the darker and less colorful areas of the image. This mask It is implemented as a Photoshop action.
Dan Margulis Action (http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1021&message=24980642)
Documentation is sparse, but it is a novel method. One can control the degree of sharpening via the usual unsharp mask controls and through the center slider of the levels control of the sharpening layer.
For those accustomed to the Bruce Fraser sharpening workflow, I do not know if this should be regarded as capture sharpening to be followed by a round of output sharpening according to the size of the final image and output device, or merely as a one step process.
Bill
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Doesn't sound very impressive. If you're going to do tonal masking, you want to mask off the highlights and shadows to avoid/reduce halos, especially shadows, since dark tones have the most noise. You also want to mask off highlights to avoid clipping. Focusing sharpening on darker areas makes no sense at all.
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Documentation is sparse, but it is a novel method.
What makes it novel?
Is it capture or output sharpening? If the later, how does one know the parameters for each device?
If its based on visual sharpening, how does one operate this considering we're working on low resolution output devices like a display?
What about converting to CMYK (and what space) to generate a black channels? Seems like a good way to toss away a lot of useful data and color gamut (not that Dan believes either are an issue).
For those accustomed to the Bruce Fraser sharpening workflow, I do not know if this should be regarded as capture sharpening to be followed by a round of output sharpening according to the size of the final image and output device, or merely as a one step process.
Sounds like that needs to be defined (among other things). So again, its novel why?
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In the Nikon forum I came across an interesting post regarding a method devised by Dan Margulis for sharpening of RGB images. It uses an artificial black channel derived from a CMYK conversion to make a sharpening mask which restricts the sharpening to the darker and less colorful areas of the image. This mask It is implemented as a Photoshop action.
Dan Margulis Action (http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1021&message=24980642)
Documentation is sparse, but it is a novel method. One can control the degree of sharpening via the usual unsharp mask controls and through the center slider of the levels control of the sharpening layer.
For those accustomed to the Bruce Fraser sharpening workflow, I do not know if this should be regarded as capture sharpening to be followed by a round of output sharpening according to the size of the final image and output device, or merely as a one step process.
Bill
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Bill,
First responding to a comment of Andrew's on the method per se, I believe the idea is to make a copy of the image, convert the copy to CMYK, extract the K channel and use that for the sharpening Action in the original RGB file. This way one does not lose the advantage of the wider gamut RGB colour space.
With that out of the way, let us turn to the fundamentals involved here. I preface my remarks with a comment to Jonathan that one should not dismiss a proposal like this out-of-hand simply because aspects of it sound counter-intuitive. It may well be quite usable on a number of image types. Dan Margulis would not issue this procedure without having tested it somehow; but we do not know the details of the testing, therefore we do not know its optimality relative to other sharpening solutions already available - of which there is a plethora.
Of all those solutions, "the bar" on the subject of image sharpening was raised decisively and definitively with the publication of Bruce Fraser's book "Real World Image Sharpening............". It is now necessary for any one developing or evaluating sharpening algorithms to read the first three chapters of that book and understand thoroughly what the technical issues with sharpening are, and their implications. Bruce was clearly of the view, based on his extensive analysis of these issues, that high quality sharpening requires a two or three stage process - hence its own "workflow"; furthermore, within each of those stages, the character of the sharpening needs to be customized by image source, image content (frequency of detail) and image use (each use by resolution).
Based on these principles, PixelGenius LLC developed PK Sharpener (Pro), which, according to Jeff Schewe in other posts in this Discussion Forum, required months upon months of research to develop and refine the settings appropriate to each imaging situation (source, content and use). I have laid-out all of these logical permutations and combinations on a spreadsheet, and calculated that PK Sharpener Pro caters to a total of two thousand three hundred and sixty eight unique imaging conditions, each of which is easily user-selectable in the PKS user interface.
Hence, testing Dan's one-pass tool for optimality relative to the full panoply of PKS options would indeed be a formidable task. And let us recall, again for reasons both Bruce and Jeff have explained, unlike for soft-proofing, it is not really straight-forward to view the results of sharpening on a display - it is necessary to make a print and examine it. Therefore a comparative test for both the test condition and the counterfactual requires twice the number of prints. At the extreme, therefore that would involve the production of 4736 prints.
Faced with a total population that size, of course one would revert to a representative sampling technique that covers the territory while substantially reducing the workload. Therefore, in the same spreadsheet, and with reference to PKS, I scaled-back to what I thought would be the minimum replications within each condition-set, and ended up nonetheless with a requirement to test for three-hundred and sixty-four unique conditions, requiring 728 prints.
If any one reading this has the time on their hands to undertake this extent of testing (no, I don't), it would inform the community about where Dan's technique stands relative to simply using PKS. Of course Dan's Action is downloadable for free (I have done so), and PKS costs money - but as we see - there is a real reason for it. That extent of effort developing and testing a comprehensive technical solution to a very complex set of issues is not handed-out for free.
I should close with an observation that at the recent Canon digital imaging event here in Toronto, Sebastian Stefano of Adobe demonstrated the creative use of the new Smart Sharpen features of Lightroom, which allowed him to control the extent of sharpening between the light and dark contours, and lower and higher frequency image data quite nicely. It isn't PKS, but it is clearly progress relative to USM, such that Dan's new approach deserves to be compared with that as well.
Cheers,
Mark
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Doesn't sound very impressive. If you're going to do tonal masking, you want to mask off the highlights and shadows to avoid/reduce halos, especially shadows, since dark tones have the most noise. You also want to mask off highlights to avoid clipping. Focusing sharpening on darker areas makes no sense at all.
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Jonathan,
I surmise that you are feeling better now and have regained your usual spunk?
It sounds like you are critiquing the method without having referred to the link. If this is not the case, please accept my apologies, but if so, you should review the referenced link. Darker is relative and does not necessarily refer to shadows. Dan is controversial, but his retouching credentials probably compare favorably to yours. Iliah Borg is very knowledgeable and has written a well regarded raw converter for Nikon cameras.
Bill
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What makes it novel?
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It's novel to me, but perhaps not to you. If it is old hat to you, please supply references showing prior use of Dan's methods so that we can understand the methodology better.
Is it capture or output sharpening? If the later, how does one know the parameters for each device?
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It would appear to me to be closer to capture sharpening and perhaps the new method could be incorporated into a multi pass work flow such as Bruce pioneered. Not everyone uses a multi pass technique, even though I think that Bruce has made a good case for it in his sharpening book and other writings. Alternatively, one could adjust the unsharp mask parameters in Dan's action. Have you looked at the link, or is your response a reflexive not invented here one?
What about converting to CMYK (and what space) to generate a black channels? Seems like a good way to toss away a lot of useful data and color gamut (not that Dan believes either are an issue).
Sounds like that needs to be defined (among other things). So again, its novel why?
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It appears that you are spouting off without having referred to the link or studying the method. The CMYK is used only to make a mask and the CMY information is discarded.
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It's novel to me, but perhaps not to you. If it is old hat to you, please supply references showing prior use of Dan's methods so that we can understand the methodology better.
Oh I see. Since its new to you, its novel. I was just trying to figure out what made it novel, I think I get it.
As for a methodology, I've yet to hear Dan's has one. Hence the questions.
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Oh I see. Since its new to you, its novel. I was just trying to figure out what made it novel, I think I get it.
As for a methodology, I've yet to hear Dan's has one. Hence the questions.
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Thanks for the gracious and informative reply. Dan has no methodology, but he made it into the Photoshop Hall of Fame far before you. I see he was inducted along with Thomas Knoll at the first ceremony in 2001. Not bad for a dunce. I am still waiting for your references if you have any.
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I had seen that thread by chance on DP yesterday and browsed through it quickly.
If I am not mistaken, they were discussing the interest of taking into account color saturation/purity in the original image as one of the inputs in determining the amount of sharpening that would be required.
I am not sure whether this is instanciated in the action that was made available by Dan, but it appeared to be a question worth considering.
I don't think that this is incompatible with the work done by Bruce and Jeff in terms of process, but - if valid - color saturation might be one parameter to take into account when creating the masks used to control the amount of sharpening to be applied. My understanding is that tone is the main input today.
There would of course be a need to determine to what extend this should be taken into account in the 3 steps of Bruce's process.
Just my 2 cents,
Regards,
Bernard
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Thanks for the gracious and informative reply. Dan has no methodology, but he made it into the Photoshop Hall of Fame far before you. I see he was inducted along with Thomas Knoll at the first ceremony in 2001. Not bad for a dunce. I am still waiting for your references if you have any.
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Hey guys...
This is not that other forum, ya know. Here people play fair and try to be nice.
So what if Dan was inducted to the Photoshop Hall of Fame before Andrew? That is silly and a deliberately mean thing to say.
And indeed, there *is* a difference between "new to me" and "novel": "novel" is what appears new or different in the field. The simple fact that something is new to you doesn't automatically mean that it's objectively new, hence "novel". You will agree to that -- yes?
Marco
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Thanks for the gracious and informative reply. Dan has no methodology, but he made it into the Photoshop Hall of Fame far before you. I see he was inducted along with Thomas Knoll at the first ceremony in 2001. Not bad for a dunce. I am still waiting for your references if you have any.
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Ah, then the date of NAPP introduction is key to a methodology. Just wanted to be sure I understand the mindset here. Lets forget his take on high bit editing (technically wrong), wide gamut spaces and the evils of Camera Raw and Lightoom. That he was inducted at a fixed time makes this all moot, despite those of us that have (unlike Dan) actually produced and provided files and instructions which prove his points on the above ideas are flat earth, religious thinking for anyone who wishes to do the testing.
Lets look at the technique that's so novel to you and Dan's original post about it. This is a direct quote from Dan's list:
My suggestion is a mask that caters to both--that allows more sharpening
where the image is darker but also restricts it where the image is colorful. While it
is possible to make a convoluted Action that generates such a mask by a series of blends of
the RGB channels, there's a faster way--make a false separation, and use an inverted
Heavy GCR black as the mask for the RGB sharpening.
OK a mask to apply sharpening. Nothing really new here at all. Been described and done for years. Use the image to build a mask to protect areas. What might be novel is the idea of using a CMYK black channel to do this. Lets look at the technique and see if there's anything to it and how its explained that is novel or defines the methodology:
Here's the procedure, which of course should be reduced to an Action to save
having to do it over and over.
1) Copy the RGB image.
2) With the copy, Convert to Profile>Custom CMYK.
3) Fill in: Heavy GCR, 70% black ink limit, 340% total ink. Dot gain is basically not relevant as you can always lighten or darken the mask after applying it, but I just use the default 20%. (AR: basically not relevant? It is or it isn't).
4) Click OK twice to generate the false separation. (AR: There's no such thing, Dan likes to make up terms).
5) Command-4 to expose the black channel, and Mode: Grayscale to discard the CMY channels.
6) Invert the channel with Command-I, yielding a negative image.
7) Auto Levels.
8) Gaussian Blur, radius 2.0 pixels to eliminate noise and make for a softer sharpen.
9) Return to the RGB image and create a duplicate layer. Sharpen conventionally with a very heavy hand--500%, 1.2 pixel Radius, 3 Threshold might be a good starting point for most images. (AR: Dan likes to use such terms like "most images" or "Usually this works" etc. Good starting point? That leads me to believe YMMV).
10) Add a layer mask. To it, load the artificial black channel that was made in steps 1-8. This should confine the sharpening to the desired areas. (AR: Dan again protecting himself in case this doesn't work. It should confine the sharpening to the desired areas. Heck, the entire methodology rests in 'it should').
11) If you feel the image is not sharp enough, apply a curve to the mask to lighten its midpoint. If you find the image to be too sharp, darken the mask in the same way. (AR: Dan once again protecting his novel idea. If you feel.... Feel based on what? You output the file and its not sharp enough? It doesn't appear visually sharp enough? This is a novel new idea about sharpening?)
We have a technique which has no methodology unlike what Bruce described in his original article on Creative Pro and greatly expanded in his ground breaking book on sharpening. Yes, Dan's built a mask using a black channel. He's not provided any kind of methodology about when or why to use this technique, nor has he discussed when or why to alter any of the setting based on any size, capture device, previous possible sharpening to the document or the output size and output device.
Here's my new novel technique. Open and RGB document. Select USM. For Amount, pick 157, for Radius, pick 1.7, for Threshold pick 5.
Now what have I done? The image IS sharper appearing. This is akin to someone saying "I have an award winning recipe for brownies. Its easy. Mix the ingredients and bake for one hour at 350 degrees." Well wasn't that useful. Its possible the USM values I just made up above have never been exactly specified by anyone anywhere, so its new and novel. So what?
Now lets see what someone like Bruce did? At the very least, there's this article, the genesis of the sharpening workflow:
[a href=\"http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/20357.html]http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/20357.html[/url]
Back to Dan. He likes to be controversial to draw attention to himself. He likes to make complex multiple stage routines that in effect polish turds. When you see the before and after, the turd looks better. Dan doesn't, as others here go out of their way to do, teach people NOT to create turds in the first place. But his livelihood is based on taking just awful originals and fixing them in Photoshop. If we all produce pretty good data from the get-go, in a Raw converter which he dismisses as unfit for pro use, he's got nothing to write about. I find this mindset dangerous and polluting to those who don't know any better. The idea that one should set a Raw converter settings null, then fix the image in Photoshop is bad enough. But to then say the converter is unfit for professional use without a drop of proof is worse than unprofessional.
His technique above has no methodology other than the image appears sharper. As Jonathan points out, the ideas seem odd based on the masking methodology if we can be kind enough to use that term here. The technique is abundantly vague. He even says he wants to sharpen the dark areas, the areas we all know is full of noise!
I'm not trying to pick a fight with you bjanes, just trying to understand what Dan brings to the party other than a pretty high B.S. factor regarding digital imaging he's expressed over the years. Does his induction into the NAPP hall of fame in any way validate or invalidate this? That I and others have provided files that PROVE him wrong about wide gamut editing spaces or high bit editing change this fact? That he refuses to explain his religious beliefs using science and tells his list he has produced the exact math used in Camera Raw to show that the math is both sloppy and destructive (but refuses to share this math), thus this product is unfit for professional use (his words), we should take him at all seriously when it comes to sharpneing?
Now we have a NEW sharpening technique. OK Dan, explain, as Bruce did, how it works, when to use it. Nothing form Dan. But we do see others in the imaging community posting about it, as if there's something novel let alone useful here. I await the methodology from Dan or anyone else who can provide any reason why we should pay attention to this guy.
In the past, Dan DID have some useful ideas about image processing. But his message has been soiled using flat earth theories that simply don't pan out. He's targeting photographers now since the prepress folks have either died off or stopped listening to him. When he starts polluting the minds of photographers, I take notice and start demanding he be accountable for what he says. Its one thing to go around panning Adobe as an axis of evil or even say their products are unfit for pro use. But to try to persuade the photo/imaging community of this nonsense, without providing a shred of evidence and worse, calling those who do provide evidence shills is going to far.
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Thanks for the gracious and informative reply. Dan has no methodology, but he made it into the Photoshop Hall of Fame far before you. I see he was inducted along with Thomas Knoll at the first ceremony in 2001. Not bad for a dunce. I am still waiting for your references if you have any.
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Bill, Dan is no dunce, but the Hall of Fame has nothing to do with the subject under discussion. What's needed is a proof of concept, and that isn't forthcoming, nor will it be easy because the bar is high. Even if the number of image frequency conditions were reduced from 4 to 2 in the sampling approach I discussed before, the number of prints to be made is cut in half, but still several hundred. Furthermore, I forgot to mention that comparative workflow efficiency would also need to be evaluated, say between Dan's proposal and PK Sharpener Pro. I don't think it makes much sense to argue about whether or not the approach is superior to anything else unless the people making those arguments do the hard work. I agree with Andrew that just to say it sharpens some images - even nicely - isn't the whole story by a long-shot.
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What's needed is a proof of concept, and that isn't forthcoming, nor will it be easy because the bar is high.
Exactly. If you look at Dan's MO, proof of concept is the weak link (weak, its non existent).
He's always right because he says so. Introduce enough fudge factor, which lately he's doing more and more, you can't pin him down on anything. Then the discussion goes nowhere and we're left with nothing concrete. But when you're trying to create a buzz about yourself, this works surprisingly well. Its a shame so many are attracted to this flame. When you examine it up close, you find there's little substance.
His list is a vehicle for self promotion. That's fine I guess until what he says gets posted to the outside world, when people get the idea he's got something useful to say. Lately, that hasn't been true, in fact the opposite and this can be proven. Case in point is Mark's article on curves here on LL. Mark did good science and anyone who wishes can take the time to not only read the piece but do the testing on their end to convince themselves of the validity of each side of the argument. Dan doesn't provide any files or proof of concept. You either accept it out right or you're wrong in his eyes. This isn't good science, in fact its not even bad science. Its religion. Its pointless to argue religion. Its not pointless to use scientific reasoning in attempting to come to some conclusion.
None of us are born with an intimate knowledge of Photoshop, imaging or even photography. We learn by reading, testing and sharing ideas. We have such a community. I suspect we are all wrong at times. Just recently, there was a superb and well behaved discussion about Metamerism on the ColorSync list. No ego's, no doggie posturing. Many of us, myself included, learned that we have been using the term incorrectly. I was actually very happy to fully understand the finer points of which I thought I fully understood. I had been talking about and writing about this phenomena incorrectly for years. Now that I understand the subtleties of this technical issue, even though I was wrong, I'm pleased to have increased my knowledge of this subject. That's how we grow. That's how we learn. Then we hope to share such ideas with others. The problem with Dan is, he's never wrong, even when you have empirical and well defined evidence of this. He can't grow or learn, he's always right. If someone does indeed show the error of his ways, he either uses censorship or diversion to ignore the finer points of the discussion. Or he tells his list, this topic is now closed and there will be no further discussion about the topic. That makes many of us even more determined to prove him wrong outside the list he controls. This emperor has no cloths. Shame. He's a nice guy in person, has (had) a lot to contribute. But based on the last few years of his behavior, he's simply not worth listening to. Worst of all, he's a hypocrite. This is easy to prove, all you need to do is examine a few posts he's made to his list. Funny, he never ventures outside the list since he has no control over the process.
IF he wants to post nonsense to his private list and pollute the minds of his minions, fine. But the topics find there way outside this list, then he's nothing more than a bad influence.
Getting back to sharpening. In Dan's mind, we have to discuss and prove his technique is screwy but in science, that's not how things work. The person proposing a theory is supposed to prove his points using sound scientific processes. That's never how Dan has worked, be it his ideas on high bit processing, wide gamut spaces or Raw processing. He's right, you have to prove him wrong (he never has to prove his ideas as being sound). This isn't how Bruce operated. Now its up to Dan to prove to you and I that he has a methodology in this new, radical sharpening technique (which I'll add isn't at all radical). You're not going to see it. Yes, the image appears sharper than before his process, so its viable? Well I don't buy that. Should you?
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Getting back to sharpening. ............
The person proposing a theory is supposed to prove his points using sound scientific processes. ........................ Now its up to Dan to prove to you and I that he has a methodology in this new, radical sharpening technique ...................... Well I don't buy that. Should you?
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Andrew, "focusing on sharpening" (no pun intended ), let us look at where we're at with the specific issue: No theory was proposed. A procedure was proposed. Operating the procedure presumably would be the methodology. In this case, it would appear that simple, but of course not ideal for satisfactory or easy evaluation. There should be a theory, in the sense of at least describing the principles underlying the procedure in some detail. Then there should be a fairly extensive description of how the procedure is implemented to optimize a wide range of images. That would establish the methodology. Had both of these things been done - and well tested - most of this discussion would be moot. For example, it would have covered-off Jonathan's point about the role of black.
Bernard raised a question about the irelationship between saturation and sharpening. Bernard, as this kind of sharpening would appear to be about acutance, one needs edges in order to improve their contrast. To my understanding, excessive saturation of a rendered image can push colours out of gamut and obliterate those edges, in essence undercutting the "raw material" on which the acutance would be improved. In other words, one needs "sharpenable" material to begin with. I believe this is one reason why it's so important to optimize white balance, luminosity and saturation in the raw converter, thereby rendering the highest quality image the raw converter can deliver; then there would normally be enough material for sharpening with tools and techniques more nuanced than those in the raw converter (though that said, they are starting to catch up).
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I should close with an observation that at the recent Canon digital imaging event here in Toronto, Sebastian Stefano of Adobe demonstrated the creative use of the new Smart Sharpen features of Lightroom, which allowed him to control the extent of sharpening between the light and dark contours, and lower and higher frequency image data quite nicely. It isn't PKS, but it is clearly progress relative to USM, such that Dan's new approach deserves to be compared with that as well.
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Mark,
Thanks for the extremely well reasoned reply. First of all, I would like to stress that I am not attempting to denigrate Bruce's work. I do have his sharpening book and PK sharpener. However, there are some images that do not respond well to this workflow and one must look to other methods. High ISO shots under incandescent light often have high noise, especially in the blue channel and PK can wreck these. With such images, edge masking does not work well. The edges are not well delineated with the edge mask, and the mask outlines noise as well as the edges. With such images I use Noise Ninja or, more recently, Noiseware. Use of PK brings back the noise. In his sharpening book, Bruce did warn that some noise reduction methods produce images which can not be sharpened. In these cases, I simply use the sharpening built into the NR application.
As you point out, Bruce did considerable research in the development of PK and Jeff talks about the "magic numbers". Of the hundreds of permutations you list, what proportion involve capture sharpening and what proportion are applied to output sharpening? It would seem to me that the majority of these permutations would involve output sharpening.
Sharpening for the capture device has well defined parameters determined by the resolution of the sensor and the strength of the anti-aliasing filter. Sharpening for image content involves selecting the frequency to be emphasized: high, medium or low. I bring up this point, since one could perform capture sharpening by some other method, perhaps smart sharpen or some other deconvolution method, and then use PK for output sharpening. Perhaps even Dan's method could be used for capture sharpening and PK for output.
Bruce's capture sharpening uses the unsharp mask as its main tool, modifying its effects with the blend if sliders and the edge mask. The unsharp mask is pretty old technology, dating back to the film era and analogue technology. It is entirely possible that the smart sharpen or some other algorithm could be substituted with better results, while maintaining the essential features of Bruce's workflow. In the sharpening book, Bruce was not a fan of smart sharpen, but as the algorithm undergoes improvements and more experience is gained with it, his opinion could have changed.
I am glad you brought up smart sharpen, since these deconvolution methods actually restore image detail, whereas the unsharp mask merely creates the impression of sharpness. The trouble with these methods is the selection of what point spread function (PSP) to use in the deconvolution. For example, if you blur an image with the Gaussian blur filter, and then use smart sharpen with the Gaussian blur PSP, it should do a better job at restoring sharpness than the unsharp mask. I'm not sure what the assumptions underlying the lens blur PSP of smart sharpen are. Lenses can have multiple aberrations, but if the main aberration is known, the restoration will be more successful. For example the Hubble Space telescope suffered from spherical aberration prior to its repair, and NASA was able to use the [a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richardson-Lucy_deconvolution]Lucy-Richardson deconvolution algorithm[/url] to good effect. If the PSP is not known, Expectation-maximization algorithms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expectation-maximization_algorithm) can be used. As the reference shows, the theory of these algorithms is beyond comprehension by most of us, but one does not need to understand the theory to make use of the algorithm.
In a post on his web site, Roger Clark (http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedetail/image-restoration1/index.html) showed how he made use of the Adaptive Richardson-Lucy Iteration to approximately double the print size of an image while maintaining image detail. Newer algorithms do not negate the value of Bruce's work, but can extend it. As Issac Newton, not a particularly modest man, said "If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants."
Bill
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...............I do have his sharpening book and PK sharpener. However, there are some images that do not respond well to this workflow and one must look to other methods. High ISO shots under incandescent light often have high noise, especially in the blue channel and PK can wreck these. ...............I use Noise Ninja or, more recently, Noiseware. Use of PK brings back the noise.
As you point out, Bruce did considerable research in the development of PK and Jeff talks about the "magic numbers". Of the hundreds of permutations you list, what proportion involve capture sharpening and what proportion are applied to output sharpening? It would seem to me that the majority of these permutations would involve output sharpening.
Sharpening for the capture device has well defined parameters determined by the resolution of the sensor and the strength of the anti-aliasing filter. Sharpening for image content involves selecting the frequency to be emphasized: high, medium or low. I bring up this point, since one could perform capture sharpening by some other method, perhaps smart sharpen or some other deconvolution method, and then use PK for output sharpening. Perhaps even Dan's method could be used for capture sharpening and PK for output.
It is entirely possible that the smart sharpen or some other algorithm could be substituted with better results, while maintaining the essential features of Bruce's workflow. In the sharpening book, Bruce was not a fan of smart sharpen, but as the algorithm undergoes improvements and more experience is gained with it, his opinion could have changed.
I am glad you brought up smart sharpen, since these deconvolution methods actually restore image detail, whereas the unsharp mask merely creates the impression of sharpness.
Bill
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Bill,
I agree - noisy images need to be treated with noise reduction before sharpening. I also find that the scope for capture sharpening after noise reduction to some extent depends on the quality and strength of the noise reduction. Noise reduction is always a trade-off between fudging noise and fudging acutance, so the better one can aim the noise reduction program at selecting-out the unwanted detail from the wanted detail, the less the sharpening problem. PKS can over-sharpen unless one is careful - but that's the point - being careful I find one can obtain a satisfactory balance. I normally put the noise reduction on a separate image layer, then by playing between the opacities of the noise reduction and the sharpening layers which PK provides, to the extent one is accustomed to judging impacts on a display, the outcomes are OK. PKS also has some tools for dealing with noise, but I have not used them much.
OK, here's the data on the options:
In the vesion of PKS I'm using (1.2.4 I believe), there are:
16 image types
4 frequency levels =
64 input image conditions.
For image output conditions, there are 4 image types, each of which has several output-type categories and resolution settings, such that the number of unique conditions for each is as follows:
Half-tone 10
Error Diffusion Dither (Inkjet) 10
Contone 6
Web 10
Hence, when you multiply the 64 image input conditions by each of the output conditions (which is legit because each is independent of the other) and add the results, you get the total number of custom conditions PK treats through its UI. But that's nowhere near the end of it, because it's all done on adjustment layers, usually three of them with Light Contour, Dark Contour and the Composite, so if you don't like the default effect from the optimal setting from the UI, we can adjust the opacities of these layers, or we can localize effects by painting in the image with the appropriate layer mask active.
Then added to that, which I did not mention in my previous posts, there are of course the Stage Two options, which add another 52 levers of adjustment that can be inserted between the Input and Output Sharpeners. These 52 options consist of:
Smoothing 18
Sharpening Brushes 15 (a lot of localized control)
Sharpening Effects 19.
Any one who can't find a way to optimally sharpen an image with all this......there's either something truly fatal about the image, or....OK, point made.
Now, interesting you mention deconvolution and restoration of image detail. Here's where the definition of terms really matters, and you've got it right. When I responded to Andrew's post by "focusing on sharpening" it was a bit tongue-in-cheek, because over at the Applied ColorTheory List where Dan first introduced the technique he said "we all know" that USM improves focus. Well, of course "we all know" it does nothing of the sort. Planes of an image are either in-focus or out of focus (this is lenses - circles of confusion as a function of aperture and distance) and no amount of acutance sharpening will fundamentally change that. (I got taken to the cleaners by several of their more defensive members for making this clarification, but it's non-trivial because working on focus and working on acutance does take us down different paths.)
If we're talking about restoring focus, we are indeed into deconvolution methods, an example of which is "Focus Magic" a tool which Ctein recommends in his book "Digital Restoration from Start to Finish" (by the way, a book I think is really first-class for both content and presentation). I downloaded Focus Magic and gave it a whirl. Indeed to a considerable extent it does what it advertises - quite an amazing piece of software; that said, it can be fairly harsh unless used VERY carefully, and it is nowhere as "fine-tunable" as PKS. But something like this has its place if you really need to reconstruct detail - apparently this technology stems from forensic imaging.
Now, as to whether deconvolution can be successfully integrated with an acutance workflow of the PKS variety is conceptually an intriguing question. I see scope for heaps of research on this, and yet newer and better tools to come.................
Cheers,
Mark
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When I responded to Andrew's post by "focusing on sharpening" it was a bit tongue-in-cheek, because over at the Applied ColorTheory List where Dan first introduced the technique he said "we all know" that USM improves focus. Well, of course "we all know" it does nothing of the sort. Planes of an image are either in-focus or out of focus (this is lenses - circles of confusion as a function of aperture and distance) and no amount of acutance sharpening will fundamentally change that. (I got taken to the cleaners by several of their more defensive members for making this clarification, but it's non-trivial because working on focus and working on acutance does take us down different paths.)
Its not really nontrivial when you see such ideas expressed as fact by readers of his list. After Mark's post to correct Dan, yet another typical hissy fit on the list with more censorship and doggie posturing by Dan and minions. Oh, that's also a typical MO there "everyone knows" this or that. IOW, if you don't know, you should. If you disagree, you're wrong. If you try to clarify improper use of technical language, you're out of line. But using terms like False Profile or Master Curve etc is fine, as long as your Dan. Sorry if I keep bringing this up, its frustrating to listen to this nonsense month after month, year after year and then hear outsiders incorrectly use the terms invented by Dan as if what he's saying has an ounce of accuracy or credibility. He might have the most awesome sharpening routine known to man, but its getting progressively harder to take him seriously. Hence, the questions about methodology once again. Other than having an image that appears sharpener after using this technique, where's the beef?
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Perhaps even Dan's method could be used for capture sharpening and PK for output.
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Not even close...
I've tested Dan's "recipe" (for that is _ALL_ it is) and find it introduces undesirable results...
First off, he doesn't mention the obvious (that I can tell) that the sharpening layer wants to be set to Luminosity only in the blend mode. This is so obvious that it makes me wonder why he left it off.
Second, the sharpening is directed to the wrong area/areas of the image (particularly for digital capture). Part of PhotoKit Capture Sharpener's emphasis is to REDUCE sharpening in shadow areas where there is already more noise and in general less edges (which generally occur between light/dark contours). Dan's recipe concentrates sharpening in the WRONG areas and in the wrong ways.
There is simply no way that Dan's recipe is useful for any sort of Capture Sharpening, period.
His recipe is simply another "sharpening for effect" attempt that many people try to pawn off as useful. And it may well be "useful for effect" (Creative Sharpening)but so far, on the images I've tested, it's really doesn't offer anything really useful for effect (unless you like over sharpening shadows).
As far as Output Sharpening, forget about it...
This is a subject I know a lot about (having learned from Bruce as well as having taught him a thing or two) and I'm here to tell you that Dan's recipe is much ado about nothing...the K generation and transformation into a mask is mildly interesting, but useless for a sharpening workflow. The sharpening is misdirected to the wrong portions of an image (unless you want your shadow noise to blossom). It's a curiosity at best...and a bad thing for most images if people have a care what their images look like.
But feel free to ruin your images if you like...I won't be doing this on my images.
And Bill, from one Photoshop Hall of Famer to somebody who will prolly never get there, if you want to trade creds, you might want to have some creds to trade with. Dan demos well (which is one reason he's in the Hall of Fame) and he HAD made useful contributions to the industry in the past. Now? Not so much...I'll let Andrew's characterizations stand (since they mimic pretty much what I think) and not pile on the Dan bashing, other to say that this is a whacky and particularly unuseful sharpening recipe as I've seen for a long time.
Other than that, have fun wasting your time (and potentially ruining your images in the bargan).
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Adding to what Jeff just said, if you check-out that same sharpening thread on DPReview, as I did this afternoon, you will see one example of a comparative test performed by one contributor pretty much suporting Jeff's observations of the procedure's impact, at least on that image. Simple USM worked better - superior acutance without making the image look as artificial as Dan's rendered it. Of course, we are talking JPEGs viewed on a display - but it is nonetheles revealing.
Reverting to a point further back which Andrew made about the absence of a theory supporting this approach, it may even be grounded in some misperception about basic sharpening principles. I refer to Dan's statement: "I've realized a corollary--in addition to lightness, a strong color is an argument against sharpening. We don't like to oversharpen skies, the petals of flowers, and human skin, for example."
It's really hard to understand why a strong colour would be an argument against sharpening. As a generalization it doesn't work. What if the strong colour also contained important image detail that we wanted to be sharp - detail that Dan argues elsewhere we need to protect and why he proclaims Camera Raw's curves are not suitable for professional use. And take his examples of bright colours not to sharpen: sky and skin: the reason why we don't sharpen sky and skin is because they are low frequency areas that aesthetically people don't like to see sharpened. Do you really want a granular sky and every pimple? It has nothing to do with bright colours.
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I've tested Dan's "recipe" (for that is _ALL_ it is) and find it introduces undesirable results...
There is simply no way that Dan's recipe is useful for any sort of Capture Sharpening, period.
This is a subject I know a lot about (having learned from Bruce as well as having taught him a thing or two) and I'm here to tell you that Dan's recipe is much ado about nothing...the K generation and transformation into a mask is mildly interesting, but useless for a sharpening workflow. The sharpening is misdirected to the wrong portions of an image (unless you want your shadow noise to blossom). It's a curiosity at best...and a bad thing for most images if people have a care what their images look like.
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Jeff,
Thanks for your opinion on Dan's proposed method. Since you are a recognized authority on the subject and have actually evaluated the method, I give your opinion a lot of weight.
Other than that, have fun wasting your time (and potentially ruining your images in the bargan).
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=142497\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I don't really have the time to spend on something that appears a bit oddball. Let Dan and his fans develop the method and we will see if they get anywhere. I thought it was worth bringing up for discussion. In the meantime, I will continue to use PK Sharpener. However, I am still interested in deconvolution methods. Is Pixel Genius doing anything in that area?
Bill
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Well, I, for one, find Jeff, Andrew, and Mark much more convincing than the "flat earth" people. I'm no expert on sharpening, but I have a healthy respect for science and arguments that are supported with evidence and reasoning.
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Dan's stuff is always tops in my book. His stuff works, works well and is fast once you get used to it.
Thanks to the OP for bringing this to my attention and no thanks to the guys that want to turn this into some kind of macho whos the best. When you have to knock someone else, it just proves you've still got a long way to go.
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When you have to knock someone else, it just proves you've still got a long way to go.
Not when the stuff you're knocking has clear technical deficiencies and works less well than what it's allegedly intended to improve upon, as is easily demonstated with some simple comparisons. Or do you have some evidence to the contrary you'd like to present? If you do, great, present it. If not, don't expect to convince many here.
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Both of you yahoos go stand in the friggin' corner. If you don't have something useful to say, keep your friggin' fingers off the keyboard.
I'm an avid fan of Bruce Fraser, Jeff Schewe, and Andrew Rodney. But when did it become acceptable for one (famous) professional to openly criticize another well-known professional in public? Maybe around the time retired army generals decided it was OK to publicly criticize current active leaders.
The me-ness of our ever-growing self-obsessed narcissism gets more disturbing by the day. Frankly, I think such behavior exhibits a small, petty, and insecure nature. The behavior is unprofessional.
This is a subject I know a lot about (having learned from Bruce as well as having taught him a thing or two) ad nauseum
Constantly acknowledging self-greatness greatly diminishes the "great" factor and illustrates a deeper flaw. It's always best to let others do the praising: humility remains a noble trait.
Thoughtful and considerate analysis is always welcome, especially from professionals. But when the agenda gets personal and/or leans destructive, it becomes much harder for the professional to keep his title. Thank goodness some of us choose to remain anonymous and enjoy the fun of saying exactly what we're thinking.
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The me-ness of our ever-growing self-obsessed narcissism gets more disturbing by the day. Frankly, I think such behavior exhibits a small, petty, and insecure nature. The behavior is unprofessional.
Constantly acknowledging self-greatness greatly diminishes the "great" factor and illustrates a deeper flaw. It's always best to let others do the praising: humility remains a noble trait.
Bingo!
What amazes me is that I first read about this sharpening method over on dpreview, and people were at least receptive to seeing if it was worth looking into. I look at the thread here in the LL forums, and within a few seconds it went into a macho contest with a lot of arrogant posts - and I include more than just Andrews and Jeffs posts in that category. What gives here? I joined this forum a bit ago thinking it would be a bit more professional an environment than what I see on the non-moderated forums, but this exchange certainly proved that idea wrong in a hurry. I see a lot of likely extremely knowledgable people with really arrogant attitudes here with this topic. No need for any of that.
I look at this sharpening method post a bit differently - I thought about it and went "you know, I could see some things I've done where that might work well, but also some things where it wouldn't work as well as what I'm using now" and just filed it into a slot of memory in my brain as another tool in the tool kit. I never took it to be the grand poobah and ultimate deity of all things sharpening - just something else to try, experiment with, and ultimately see if it works for me.
And I don't really see anything wrong with that. The title of the post was never "Dan Margulis Super Perfect Never Been Beaten Sharpening Technique", so I think some could back off the trash talk a bit and try constructive criticism instead of macho arrogance.
-m
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I'm an avid fan of Brian Fraser, Jeff Schewe, and Andrew Rodney. But when did it become acceptable for one (famous) professional to openly criticize another well-known professional in public? Maybe around the time retired army generals decided it was OK to publicly criticize current active leaders.
When one started making up total crap about a number of technical issues that only he believes, then attempt to spread this nonsense to a group of people who don't know better. It started years ago when Dan tried to dismiss the work of Adobe in providing us tools to edit in high bit and started his totally lame 16-bit challenge. Most of us dismissed him because the math is undeniable. When some tried to take the challenge, they found they were working with a guy who was more interested in being right AND using the controversy to shine a light on himself. One very well known, quite brilliant color scientist by the name of Bruce Lindbloom even posted his frustration with Dan's total lack of scientific testing and rule changing here:
http://www.brucelindbloom.com/index.html?DanMargulis.html (http://www.brucelindbloom.com/index.html?DanMargulis.html)
PLEASE read it, it sums up perfectly the genesis of Dan's MO.
Please take note of something Bruce says (and I believe in my testing):
"My goal in preparing it was to be truthful and objective. If it contains errors, please let me know". It would be refreshing if we ever heard something like this from Dan.
Then I submitted actual Raw files on my iDisk to illustrate an image that showed image degradation in 8-bit that didn't show up in 16-bit. Dan trashed it, again moving the goal posts by saying that I used an "Ultra wide gamut" space (ProPhoto RGB) and these spaces are not to be used and don't fall into the challenge. Note the new Dan term he made up and now uses to dismiss a working space that lots of users work with every day. I then submitted again, Raw files to illustrate a situation where using ANY working space OTHER than ProPhoto RGB would show problems (image damage) even in 16-bit. He of course dismissed that as well.
Oh, I should point out that when I uploaded both sets of test files as .DNGs, Dan dismissed them as not being Raw files. Only until his close moderator friends on the list carefully explained to him that a DNG is a Raw file, did he back off on that method of dismissing my files.
As to 16-bit, in Dan's mind, Adobe and all the manufacturers who provide data in high bit are wrong, its not useful and he's right. And yet, has Dan EVER provided any empirical data to back up his theories? No. Instead he expect us to provide files to prove our point, then he dismisses them using whatever he wishes to use to tell us what we're seeing or doing is wrong. That's not good science as I said before.
Then we have the more recent composite curve nonsense of Dan's that resulted in Mark Segal's excellent and well researched article here. Again, Dan and his minions shot it down. Dan told his list that Camera Raw and Lightroom use "sloppy math" and are "unfit for professional use". Instead you should (if you must use these products) set the sliders to default and fix the images in Photoshop, the only application he really has a clue about.
Dan put his foot in his mouth by saying he had produced the exact math used in CR using an Excel spreadsheet to prove his point about the sloppy math. Many of us asked to see this so called proof, even willing to provid this to Thomas Knoll so he could 'fix' this issue. We suggested Dan would do the imaging community a lot of good by providing this to Thomas. Well not only did he spend weeks ignoring countless requests, he finally demanded the topic be closed. This is after all, a highly moderated list. Fine, its obviously there to promote Dan.
Now we have the magic sharpening technique. Again, based on the past history of Dan, many of us, myself in the forefront want to know, where's the beef?
If Dan wasn't a capable guy, we'd dismiss him long ago. That he does make up stuff, basically lie (the spreadsheet is a prefect example) and has the ear of so many less than knowledgeable readers, its simply unfair for those of us that have seen what he says to remain quiet. At the very least, test what he says is the law of physics according to Dan.
BTW, everything mentioned above is documented and direct quotes from Dan can be provided. This is ALL from his list. No one is putting words in Dan's mouth. He's usually pretty careful about not 'getting caught' using terms like "everyone knows" or "if this is too much or too little do this" etc. The spreadsheet was a huge mistake on his part, and he's progressively being caught with his pants down. Just in the last few weeks, he's told folks this new sharpening technique is " highly effective at adding focus..." Technical psychobabble. Again, when Mark pointed out that NO sharpening technique could add focus, he was shunned and censored (again).
So, to answer your question, its all about letting the imaging community know the kind of crap this guy has been generating and asking these people to TEST and examine what he says before drinking the Koolaid outright.
As for the army generals, I will only say that I support them in saying what they feel are the facts, as some of us have tried to do here and on other lists. Lists that are not moderated and censored so that those running them can be protected from the facts, or at least to provide readers enough information to make up their own minds, should they be willing to do some testing. Or, people can read and believe what they hear as fact based on the messenger.
The files, should anyone wish to test them continue to be on my iDisk.
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I'm an avid fan of Brian Fraser, Jeff Schewe, and Andrew Rodney. But when did it become acceptable for one (famous) professional to openly criticize another well-known professional in public? Maybe around the time retired army generals decided it was OK to publicly criticize current active leaders.
The me-ness of our ever-growing self-obsessed narcissism gets more disturbing by the day. Frankly, I think such behavior exhibits a small, petty, and insecure nature. The behavior is unprofessional.
Constantly acknowledging self-greatness greatly diminishes the "great" factor and illustrates a deeper flaw. It's always best to let others do the praising: humility remains a noble trait.
Thoughtful and considerate analysis is always welcome, especially from professionals. But when the agenda gets personal and/or leans destructive, it becomes much harder for the professional to keep his title. Thank goodness some of us choose to remain anonymous and enjoy the fun of saying exactly what we're thinking.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=142905\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I don't know from where you picked up the quote about yahoos keeping their fingers of the keyboard, because I reviewed this thread twice and couldn't find it.
As for professionals critiquing eachother's work in public - that is normal, and an accepted means of making progress. As well, I have no problem with Jeff Schewe reminding readers that he has the credentials to make the analytical remarks he made, because his credentials are his credentials, and not everyone who happens-in to read this stuff knows about them. When I took my car to the repair shop for an opinion on whether the suspension needed revamping, the first thing I asked them is whether they have a mechanic with the knowledge and experience to assess it for that particular vehicle model.
Turning back to the substance of the topic, Jeff and Jonathan have both made the valid point that the procedure seems to emphasize the sharpening of the darker, noisier parts of the image. I suppose that gets enabled with step 6 in the procedure - inverting the channel. However, step 8, the Gaussian blur, is supposed to eliminate the noise. Step 10 I assume is meant to be a "Reveal All" mask, but one could consider doing it with a "Hide All" and painting in the sharpening with a white brush in the desired areas - kind of as a way of not needing to rely on the effectiveness of Step 8. Then one would be left with the fundamental question about how well the technique sharpens the mid tones. If step 8 somehow contributes positively to this, the reasons aren't explained. It isn't obvious.
Therefore one is left with the usual task of "the proof is in the pudding". Jeff here has stated he did make the pudding, and over in DPReview "flashlight" posted some pudding - in both cases it would appear that this technique really has nothing to offer, even compared with USM, let alone any comparison (not yet posted as far as I know) with PKS, which offers substantial value-added over USM. Contrary to what EricWHiss says above, this is not about "macho" anything. It is completely fair and legitimate to test any new technique against any other existing technique - that is the only way to know whether or not it is better in some respects, in all respects, or not at all. And as I've indicated above, to do this thoroughly is a big job. The big job could be worthwhile if the early indications and the underlying principles showed promise, but so far they don't.
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Therefore one is left with the usual task of "the proof is in the pudding". Jeff here has stated he did make the pudding, and over in DPReview "flashlight" posted some pudding - in both cases it would appear that this technique really has nothing to offer, even compared with USM, let alone any comparison (not yet posted as far as I know) with PKS, which offers substantial value-added over USM.
Which brings me back to a key point by Lindbloom that should be emphasized here for those that think its unprofessional to question new methods. It sums up the reason many of us are asking for the pudding with respect to Dan and asking for evidence:
I have nothing against Dan Margulis. As I have repeatedly stated in various venues, he is a knowledgeable person who has helped many people by way of his many contributions online, in publications and through his seminars.
But making statements such as those quoted above, involving accusations of sabotage and deliberate postings of false information, must be challenged. Why should anyone believe these statements? Where is the supporting evidence? My single most important message on this page is found in the last paragraph at the very bottom of the page, which highlights the difference between an assertion and an argument. Learning to recognize assertions when you encounter them, and then forcing the other person to turn it into an argument is a very valuable technique in many aspects of life. Learn it.
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I'm an avid fan of Bruce Fraser, Jeff Schewe, and Andrew Rodney. But when did it become acceptable for one (famous) professional to openly criticize another well-known professional in public?
The dawn of time.
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Bingo!
What amazes me is that I first read about this sharpening method over on dpreview, and people were at least receptive to seeing if it was worth looking into.
-m
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Mike,
Jonathan and Jeff reviewed the procedure and raised in this Thread problems in principle to the effect that from the description of the steps it would appear to sharpen shadow noise and highlights, which is exactly what one would want to avoid (I know Step 8 of the procedure is designed to mitigate that, but does it do so in an acceptable manner?). Jeff says he tested the procedure on some images and believes it is prone to spoiling them. This confirms a spot-test finding made by "flashlight" on DPReview. I think the discussion here between Jeff and Bill Janes on the possible role of this procedure in a multi-stage sharpening workflow was useful. So it looks very much to me as if participants in this thread in this forum are evaluating the procedure for what it is. In all of this, no-one set-up Dan's procedure as the be-all and end-all. That isn't necessary or appropriate; nonetheless it remains totally legitimate to simply evaluate what it does and compare it with other tools and procedures.
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Both of you yahoos go stand in the friggin' corner. If you don't have something useful to say, keep your friggin' fingers off the keyboard.
I'm an avid fan of Bruce Fraser, Jeff Schewe, and Andrew Rodney. But when did it become acceptable for one (famous) professional to openly criticize another well-known professional in public?[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=142905\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Ah...an attempt to use a cross-quote (from me) from an entirely different thread (one that devolved into a mean & nasty exchange) into this thread to try to make a point. Nice try bud...but I'm not being mean and nasty...when I'm mean and nasty, you would know about it–there would be no question, really.
In point of fact, I was actually giving Bill some crap for bringing the whole Photoshop Hall of Fame thing into play as though that somehow had anything to do with anything...I thought that was a useless attempt and one that deserved some blowback.
Bill posted the original message with full knowledge that he would get a rise out of some people. But the fact remains that Dan's sharpening "technique" is pretty far south of useful. And I would have no problem saying that to Dan's face...if he were around (I think he's still off to northern Europe teaching).
If sombody comes up with a crackpot idea, I'll shoot it down regardless of how famous he or she may be. The idea that somehow being famous offers some sort of "protection" from ridicule is, in itself, pretty stupid. Being famous exposes you to critisim and ridicule if the idea being fostered is stupid.
But those of you who wish to continue to drink Dan's Kool-Aid, you go right ahead...but just be sure you understand what it is you are drinking.
Thank goodness some of us choose to remain anonymous and enjoy the fun of saying exactly what we're thinking.
Ah, there you have it...because this person remains "anonymous" he enjoys the freedom of "saying exactly what we're thinking"...but since some of us don't choose to hide behind an anonymous screen name, we get held to a different standard?
Try again bud...that dog don't hunt.
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when I'm mean and nasty
My dearest Jeff, you appear mean and nasty often and laced with plenty of "tude." If sombody comes up with a crackpot idea, I'll shoot it down regardless of how famous he or she may be. The idea that somehow being famous offers some sort of "protection" from ridicule is, in itself, pretty stupid. Being famous exposes you to critisim and ridicule if the idea being fostered is stupid.
Interesting that you, Jeff, would focus on the word "famous" when my point concerned the words "professional" and "behavior."Ah, there you have it...because this person remains "anonymous" he enjoys the freedom of "saying exactly what we're thinking"...but since some of us don't choose to hide behind an anonymous screen name, we get held to a different standard?
Try again bud...that dog don't hunt.
That dog hunts all the time, bud. In "professional" business, different standards apply. They always have. Of course you and other so-called professionals are free to publicly "shoot" anyone down you wish. That doesn't mean such behavior will define "professional" or will remain free from negative consequence.
I wonder how Bruce Chizen feels about professionals who publicly wax derision and do so with a self-righteous big mouth?
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I'm an avid fan of Bruce Fraser, Jeff Schewe, and Andrew Rodney. But when did it become acceptable for one (famous) professional to openly criticize another well-known professional in public?
When a "well-known professional" espouses crackpot theories that are demonstrably false, and responds to every attempt to disprove said theories with ad hominem attacks and censorship, that person deserves public criticism. If I was a famous doctor, and started running around claiming that eating dog feces cured cancer, wouldn't you agree that I would deserve ridicule?
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If I was a famous doctor, and started running around claiming that eating dog feces cured cancer, wouldn't you agree that I would deserve ridicule?
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ROTFL! That's what we needed in this series of posts on such a fine Sunday!
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I wonder how Bruce Chizen feels about professionals who publicly wax derision and do so with a self-righteous big mouth?
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Why would I possibly be interested in what Bruce Chizen thinks about anything?
Again, you are free to hide behind your screen name and launch personal attacks all you want. It means absolutely zero to me. (actually, less the zero truth be told) Maybe sometime you'll actually have something interesting to contribute to the forum instead of ad hominem arguments...(you know what those are, right?)
:~)
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I simply cannot believe that this whole thread is in response to this, from Dan:
"Meanwhile, I wanted to throw out a sharpening idea that I've been having success with
recently. I am intending to show this in my advanced classes later this year but haven't
tested it as well as I should have with enough of a variety of images. So, to those
interested in testing it , suggestions or comments would be welcome, although I don't
know whether I will personally see them for the next two weeks."
and the response includes THIS???:
"When a "well-known professional" espouses crackpot theories that are demonstrably false, and responds to every attempt to disprove said theories with ad hominem attacks and censorship, that person deserves public criticism. If I was a famous doctor, and started running around claiming that eating dog feces cured cancer, wouldn't you agree that I would deserve ridicule?"
Wow.
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and the response includes THIS???
Look up Dan's positions on 16-bit editing, color management, and Adobe Camera Raw, and my comment will make a LOT more sense. My analogy is approriate when applied to an alleged "expert" who dismisses the usefulness of 16-bit-per-channel editing, wide-gamut color spaces such as ProPhoto, and Camera RAW in general. Dan ought to know better.
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In point of fact, I was actually giving Bill some crap for bringing the whole Photoshop Hall of Fame thing into play as though that somehow had anything to do with anything...I thought that was a useless attempt and one that deserved some blowback.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=142932\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
What annoyed me in Andrew's response is that he denounced the method without even having analyzed it. He falsely asserted that the method would throw away detail by using a conversion to CMYK, but if he had read the post, he would have seen that the CMYK was used only to obtain a mask form the K channel. Anything from Dan must be crap. That is unprofessional, and hence my comment on the Hall of Fame.
On the other hand, you and Mark Segal actually analyzed the method and identified some shortcomings
Bill
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"Meanwhile, I wanted to throw out a sharpening idea that I've been having success with
recently. I am intending to show this in my advanced classes later this year but haven't
tested it as well as I should have with enough of a variety of images. So, to those
interested in testing it , suggestions or comments would be welcome, although I don't
know whether I will personally see them for the next two weeks."
Let me translate. It's kind a new Dan speaking here, based on those who have repeatedly questioned him on his list in the past, much of it described above.
I'll be Dan: I just made up a new technique. I don't know if its any good but the after effect looks like the image is sharpener. I'd like you to tell me its good. If you tell me its not so good, I'll ignore you or tell you that you don't understand what I'm going or you didn't tweak the numerous parameters in the technique to make it look good (your fault). If you try this, without testing it next to techniques that have been written about by others over the years, that be great. I really want you to tell me that the technique looks good, then I'll teach it to others. I will not explain when or how to use this, that's not necessary. I'd hate for you to spend the hours upon hours it would take to fully test this on lots of images, out to lots of devices, especially compared to existing techniques where the authors did all this work. All I'd like is for you to say its good as it currently stands. I would test this myself but for reasons I will not say, I can't. I'm now leaving the scene, discuss this on your own, but be aware that my list has no less than 5 moderators and if you question what I'm doing, you'll be censored. Enjoy.
In the recent past, Dan would simply state his techniques as being factually correct and superior to anything else out there. Like "you should convert to Lab and sharpen the L channle despite the time and data loss". When you inform him that such a process isn't necessary, we have blend modes in Photoshop for doing this faster, with more control and without data loss, well its simply not appropriate.
To append, Dan never setups up any kind of testing parameters, making the request for testing pretty lame. Bruce didn't operate in such a non scientific process. When he asked for feedback, he didn't just throw out a techniques, he used well defined ground rules for testing. He wasn't asking for people to tell him what he wanted to hear, he wanted actual, useful feedback in order to make his technique better. In the above example, Dan really wants admiration and attention. Otherwise he'd ask people to use well defined testing methods for valuable feedback.
He could have said "if the image looks sharpener, let me know" but that would have been a bit too obvious, even for his followers.
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What annoyed me in Andrew's response is that he denounced the method without even having analyzed it. He falsely asserted that the method would throw away detail by using a conversion to CMYK, but if he had read the post, he would have seen that the CMYK was used only to obtain a mask form the K channel. Anything from Dan must be crap. [a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=142969\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Actually, what I said was exactly this, a series of questions, not statements:
What makes it novel?
Is it capture or output sharpening? If the later, how does one know the parameters for each device?
If its based on visual sharpening, how does one operate this considering we're working on low resolution output devices like a display?
What about converting to CMYK (and what space) to generate a black channels? Seems like a good way to toss away a lot of useful data and color gamut (not that Dan believes either are an issue).
Yes I did question it outright based on Dan's history. And I didn't get any replies to the questions asked by those who feel this is a useful technique.
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Andrew, you must admit this is going to get really complicated if you get to be both Dan and you.
In the recent past, Dan would simply state his techniques as being factually correct and superior to anything else out there. Like "you should convert to Lab and sharpen the L channle despite the time and data loss". When you inform him that such a process isn't necessary, we have blend modes in Photoshop for doing this faster, with more control and without data loss, well its simply not appropriate.
This is from Dan's (recent) PP5 book,"If we're in LAB, we always sharpen the L channel only, because the A and B just contain color information, no detail. Unless you're never planning to leave RGB at all, it's best to avoid sharpening there. Both other alternatives have slight technical advantages in certain cases. Not enough, in my view, to warrant moving out of RGB if you have no other reason to do so. In around half of the images I've tested, I see no difference at all..."
This is just frustrating, Andrew.
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Andrew, you must admit this is going to get really complicated if you get to be both Dan and you.
Really scary thought
This is from Dan's (recent) PP5 book,"If we're in LAB, we always sharpen the L channel only, because the A and B just contain color information, no detail. Unless you're never planning to leave RGB at all, it's best to avoid sharpening there. Both other alternatives have slight technical advantages in certain cases. Not enough, in my view, to warrant moving out of RGB if you have no other reason to do so. In around half of the images I've tested, I see no difference at all..."
We don't know how many of the images were tested to understand what half means for one.
We can produce visually identical results using Fade/Lumonisty. I'm arguing with a fellow over on DP review who says the differences are obvious. Here are the two files:
1. http://digitaldog.net/files/LabvsLumonisity.jpg (http://digitaldog.net/files/LabvsLumonisity.jpg)
Which is which? One's sharpening in Lab, the other is the Fade technique.
2. http://digitaldog.net/files/ApplyImage.jpg (http://digitaldog.net/files/ApplyImage.jpg)
Here we use the apply command/subtract to see there IS a difference (all non gray pixels). But man, its really subtle.
So the question becomes, why go to Lab to sharpen? Well its a good way to toss away 20-30 or more levels in your original just by virtue of the conversions. And of course, it takes time if you have a big file. So one technique is slower and more damaging, the other isn't and provides a nice opacity tweak if you want it. Which would you use?
OK, he says "If we're in Lab". So you sharpen for what, ouptut? And yes, I plan to never leave RGB, certainly for all my editing needs. I'll convert to CMYK as a last step. So if I'm in Lab, polishing a turd using a Lab move, I should now sharpen because I'm in Lab? Or move into Lab again later?
Then we have the newer Dan speak of ensuring that he doesn't say anything that can be held against him but not defining anything either such as "Both other alternatives have slight technical advantages in certain cases." Well what are they? What cases, what are the advantages? If you do the tests, what are the technical disadvantages of using Fade? No question its faster. And no question there's less data loss. You can't do a round trip from RGB to Lab and back without some data loss. In high bit, its moot, you have plenty of data to start with. Expect Dan doesn't buy high bit editing.
"Not enough in my view". Well based on what Dan? Could you tell us? No, its better to be vague.
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On the other hand, you and Mark Segal actually analyzed the method and identified some shortcomings
Bill
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=142969\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Bill, thanks for the credit, but it was actually Jonathan Wienke who made the first analytical comment in this thread about the wrong emphasis the procedure would produce, then some time after Jeff's analytic post, I followed-up with a comment on the relationship between two steps in the procedure dealing with the black mask and the treatment of noise, also raised a question about Dan's intro, wondering what bright colour has to do with sharpening, but the main emphasis of my comment was on the need for a proof of concept using a methodology we could consider scientifically valid based on what we now know about sharpening issues - thanks to the late Bruce Fraser and his colleagues.
Turning to Gloria's *astonishment* about what has happened in this discussion thread, Gloria, what you're seeing, as you can understand from Andrew's message, is a lot of attenae up, because of the rather sorry history of the recent past concerning the Camera Raw discussion, the Black and White Adjustment Layer discussion, the moderating practices on ACTL, etc.- all of Dan's making I might add; but "obeying strict rules of justice" and confining the scope to the case in hand, it's hard to avoid noticing the way in which this procedure was launched.
Now here, I don't want to sound unreasonable, but we are talking about material coming from one of the world's foremost professionals in this field. Therefore we have a natural tendancy to hold him to an appropriately high standard in terms of his technical output. The statement of principles underlying the procedure was - to put it mildly - thin, and likely contains errors mentioned above. There are precious few explanations underlying the rationale for the various steps. Explanation of methodology for using it is also thin. Even a very preliminary comparison to demonstrate its value of the kind "flashlight" produced on DPReview wasn't provided. It was kind of thrown out as a "here - test this and comment" request. Now any one who wants to argue back that Dan is in travel status - my response would be fine - wait until you can do it properly.
Putting it out this way itself demonstrates to me that perhaps Dan hasn't fully internalized the true scope of the sharpening challenge, because if he did, he would have realized that a proof of concept in this particular area really needs *a lot* of concentrated effort using a well-selected and representative matrix of cases - provided both the underlying principles and preliminary spot-tests indicate the procedure may have real merit and therefore deserves more thorough testing. That, however, has been seriously questioned over the past couple of days and should provide useful feedback for Dan. Whether he agrees with it of course remains to be seen. He could also make a positive contribution by participating in the technical aspects of the discussion on and in this Forum.
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Why would I possibly be interested in what Bruce Chizen thinks about anything?
The super-egos and self-righteous among us tend not to care what anybody thinks of them. Donald Trump comes to mind and I think he's a small, petty man.
Bruce Chizen? John Lang? Michael Reichmann? Does any professional matter? At least in your seminars your thoughtful enough to ask if anyone from Epson is in the room before you criticize them.
If your cowboy/biker, shoot-em-down style helps to attract corporate interest and money, congratulations. Will it help define you as professional? I guess that's for the marketplace to decide. For me, I prefer Michael Reichmann's style of professionalism.you are free to hide behind your screen name and launch personal attacks all you want. It means absolutely zero to me. (actually, less the zero truth be told)
I'm happy it meant enough for you to respond. I don't view defining professional in the context of this thread as a "personal attack." Let's not forget I'm a fan. Do you treat all your customers this way?
The method of any man's argument illustrates character.
As for hiding...yes, men tell me my naked beauty is so great it blinds. This being a forum for photographers, I figured I'd spare everyone.
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As for hiding...yes, men tell me my naked beauty is so great it blinds. This being a forum for photographers, I figured I'd spare everyone.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=143002\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Now you really have my curiosity going <g>
Of course, there's that old saying about curiosity and the cat. Being an old dog... Never mind.
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If I am not mistaken, they were discussing the interest of taking into account color saturation/purity in the original image as one of the inputs in determining the amount of sharpening that would be required.
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Any comment on the relevance of color saturation/purity on sharpening?
Cheers,
Bernard
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Any comment on the relevance of color saturation/purity on sharpening?
Cheers,
Bernard
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Bernard, yes, please read one of my posts above, where I commented that I think it is completely irrelevant. It isn't the colour that matters for sharpening, it is the structure of the image's frequency for capture sharpening, and resolution for output sharpening. There is no necessary correlation betweeen frequency and colour unless you saturate a colour to the extent that it obliterates detail, and at that point no amount of acutance enhancement will bring it back. Try it and you will readily see. Maybe I'm missing something fundamental, but I just don't see where Dan is coming from on this - it makes no obvious sense in terms of the basic principles of sharpening as we now understand them.
Cheers,
Mark
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Any comment on the relevance of color saturation/purity on sharpening?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=143017\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Only as it may relate to avoid sharpening color data instead of luminance data...which Dan's technique fails to address (unless he just forgot to tell people to set the background copy that is sharpened to a luminosity blend mode).
Generally, it's not a real good isea to sharpen color...but the luminosity of a color often needs sharpening to bring out texture and detail.
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Let's not forget I'm a fan.
photographers, I figured I'd spare everyone.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=143002\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Well, with "fans" like you, I sure don't need enemies...
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Jeff, true enough.
I think Bernard may have been referring to this statement of Dan's:
"I've realized a corollary--in addition to lightness, a strong color is an argument against sharpening. We don't like to oversharpen skies, the petals of flowers, and human skin, for example."
In these cases of course one may not even want to sharpen the luminance of the colours, but not because of the colours - rather because of the subject matter. And what if there happens to be detail within the strong colours that one wishes to enhance? No sharpening allowed? Would sharpening here, using proper capture and output sharpening mess up the image in any way whatsoever?
Mark
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In these cases of course one may not even want to sharpen the luminance of the colours, but not because of the colours - rather because of the subject matter. And what if there happens to be detail within the strong colours that one wishes to enhance? No sharpening allowed? Would sharpening here, using proper capture and output sharpening mess up the image in any way whatsoever?
I am really confused by something here. If one wants to avoid sharpening color noise, does sharpening in the luminosity blend mode ignore color noise, or does it sharpen noise, but eliminate color shifting? Or possibly something else entirely?
What does it mean to sharpen the luminance of the colors?
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Gloria, my understanding is that when we work in Luminosity blend mode the whole idea is to avoid altering or affectingcolour, but rather alter luminosity only. In this mode, similarly sharpening of colour noise would also be ignored; but I expect that luminance noise may not be so ignored, and if there is much of that, it should be disposed of before sharpening - normally using something like NoiseWare or Noise Ninja on its own duplicate image layer until one is satisfied with the balance between noise reduction and "sharpness". Jeff can answer for what he means by sharpening the luminance of the colours, but I interpret this to be sharpening the edges between light and dark contours, whatever the colour.
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Gloria,
Further to my message from last night, you will find what Jeff means by sharpening luminance in this article of his:
Schewe Article on Camera Raw 4.1 (http://www.photoshopnews.com/2007/05/31/about-camera-raw-41/)
Mark
(edited for web page identifier)
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Gloria,
Further to my message from last night, you will find what Jeff means by sharpening luminance in this article of his:
Schewe Article on Camera Raw 4.1 (http://www.photoshopnews.com/2007/05/31/about-camera-raw-41/)
Mark
(edited for web page identifier)
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=143122\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Thanks very much for your reply, Mark. There is a small distinction I am still not able to eliminate: does the Luminosity Blend mode look at color noise, sharpen its edges, but not cause color shifting/color in halos or does it ignore color noise all together?
Andrew's post in which he provided two files is really interesting. I would like to know if my question has anything to do with the extremely slight difference he found between sharpening methods.
Gloria
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Thanks very much for your reply, Mark. There is a small distinction I am still not able to eliminate: does the Luminosity Blend mode look at color noise, sharpen its edges, but not cause color shifting/color in halos or does it ignore color noise all together?
Andrew's post in which he provided two files is really interesting. I would like to know if my question has anything to do with the extremely slight difference he found between sharpening methods.
Gloria
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=143128\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Gloria, that is a "fine" question in more ways than one; now that you have raised it I am curious to know the answer!
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... I expect that luminance noise may not be so ignored, and if there is much of that, it should be disposed of before sharpening - normally using something like NoiseWare or Noise Ninja on its own duplicate image layer until one is satisfied with the balance between noise reduction and "sharpness".
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=143048\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Mark,
Your suggestion seems like a very good one, but do you carry the process further by making a surface mask to protect the edges and allow stronger NR in areas with less detail. In his sharpening book, Bruce suggested that one could merely invert the sharpening mask for this purpose, but that better results would require some tweaking.
The case of the blue sky is illustrative. It makes no sense to sharpen blue sky, not so much because of its color, but because there is no detail to sharpen and the sharpening will only accentuate noise. The edge mask will protect the sky from the sharpening. With NR, the sky has little detail and strong NR may be employed and a surface mask will reveal the sky but protect the edges from the NR process.
The NR programs such as Noise Ninja may have edge protection but so far as I know this is not documented.
One could make his/her own surface mask, but perhaps the edge mask in PK Sharpener could be used as a starting point. Any suggestions from you (or Jeff and others too)?
Bill
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Surely it only looks at the luminosity values of the colour noise pixels?
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Andrew's post in which he provided two files is really interesting. I would like to know if my question has anything to do with the extremely slight difference he found between sharpening methods.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=143128\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
The question about color noise and color itself? I don't think so based on looking at the results of the Apply command. Looks more like the issues of moving from RGB to Lab and back. I also see the effects on some very fine edges.
You can test this yourself on any image you like. I actually used one that (according to Chris Murphy) should show more differences by using a working space in a 1.8 gamma TRC (ColorMatch RGB and ProPhoto RGB).
Take an RGB image. Duplicate it. On the duplicate I ran USM (75/1/0 but you can use what you wish). Then faded Lumonisty. On the original I converted to Lab, selected the L channel, ran the same USM. Then I used Covert to Profile to convert back to the original color space. Use Apply Image. Subtract. Offset is 128. If the documents are identical, every pixel in the image would be a solid level 128 gray. Pixels that aren't level 128 gray are different by the amount they depart from 128 gray. Zoom in, you can see the differences.
Of course, just looking at the two prior to the Apply shows what appears to be identical looking results. You have to use the Apply trick to see the very subtle differences.
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Surely it only looks at the luminosity values of the colour noise pixels?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=143143\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
John, when you start an answer with a certainty and end it with a question mark, it tells me we're not quite so sure? Right? OK, that was for a laugh.
Substantively, what intrigues me about Gloria's question is this: assuming the luminosity of a pixel which is actually colour noise differs from that of the pixel/pixels next door to it (which may or may not be colour noise), there is by definition an edge created, hence is it not reasonable to believe that the edge would be sharpened eventhough the colour of the pixel may be left unaltered in luminosity mode?
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Take an RGB image. Duplicate it. On the duplicate I ran USM (75/1/0 but you can use what you wish). Then faded Lumonisty. On the original I converted to Lab, selected the L channel, ran the same USM. Then I used Covert to Profile to convert back to the original color space. Use Apply Image. Subtract. Offset is 128. If the documents are identical, every pixel in the image would be a solid level 128 gray. Pixels that aren't level 128 gray are different by the amount they depart from 128 gray. Zoom in, you can see the differences.
I almost think I'm doing something wrong, because I'm seeing really substantial differences on the three images I've tried this with. Especially in the noisy sky of one image. I could post these, but people should do this themselves, so they can zoom in to really take a look.
I do agree, though, that I couldn't easily see much difference unless I used the Apply Image 'trick'.
Btw, I also did this without applying any sharpening, just the conversions, and did notice some difference, sort of what I would call a smearing of some color areas.
Gloria
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I almost think I'm doing something wrong, because I'm seeing really substantial differences on the three images I've tried this with. Especially in the noisy sky of one image. I could post these, but people should do this themselves, so they can zoom in to really take a look.
I do agree, though, that I couldn't easily see much difference unless I used the Apply Image 'trick'.
I'm confused because you say you see substantial differences on the three images but then say you couldn't easily see the differences without the Apply Image 'trick'.
Btw, I also did this without applying any sharpening, just the conversions, and did notice some difference, sort of what I would call a smearing of some color areas.
So you compared a non edited version with one that simply made a move from RGB to Lab and back again. I'd expect to see that. This is a reason why, in 8-bit, you don't want to make such moves. Depending on the original color space, both gamut and gamma, you will toss between 20 and 30 levels of the original 256 levels of the document just converting into and out of Lab.
In fact you may be onto something. You could compare the differences in just the color space conversions using Apply trick compared to just the sharpening edit and get some idea which is providing more alterations to the data. But in the end, just look at the two images side by side at 100% view. When I did my tests (which you can see contains gradients which can show a lot of data loss damage), I could hardly see the differences between the two, hence the need for the Apply trick.
In my mind (and I really DO need to test this on more images in different color spaces), the Fade Luminosity technique works as well as going through the hoops of converting to Lab to sharpen. And that's why we have such a blend mode. To attempt to accomplish the kinds of moves we'd see just working on the L channel of a Lab file, without having to make conversions.
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I'm confused because you say you see substantial differences on the three images but then say you couldn't easily see the differences without the Apply Image 'trick'.
Sorry, what I meant is that comparing the images side by side at 100% (before the apply image trick) didn't show much difference. But the results of the Apply Image trick showed a lot of changes between the two files. In one of the three, I could clearly see the entire image.
The thing I don't know yet is if the changes are significant/obvious in the final print. (if one is printing). I guess I should print them.
Thank you, Andrew. This 'apply image trick' has many possibilities for comparing techniques.
Gloria
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Mark,
Your suggestion seems like a very good one, but do you carry the process further by making a surface mask to protect the edges and allow stronger NR in areas with less detail. In his sharpening book, Bruce suggested that one could merely invert the sharpening mask for this purpose, but that better results would require some tweaking.
The case of the blue sky is illustrative. It makes no sense to sharpen blue sky, not so much because of its color, but because there is no detail to sharpen and the sharpening will only accentuate noise. The edge mask will protect the sky from the sharpening. With NR, the sky has little detail and strong NR may be employed and a surface mask will reveal the sky but protect the edges from the NR process.
The NR programs such as Noise Ninja may have edge protection but so far as I know this is not documented.
One could make his/her own surface mask, but perhaps the edge mask in PK Sharpener could be used as a starting point. Any suggestions from you (or Jeff and others too)?
Bill
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=143142\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Bill, firstly, I have to say that noise is not a big-ticket issue for me. I shoot most of my images at ISO 100 or 200 with a Canon 1Ds, so the amount of noise reduction I need varies from none to little. When I need it, say higher ISO shots or where "cleanliness" is very critical, I do a number of things - depending. Before any sharpening (i.e. ZERO in Camera Raw, then just after rendering into Photoshop) I'm mainly using NoiseWare for noise reduction. It has a remarkably detailed UI and feature set for distingushing between detail and noise for both colour (even various hue categories) and luminance noise. But sometimes I want to be more extreme in how I handle noise vs sharpening in a single image.
Good example, I have images where I want zero noise reduction in some areas and heavy noise reduction in others. Large amounts of sky above a city-scape with much fine detail and texture which I want to preserve is good example. In a case like this I put the sky on a layer, apply heavy noise reduction to that layer, then capture sharpen the whole image, examine the result on the display at 50% and 100%; if OK, just flatten the whole thing and carry on. If not, adjust opacities of the noise and sharpen layers, re-examine and flatten. Take another example: I want sharpening on everything except skin. I’ll sharpen, then punch-through the sharpening layer masks with a paint brish (be it capture or output sharpen) to delete the effect of the sharpening in those particular areas. There are other ways of targeting of course, but these two are the more usual situations and these approaches are quick and effective.
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Well, with "fans" like you, I sure don't need enemies...
True, loyal fans often care deeply about the character of the men and women they admire. Enemies hate and typically seek to destroy. Jeff (and Andrew), I repeat, I am a fan. And I may continue to pay hard-earned money for your knowledge. That's up to you.
My purpose on this thread was to address "professional behavior," particularly the public kind. If the subject of behaving like a professional does not belong here, Michael Reichmann is free to edit the thread.
Much like bashing a fellow professional, calling a customer, any customer, a "yahoo," or any derogatory name in public, demonstrates disrespect and possibly contempt. It is my firm belief that any businessman who disrespects or maintains any obvious contempt for his customers or fellow businessmen, is a businessman out to destroy. He is his own worst enemy.
One final note: I came to this thread wondering who Dan Margulis was. I had never heard of him. I called friends at two ad agencies and they had never heard of him. Finally, I presented his name to my two favorite beauty retouchers at Box Studios. One said, "Never heard of him." The other said, "She's hot!" (It was noisy but I'm sure Cindy Margolis appreciated the compliment.)
Charlatans exist in every business. I'm sure Adobe software has spawned many. There is always a discreet and polite way to let your fans and customers know what you think of an opposing theory. Hopefully, if you regard yourself as a true professional and care to protect your business interests, you'll change the subject. The use of discretion can be as powerful and rewarding as Photoshop.
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My purpose on this thread was to address "professional behavior," particularly the public kind.
I may have stepped over the line in professional behavior but I'm not convinced (yet) but will keep an open mind.
What is key here is that industry experts (guru's, pundits, whatever) should be able to discuss the ideals and techniques of others, its known as peer review. Its done in all kinds of industries. It should be applied to myself, Jeff and in this context, Dan. I've tried to explain a history of denial on Dan's part, censorship and worse, an inability to allow peer review. If in doing so I got personal, and in that respect unprofessional, I will gladly review these points when shown to me and if necessarily, apologize not to Dan but to the community. I don't recall saying he's a fat impotent slob that can't tie his shoes. I did say he's got a big BS factor, which I believe can be demonstrated by simply quoting him.
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One final note: I came to this thread wondering who Dan Margulis was.
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That explains a lot...your lack of knowledge about a published author and Photoshop expert of many years kinda puts the rest of your perspective in context.
As for your attempts at behavior modification bud, that's a lost cause...I'm way to old to care what others may think of me. It's just not relevant to who I am and what I do.
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Mistybreeze, whoever you are, there is no disagreement between you and me about the desirability of maintaining professional standards on web forums. That would make it perhaps less than satisfactory to label customers as "yahoos". I think you would agree that any one who buys a book is a customer of the author. I quote for you from the left column of page 58 in Professional Photoshop 5th Edition by Dan Margulis as follows:
"The following practices identify you as a yahoo and should be avoided:
> Using the Master Curve.................."
Well, you know, when I read that (and I am a customer of Dan's books too - lots of useful stuff in them) I just passed it off as Dan's emphatic way of trying to drive home a point, but truly it's a bit condescending and demeaning, especially since the overwhelming majority of his peers teach their students how to use the Master Curve (known by the rest of the world as the RGB curve) appropriately.
So the message here is simply this: within the range of behaviours that are "not un-professional", there can be some wiggle room for a bit of feistiness in the give-and-take before it gets downright nasty (which must be avoided), and those people who are overly dogmatic about what to do and what not to do in a program like Photoshop can expect a reasonable dose of it.
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Well, you know, when I read that (and I am a customer of Dan's books too - lots of useful stuff in them) I just passed it off as Dan's emphatic way of trying to drive home a point, but truly it's a bit condescending and demeaning, especially since the overwhelming majority of his peers teach their students how to use the Master Curve (known by the rest of the world as the RGB curve) appropriately.
Dan is a master of being condesending and demeaning on his list. Case in point was the post you Mark made about new usefulness and functionality in Camera Raw 4 (of which I know Dan doens't have, I saw him at Photoshop World last month using CS2 for his classes). He goes on a rant about how shills (who's he pointing his finger at?) and paid consultants:
Mark Segal writes,
>>This is out of date. The Raw Converter in CS3 (ACR-4) is far more
powerful and offers many new and improved options for correcting and modifying
colour balance, hue, brightness and saturation of individual colours, and
overall image brightness and contrast whether in colour or greyscale.>>
Dan replies:
This morning I started a new class with eight strangers. In light of your post, I asked them: What is the version of Photoshop that you currently use? The answer was what I would have expected at this time: one uses CS3, seven CS2. That's entirely typical of past releases of Photoshop--it's at least six months after the initial ship date before the new release has caught on with the majority of the professional user base. (AR: Dan using his idea of science to propose fact, he asked 8 people who gravitated to his class about their experiences, that sums up the entire Photoshop community).
What I asked was that "as a courtesy" people who were using tools from the new release to explain to the non-users (who are certainly the current majority) what is going on. This is no different from what has taken place in past releases; for example when we discussed the Surface Blur filter here in the early stages of the CS2 release most people were kind enough to indicate not just *what* it did but talk about specific images in which it was superior to previous methods.
There is an even more compelling reason to ask this here. It is difficult to think of anything in the last five years that was overhyped the way the CS2 Raw was. Among the phrases that the shills used to describe it was "an absolute revolution"; "incredibly powerful"; "renders Photoshop a mere plug-in for Camera Raw"; "gives infinite control", "the greatest advance in Photoshop ever," etc., etc. Worse, those users who hadn't hopped on board were belittled and informed that it proved that they were disinterested in quality, and that if they were really anything more than rubes they would be using the state-of-the-art stuff that all professionals know is the best ever. (AR: Utter nonsense. And where did these quotes come from? Can he back this up?).
Now, of course, it turns out that the CS2 release was not so hot--otherwise, how could CS3 be, as you say, "far more powerful"? And how could all these vital tools possibly have been left out in the past? (AR: With that attitude, why not stick with Photoshop 2.5 Dan?. And CS2 was not so hot? Why? Because Dan says so)
Whenever any software package is upgraded, you can be sure that certain
parts of it will be fluff and others actually useful. (AR: Its fluff based on what I say is Fluff, not you. Oh, and doesn't Adobe provide a demo so you can decide if this is full or not?) It is up to the users to sort it out and decide whether it is worth getting. Obviously the shills will be telling us, as they always do, that it is the greatest release in the history of the galaxy. Sensible people (AR: That means Dan) ignore this bought-and-paid-for commentary. (AR: I, Dan of course don't count here) Someone like yourself, OTOH, who does not depend on handouts from vendors, can promote the product considerably more than they can, by citing specific images that benefit from it and that could not have been worked as effectively in the version that previously was the greatest release in the history of the galaxy.
If you get a handout, your obviously biased. Hog wash. Read ANY review in a magazine or on line, the authors get the products to review. 9 times out of 10, they keep it. A good reviewer who's respected and has been doing reviews for any length of time is going to be unbiased. What Dan is pissed about is hardly anyone would send him product to review, he was kicked off the Photoshop beta years ago for being not only useless but worse, for writing scathing reviews of Photoshop that were either technically soft or to once again build attention to himself. Most well balanced reviews stress the good and the not so good.
On his list, he didn't imply, he said Adobe was Jeff's boss. He insulted Chris Murphy, a well respected author and expert. Chris replied and of course got nothing back from Dan:
Chris replies:
Who's the bought and paid for commentary? Who, specifically, depends on handouts from vendors? What's the nature of the handout? How is the advice adversely tainted? You brought this up and have made a charge of serious impropriety on the part of unnamed digital imaging professionals, and you've done so with a VERY broad brush. Your statement categorizes anyone who says this or that is the best release ever is a shill. Watch out where you point that shotgun.
So there's more to all this than Dan's questionable techniques, lack of methodology and peer review. He's a hypocrite and he's just as nasty as anyone here or elsewhere with respect to professional courtesy.
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That explains a lot...your lack of knowledge
It sure does bother me, Jeff, that you seem to take pleasure in pointing out how everyone is NOT as smart as you. As brilliant as I think you are, I find this to be a "small" quality in a man.I'm way to old to care what others may think of me.
They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks but I rarely listen to what "they" say. Plus, it's never too late to love yourself and others more. My thoughts on professionalism were meant for any photographer trying to grapple with the business side of doing business. My perspective was not meant for you alone.It's just not relevant to who I am and what I do.
I see a couple of I's there which suggests your focus on only yourself. It seems you're professionally aligned with others, though. Is their professionalism worthless? I guess if they choose to tolerate the selfishness of the old dog than so be it. I still believe you can do better.your lack of knowledge about a published author and Photoshop expert of many years
I can't read and/or follow every so-called "Photoshop expert." I have a business to run, mouths to feed and people who need my love and attention. If you want to criticize me and "shoot me down" because I was smart enough to latch my brain and focus onto Bruce Fraser, Jeff Schewe, and Andrew Rodney, while not wasting my time and energy on most others, be my guest.there is no disagreement between you and me about the desirability of maintaining professional standards on web forums
"Professional behavior" in public includes more than just web forums.I think you would agree that any one who buys a book is a customer of the author.
Buys a book, attends a seminar, and purchases software, yes, including those of the experts who are professionally aligned with each other. I quote for you from the left column of page 58 in Professional Photoshop 5th Edition by Dan Margulis as follows: "The following practices identify you as a yahoo and should be avoided:
> Using the Master Curve.................."
Maybe there was a good reason why the experts in my life never mentioned or steered me in the direction of Margulis. Like I said, I don't have time to waste on bullshit and charlatans. Every expert in my circle knows I spend my money and time wisely. A thoughtless recommendation that proves worthless will get you beheaded in my studio.I just passed it off as Dan's emphatic way of trying to drive home a point
Nobody is perfect and fans tend to overlook a flaw or two. Plus, drama attracts attention. Schewe's seminar style shocked me at first but I kept giving him another chance. The brains matter more to me than the insecure bully factor.
In the "serious" business world, especially when you are aligned with other professionals, public behavior matters because respect and character matters. There isn't much "wiggle room" for tolerating flaws.
I fully agree, I'm grateful when someone steers me away from a charlatan or bad advice. But there is a professional way to bring differences to light without doing harm to your professional reputation or attaching your "shoot-em-down" reputation to others in alignment.
I've been told some photographers are worse than $2000-a-day hairdressers. Their ego and need to proclaim their greatness leaps beyond any form of professional standard. I don't enjoy the comparison and I'm proud of my professional woman behavior, bud.
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Andrew, you know, I was puzzled by the result of his poll in the Advanced Class - one of eight people having up-graded to CS3. I'm not saying he wasn't telling the truth, but the puzzling thing is that (i) it's the advanced class, meaning they all took his basic class which is a pre-requisite, and (ii) these are people willing to commit 1600 in the US for that class, so there is something serious about their interest in Photoshop. Could it be that the class occurred so soon after the new release that few had up-graded yet? I'm not sure about the exact timing of these events. Anyhow, he should better have asked how many of them WILL up-grade and I'll bet he would had a much different answer.
The other aspect of puzzlement is that when we go to PSW, more often than not people like Scott Kelby will start a session with "how many of you have up-graded to CS3; how many on CS2; how many on CS; how many still on PS7......(security! laughter.....). And the audience can be anywhere from 500~2500 people, so the sample is much bigger than 8. I look around the room at that question time and I see (each time that I've been there, and I chose the PSWs closest after a Photoshop upgrade) that AT LEAST half the audience if not more is already up-graded. Personally, I was "upgraded" from the day the Beta was announced.
I read most of the reviews and commentary on new releases and I just haven't seen the extent of hype and exaggeration about them Dan talks about. Most of them are enthusiastic about the new features, but that's fine - par for the course. Most of them also use the opportunity to communicate their wish-lists - and that helps Adobe in charting the future work program. And some of them do indicate that they don't see the obvious improvement of this or that llittle bit. As well, it is technically undeniable that ON THE WHOLE each release is better than the previous one. So what's his problem?
You know, after reading all that stuff you just quoted about what Dan responded to me, the only things I thought it worthwhile to say at the time are that I've processed about 1400 images of all kinds in the new software since it became available so I have some experience to rely upon, and just because successive versions of Photoshop were advances over previous ones, as they should be, it doesn't mean the previous ones were no good or that commentators had no right to tell their readers what improved since the previous version. "Rome wasn't built in a day" but people were living in it during the construction phases.
Oh - and I may have mentioned that professional reviewers are entitled to remuneration for the time they spend (and the expertise they've invested in)working the software and writing their stuff. It's real work and they deserve to be paid for it.
I found it very unfortunate how technical discussions about a piece of new software got diverted into all this kind of stuff. It would indeed have been preferable to see the colour space discussion, the bit-depth discussion, the Camera Raw discussion, the colour management discussion (trusting "machines"), the B&W Adjustment Layer discussion and now the sharpening discussion stick to their technical and aesthetic aspects. But it was not to be.
(Edited: unintended emoticon eliminated)
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In all fairness, (sigh) and in spite of the fact that I find some of the shenanigans really frustrating, I have to consider this: isn't it amazing that we are able to actually access people like Jeff Schewe and Andrew Rodney at all? I wonder how many times they have seen the same questions and responded to the same arguments in the last couple of years?
Andrew just provided me a very courteous response to a question that has been plaguing me for some time. Jeff was one of the portfolio reviewers at Photoshop World; I benefited greatly from a very patient and encouraging exchange.
Cost and benefit? Benefits far outweigh the cost, in my opinion. Simple as that
Gloria
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It sure does bother me, Jeff, that you seem to take pleasure in pointing out how everyone is NOT as smart as you. As brilliant as I think you are, I find this to be a "small" quality in a man.
And others could say it bothers them that the majority of your posts on this forum have been self-righteous pontifications proclaiming your moral superiority over others here, while in several instances the invective and epithets you've directed toward others has been far harsher and more disrespectful than the statements that got you on your high horse in the first place. If you want to be the guardian of civility and decorous public discourse here, the first place you should apply your standard of civility and respectfulness is to your own postings.
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I have been a long time lurker on LL, recent joiner and more recent poster, and having watched this thread and others, I'm now motivated to post on this subject (ie. the DM subject).
From the start I'll admit to believing in the benefits of a calibrated workflow and I think that DM writes at a level that involves some abstract thought beyond the basic user of PS, but that DM also acknowledges this in his books. His books are not meant for the basic or even intermediate user and DM fails to acknowledge this to the extent necessary.
Why I have been motivated to post is that I see this type of thread on a few forums (eg. DGRIN (user: peterst6906) and dpreview) and, in my view, to some/many it can come across a bit like school-yard bullying.
DM doesn't (for whatever reason) move outside his own tightly controlled list (ACTL) and so, to people who don't know much about the list, it seems like there are plenty of personal attacks from one side, without any defence from the other (not that there isn't the chance to defend himself, just that DM doesn't move outside ACTL), and it is natural for this to attract sympathy.
This makes it seem like a snap-shot photograph. The people in the know are able to draw on personal experience from ACTL in order to write their posts, but some of the message is in their experience, it isn't in the personal exerience of what general people see. So it's like a snap-shot because while the photo triggers memories in the photographer, others just don't see the connection because the composition doesn't stand on it's own. All they see is part of a message without the back-ground.
I think this is where the claims of "unprofessionalism" come from. However, as PhD scientist myself, I totally agree with the idea of peer review, but think that peer review should be confined to assessing the technique/method/hypothesis and not the man. It's not the man that is important, only the ideas.
This is where some disagreement might occur, because while it may seem that the ideas are being attacked, others may see that the man is being attacked instead (without any defence, despite his ability to defend himself here).
Perhaps a better strategy to show that the Emperor has no clothes would be to only make comments about the technique and to leave the names, egos and histories out of it.
If this is a thread about a sharpening technique, then perhaps the other field experts might discuss a response privately and then one post (with supporting comments from others) on some of the technical limits of the technique and ways in which general readers can test this (ie. 16 bit v. 8 bit, Lab, CMYK, ACR, etc. aren't relevant to this discussion for most people, only the technical merits of the sharpening method are).
That would allow anyone to make their own emprirical conclusion about the method, without being clouded by the character assassination (whether you agree or not, this is a perception).
Then, if the method doesn't stand up, people will see that the Emperor has no clothes and his influence will be diminished.
Ultimately, attacking the ideas is a much better peer review then attacking the character, but unfortunately, for those without a personal knowledge of ACTL, it seems like the reverse is happening.
MarkDS in his replies attracts some praise, I think, specifically because he focusses more on the technical aspects of the topic at hand, rather than the other topics that cloud the issue.
If you just chose to completely ignore DM is association with this method, and only discussed the technique, then the value might be increased.
Hope that helps. But if it doesn't, I will keep my head down to avoid that hand-grenades (luckily being Australian, I eat them for breakfast, so can handle criticism if you want to dish it out. Also, I live in The Netherlands and the Dutch aren't known for any sort of tact, so I guess you can say I'm an Australian who has even tougher skin because of my Dutch cultural influence).
Regards,
Peter
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Hope that helps. But if it doesn't, I will keep my head down to avoid that hand-grenades (luckily being Australian, I eat them for breakfast, so can handle criticism if you want to dish it out. Also, I live in The Netherlands and the Dutch aren't known for any sort of tact, so I guess you can say I'm an Australian who has even tougher skin because of my Dutch cultural influence).
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Gotta love those Aussies...
Personally, I think the whole "professionalism" aspect of this thread has been blown WAY out of proportion–particularly by mistybreeze's attempts at behavior mod. Nothing he, (or I suppose she) has written has been on point nor on topic...and believe me when I tell ya getting a finger shaken in my face doesn't phase me one bit...
The simple fact is that ol' Dano has been TRYING for years to regain some level of relevance in an industry that has moved beyond his area of expertise–prepress and has tried to branch out in areas where his lack of knowledge and expertise tends to get pretty quickly exposed.
I seriously doubt he will leave the cocoon of the ACTL list because then he's exposed to a far wider ranging group of peers...
But I have no problem sticking to the technical merits (or lack thereof) of a a debate. However, I think the first salvo was lobbed by the OP himself, not those following up on the discussion...and I'll never back down from a good dustup!
:~)
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Hope that helps. But if it doesn't, I will keep my head down to avoid that hand-grenades (luckily being Australian, I eat them for breakfast, so can handle criticism if you want to dish it out. Also, I live in The Netherlands and the Dutch aren't known for any sort of tact, so I guess you can say I'm an Australian who has even tougher skin because of my Dutch cultural influence).
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Can't disagree with anything you've said, certainly in spirit. It would be useful if we all calmed down a bit and got back to Dan's Sharpening techniques. Lets all be nice and friendly now.
Gotta love those Aussies...
That I do! Any excuse to go there, great people, great food, great wine.
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Earlier in the thread there was some discussion of the need for some comparative testing (perhaps more extensive than what is already available; and including a comparison with PKS).
So, after spending the last 6 weeks in the centre of Russia, I'm finally heading back home this afternoon and I'm happy to volunteer to do some testing. I have all next week off work, so I'll do as much as I can then and post a paper for review.
As a result, expect something no later than 12th October.
After having spent the last year developing a sharpening workflow that I'm comfortable with, I think I understand sharpening enough now to be able to contribute something of value. So I'll host a paper on my domain, but link directly to the paper from this thread.
Regards,
Peter
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Perhaps you'd be kind enough to share the workflow you came up with for yourself with us Peter? I for one would be glad to see any that might help me. Wayne
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In the Nikon forum I came across an interesting post regarding a method devised by Dan Margulis for sharpening of RGB images. It uses an artificial black channel derived from a CMYK conversion to make a sharpening mask which restricts the sharpening to the darker and less colorful areas of the image. This mask It is implemented as a Photoshop action.
Dan Margulis Action (http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1021&message=24980642)
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Quote: >> Doesn't sound very impressive. If you're going to do tonal masking, you want to mask off the highlights and shadows to avoid/reduce halos, especially shadows, since dark tones have the most noise. You also want to mask off highlights to avoid clipping. Focusing sharpening on darker areas makes no sense at all. <<
Quote: >> First off, he doesn't mention the obvious (that I can tell) that the sharpening layer wants to be set to Luminosity only in the blend mode. This is so obvious that it makes me wonder why he left it off. Second, the sharpening is directed to the wrong area/areas of the image (particularly for digital capture). Part of PhotoKit Capture Sharpener's emphasis is to REDUCE sharpening in shadow areas where there is already more noise and in general less edges (which generally occur between light/dark contours). Dan's recipe concentrates sharpening in the WRONG areas and in the wrong ways.<<
I’m typically keeping myself out of sharpening discussions, nonetheless, I downloaded and tried the action:
/> Interestingly enough, the first step of this Action is to change to 16 bit/ch
/> In agreement with above comment, I’d change the sharpening layer to Luminosity blend mode. Also, I would go for a broader split of the Blend-IF sliders e.g. 5/35 – 220/250.
/> The mask obtained from the K-channel seems to be somewhat close to a Luminosity mask which can be obtained without leaving the RGB sphere by duplicating the image, converting to CMYK, etc. I have yet to understand the merits from this effort.
/> Anyway it’s not an edge mask which differentiates by frequency. In a sample chapter of his book, Professional Photoshop (fifth edition) Dan Marglis demonstrates K-channel sharpening with a person’s portrait. It happens that this person has black hair and (light) Caucasian skin. In this case, the K-channel (tonality) correlates with frequency, but that is of course not a general rule.
/> Sharpening is directed to the shadows where there is more noise, thus, making USM prone to amplify the noise. Perhaps – maybe – this Action is meant to be applied on an image where a stronger noise reduction was applied on the shadows first. But even then, a differentiation by frequency would make sense.
I assume that at the end this points to a matrix where the needs for noise reduction and (re-)sharpening are defined depending on tonality and frequency. At the moment, I find this too complex to sort it out and to action it. Above Action for sure does not. So I’m staying with the simpler tools which work well enough for me and leave it with this.
My 2 ct. Peter
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I assume that at the end this points to a matrix where the needs for noise reduction and (re-)sharpening are defined depending on tonality and frequency. At the moment, I find this too complex to sort it out and to action it. Above Action for sure does not. So I’m staying with the simpler tools which work well enough for me and leave it with this.
My 2 ct. Peter
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Peter,
Your findings correlate with others and the supporting reasons you mention appear to me well-based. Of course the matrrix for all of this exists already in the form of PK Sharpener. I reported on the extent of that matrix several days ago above.
Mark
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So, after spending the last 6 weeks in the centre of Russia, I'm finally heading back home this afternoon and I'm happy to volunteer to do some testing. I have all next week off work, so I'll do as much as I can then and post a paper for review.
As a result, expect something no later than 12th October.
After having spent the last year developing a sharpening workflow that I'm comfortable with, I think I understand sharpening enough now to be able to contribute something of value. So I'll host a paper on my domain, but link directly to the paper from this thread.
Regards,
Peter
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Peter,
This is excellent, and very much looking forward to your findings. If you would like to have a copy of the spreadsheet where I charted all the possible combinations of PK Sharpener (for Capture and Output Sharpening) please send me a private email through this website. It all allows one to define and calculate the size of a sample set for testing.
While the most obvious tests of interest to you would be comparisons with your own sharpening approach (I too would be interested in seeing it), it would also be of considerable interest if you were able to include comparisons with PK Sharpener. If you do not own a licensse to it yet, you can download it on trial and give it a whirl with this testing.
Mark
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One big problem I'm having trying to access if Dan's technique is any good is figuring out what its for. As I said, is it capture sharpening (well based on running it, it can't be. More later). Is out output sharpening? Anyway, I downloaded the action from DP Review to run the sharpening technique. I took two very different images: one high key, one low key night shot at a pretty high ISO and ran the images using the defaults (lets not even go into the fudge factor instructions provided by Dan about "if this looks too much or too little).
I wanted to compare this to PhotoKit Sharpener but using what? After viewing the images at 100% in Photoshop from Dan's technique, there's no way this is gentle capture sharpening. Its way, way too sharp for that. So how do I compare it to PKS? Well I used output sharpened for Ink Jet, 300ppi and glossy paper. Anyone who's familiar with this product will know that when you view the effect of this kind of output sharpening on screen, it looks prettly awful but prints fine. Its a wake up call to how silly it is to use a low rez device like a display to visually approach output sharpening. Below I have two examples, one with PKS, one with Dan's technique. Dan's makes the PKS output sharpening look like gentle capture sharpening. What's really really bad here is what he's doing to low key images. They are hosed! And yes, I printed them both out to a 3800 on Luster paper and yes indeed, the severe damage you see in Dan's technique shows up like a sore thumb.
Only two files gang but based on these tests (from Raw, no sharpening in CR, 16-bit ProPhoto RGB), I can only say this technique looks like garbage! Other than the fact the image IS sharpener, its about the worst technique I've tried on images for sharpening in a very long time.
As it appears I can only post one image per post, the first is the night shot, side by side screen dump at 100%. I think you can easily tell which is which. I only wish you could see the prints!
Next post will be my girl Zia in the snow (high key).
It appears that this technique is a bit more forgiving on lighter tones and totally hoses dark tones. But if you look at the high key stuff, it looks pretty darn ugly. But its hard to say anything definitive about this test since we have NO idea from Dan when or how to use this, other than run the action and tweak.
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High key...
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Both images are over-sharpened to the point of unpleasant halos and excessive white artifacting - this is so obvious on the display there is no question in my mind they would print similarly. I haven't seen your prints of course, but I'll stick my neck out and hazard a guess they probably look like those low-res, over-sharpened JPEGs that came out of the digicams from the 1990s - "eh" ? (I'm Canadian, gotta get that "eh" in there!)
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Both images are over-sharpened to the point of unpleasant halos and excessive white artifacting - this is so obvious on the display there is no question in my mind they would print similarly.[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=143694\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Well the output sharpening from PKS, as I said, usually looks pretty awful. That's to be expected. I could upload the 'before' (no sharpening) but again, what readers here have to do is run the action and output the files on their devices. What really looks absolutely awful in Dan's techniques is what's happening in low frequency, almost smooth areas of dark tones. Those are NOT stars in the night shot <g>. In the fur of the darker regions of the dog, there's also some nasty artifacts.
But in the end, this is almost pointless. I'm assuming I ran the action correctly. There are two dialogs that pop (USM and Levels), and I'm supposed to do something here but I have no idea what or based on anything specified. Dan or a minion could say I did this incorrectly. Considering there's no more instructions than 'run the action', I'm at a loss. Then there's the fact I'm comparing this to PKS output to an Ink jet glossy paper 300dpi. Is that fair? Well since I have no idea what Dan's action is for, it may or may not be. If its based on halftone output to a press, and I use PKS for ink jet and print both side by side, I didn't run a fair test and gave PKS an unfair advantage.
Yes, Dan's action does make the image look incredibly awful on screen. But based on what I know about visual sharpening, I guess it could be optimal for something of which hasn't been defined. As such, there's really no fair way to test this other than using the "it looks sharper after then before" which is silly.
Visual sharpening is fraught with issues as many of us know. Our brain plays tricks on us. Over sharpen an image, then fade it back or move the sliders back, the image visually looks softer. I suspect this is one reason so many over sharpen. You have to train yourself to look for areas like harsh halo's or artifacts and not over do it. BTW, I found the same 'optical' effect when using noise reduction. I'm a fan of NoiseWare, and like PKS, I usually let it do its preset thing, rather than try to out smart it. When I move the various sliders to remove the noise, the effect visually is that image looks less sharp. Only when you output the before and after do you see what a great job it does. Certain edits just don't work visually on a display. Sharpening and noise reduction can fall into this camp.
Anyway, I do know that despite what an image looks like at 100% on any display, when I use PKS and output the files, they look as I wish. But I conduct this sharpening based on a well defined methodology and based on what the heck I want to do with the image. None of this applies to Dan's technique. From my perspective, its pretty useless.
Considering Dan's MO in the past, the totally vague instructions for use, with the advise that you should tweak based on visual feedback, this seems like something we might have given a few minutes of attention to way back in Photoshop 2 days. Unless Dan can provide some kind of instructions about what the heck this technique is for, I have to believe its yet another 32 step turd polishing routine that is half baked, not tested. But I'm biased. I fully admit that.
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Andrew,
Did you make prints of the results you got from both Dan's proedure and PKS on those two files you posted? Or are you discussing on the basis of the display view? My take on Dan's procedure is that it is "sharpening" full stop. Like before the days of a "multi-pass sharpening workflow". If so, there's not much point trying to match it with either Capture or Output sharpen. The only valid comparison would be actual prints resulting from running on the one hand Capture + Output in PKS, and on the other hand Dan's procedure. Then compare the prints.
Mark
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Yes, printed. But again, when comparing to PKS, I used a method based on the output I was using (an Epson 3800 on luster paper).
On the print, it doesn't of course look as butt ugly as we see here. But I do see what looks like white pixels (stars) in the Dan version in the sky where in the PKS, its clean and black as the original image shows. I also see noise greatly exacerbated in Dan's image in smooth areas of tone which PKS avoids. In print, there's nothing I see in Dan's version I like over the PKS version, just the opposite. Some might say "Dan's version of the print looks sharper' because it is. The there's far more noise but when you look at edge detail, its no better. And that's where we want to see the effect of sharpening.
Do we really believe that this is output sharpening that's appropriate for any output device, from any resolution file?
And IF I really want to stack the deck in PKS's favor for visual analysis, I could have used output sharpening for the web and posted the images side by side. That would really make Dan's version look worse.
This effect of Dan's looks like the over-sharpened drum scans we got in the early 90's. This might print well in a book or to a press. But since I don't know what its based on, all I can say is that to a good ink jet printer, its not at all useful.
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I went back to look at Dan's directions for doing this sharpening. They are:
Here's the procedure, which of course should be reduced to an Action to save having to do
it over and over.
1) Copy the RGB image.
2) With the copy, Convert to Profile>Custom CMYK.
3) Fill in: Heavy GCR, 70% black ink limit, 340% total ink. Dot gain is basically not relevant
as you can always lighten or darken the mask after applying it, but I just use the default
20%.
4) Click OK twice to generate the false separation.
5) Command-4 to expose the black channel, and Mode: Grayscale to discard the CMY
channels.
6) Invert the channel with Command-I, yielding a negative image.
7) Auto Levels.
8) Gaussian Blur, radius 2.0 pixels to eliminate noise and make for a softer sharpen.
9) Return to the RGB image and create a duplicate layer. Sharpen conventionally with a
very heavy hand--500%, 1.2 pixel Radius, 3 Threshold might be a good starting point for
most images.
10) Add a layer mask. To it, load the artificial black channel that was made in steps 1-8.
This should confine the sharpening to the desired areas.
11) If you feel the image is not sharp enough, apply a curve to the mask to lighten its
midpoint. If you find the image to be too sharp, darken the mask in the same way.
So I did this, exactly as written (no luminosity mode change), and I ended up with a file that looks...fine. Certainly workable. Was too sharp, but I darkened the mask and it seemed much better. I'm not sure how I feel about the print, but I can say that this technique does not belong in some crazy sideshow; it could be viable under some circumstances.
I have no idea how large a file to attach, but here goes.
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I don't know how to prepare a file for viewing here, obviously. Poor Dan
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11) "If you feel the image is not sharp enough, apply a curve to the mask to lighten its
midpoint. If you find the image to be too sharp, darken the mask in the same way".
So I did this, exactly as written (no luminosity mode change), and I ended up with a file that looks...fine. Certainly workable. Was too sharp, but I darkened the mask and it seemed much better. I'm not sure how I feel about the print, but I can say that this technique does not belong in some crazy sideshow; it could be viable under some circumstances.
I have no idea how large a file to attach, but here goes.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=143718\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
That's kind of the problem. IF you feel its too sharp. Based on what? If the idea is to print something, find its too sharp and tweak, well that's not at all useful, go back to good old and simple USM and fumble around. Might as well build a sharpening Variation's, output the squares and pick (hey, neat idea). But again, with respect to this set of commands, where's the beef?
Not sure how you feel about the print? Can you compare this to another sharpening routine, even a demo of PKS if you don't have it? It runs fully functional for 7 days.
It would be interesting to output the same image to different types of printers and papers. Will they all appear the same? Doubt it. Which is right?
No one is arguing that this produces a sharp (sharper) print. But then any USM setting would do that.
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That's kind of the problem. IF you feel its too sharp. Based on what? If the idea is to print something, find its too sharp and tweak, well that's not at all useful, go back to good old and simple USM and fumble around. Might as well build a sharpening Variation's, output the squares and pick (hey, neat idea). But again, with respect to this set of commands, where's the beef?
You know, I ended up feeling like the print was much less delicate than I'm used to seeing. Hard to explain, but though there was no obvious artifacts, there was a certain clarity missing; it feels heavy.
Can you compare this to another sharpening routine, even a demo of PKS if you don't have it? It runs fully functional for 7 days.
I think I'll do that tomorrow. I will say, this method was wasted on me--I don't have the know-how to make it work the way he intended. I only tried it because I couldn't believe it was completely insane.
It would be interesting to output the same image to different types of printers and papers. Will they all appear the same? Doubt it. Which is right?
Tell you what, I'll print it after the Print Academy Workshop I'm attending in NY!
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So Andrew, would you say that my initial assessment (any sharpening method that increases in intensity as you go down the tonal scale is flawed) is accurate?
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So Andrew, would you say that my initial assessment (any sharpening method that increases in intensity as you go down the tonal scale is flawed) is accurate?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=143728\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I do...one of the primary goals for PhotoKit Sharpener is to roll off the extreme highlights and the shadows and concentrate the sharpening in the midtones...to roll off the midtones and higher is, well, let's call it misguided...particularly for digital capture.
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I used to fuss around with Unsharp Mask when I was trying to learn digital, and sometimes my results weren't too terrible. But once I tried PK Sharpener, I have never found any reason to go back, or to try any other method (or recipe or arcane ritual). Unless someone can show me an image that prints better after Dan's procedure than after capture+output from PKS, I see no reason to waste the time running experiments.
I, too, feel that Dan should provide the evidence (concrete examples, with details of how his "method" was applied) if there are indeed any situations in which his procedure is better than others (such as PKS defaults).
As you can see, I'm already getting biased against Dan's procedure, mainly because Jeff, Andrew, and Mark all provide explanations and the evidence that I haven't seen from Dan. I'll listen to people who make sense and explain what they are talking about without a lot of vague hand waving.
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hand waving.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=143737\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Hey, I'm pretty good at hand waving...move along, there's nothing of interest to you here.
:::waving hand in front of the stormtrooper's face:::
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I went back to look at Dan's directions for doing this sharpening. They are:
Here's the procedure, which of course should be reduced to an Action to save having to do
it over and over.
1) Copy the RGB image.
2) With the copy, Convert to Profile>Custom CMYK.
3) Fill in: Heavy GCR, 70% black ink limit, 340% total ink. Dot gain is basically not relevant
as you can always lighten or darken the mask after applying it, but I just use the default
20%.
4) Click OK twice to generate the false separation.
5) Command-4 to expose the black channel, and Mode: Grayscale to discard the CMY
channels.
6) Invert the channel with Command-I, yielding a negative image.
7) Auto Levels.
8) Gaussian Blur, radius 2.0 pixels to eliminate noise and make for a softer sharpen.
9) Return to the RGB image and create a duplicate layer. Sharpen conventionally with a
very heavy hand--500%, 1.2 pixel Radius, 3 Threshold might be a good starting point for
most images.
10) Add a layer mask. To it, load the artificial black channel that was made in steps 1-8.
This should confine the sharpening to the desired areas.
11) If you feel the image is not sharp enough, apply a curve to the mask to lighten its
midpoint. If you find the image to be too sharp, darken the mask in the same way.
So I did this, exactly as written (no luminosity mode change), and I ended up with a file that looks...fine. Certainly workable. Was too sharp, but I darkened the mask and it seemed much better. I'm not sure how I feel about the print, but I can say that this technique does not belong in some crazy sideshow; it could be viable under some circumstances.
I have no idea how large a file to attach, but here goes.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=143718\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Has anyone compared the action to the above quote? I'm wondering if theres any difference between the two? Wayne
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You know, I ended up feeling like the print was much less delicate than I'm used to seeing. Hard to explain, but though there was no obvious artifacts, there was a certain clarity missing; it feels heavy.
I think I'll do that tomorrow. I will say, this method was wasted on me--I don't have the know-how to make it work the way he intended. I only tried it because I couldn't believe it was completely insane.
Tell you what, I'll print it after the Print Academy Workshop I'm attending in NY!
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=143727\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Gloria, if the method is "wasted on you" don't assume that the problem is you - it is more likely the method. I won't know this first-hand till I try it myself but that won't be till later this month, if at all, based on what is now emerging. But your results are consistent with those of several others.
In addition to which, when we now have plug-ins such as PK Sharpener with such user-friendly and intuitive UI, plus an extensive well-written manual for ease of reference, that sets a standard for new ideas - indeed I share EricM's philosophy on this point.
I also share your philosophy of sharpening - not too much of a good thing. Make the image breathe with detail, without being harsh and brittle. As well, when doing volume work, the sharpening shouldn't be a hassle to adjusst for each image - yes, each image may need some custom-tweaking, but the algorithm should be designed to make that quite easy. All of these "expectations" (of mine) are amply fulfilled with PK Sharpener, which is why I use it.
Looking at the image you posted yesterday, if you care to do a comparison using that image, I would suggest that your Capture Sharpen be set to either Medium Edge or Narrow Edge, and the Output Sharpen to suit the media and resolution of your print. Please merge the sharpening layers into the background after each stage of sharpening (you don't need to save them flattened - this is just for printing purposes) because those sharpening layers add hugely to file size and you don't want to send so much data to the printer. My normal workflow is to flatten capture sharpening into the background, because I have enough confidence in what I'm doing with capture sharpening (and it is gentle) that I don't expect any need to review it. Thousands of images later confirms this. I delete Output Sharpening after printing, because if ever the file were repurposed (resolution or medium) Output Sharpen would need to be re-done differently anyhow.
May I suggest, if you have the time, to select an image that has a bit more frequency - i.e. something with an area or two in the lights and darks which contain finer texture and detail you want emphasized but not over-emphasized.
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I've followed this thread for days now--I honestly didn't have any desire to try Dan's method, but I find I usually learn something from these long technical threads.
The only thing I have to add here--and it really is whining LOL--is that I am now using LR most of the time and I have to do a round trip to PS to use PKS (or else just print from PS)--and ever since I started using it I haven't used any other form of sharpening (except to try the sharpening in LR)--why try to do something on your own that won't be nearly as good as the relatively simple PKS which also offers so many options if you choose (creative). I have great hopes that a form of PKS can be added somehow to LR in the future.
Diane
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I've followed this thread for days now--I honestly didn't have any desire to try Dan's method, but I find I usually learn something from these long technical threads.
The only thing I have to add here--and it really is whining LOL--is that I am now using LR most of the time and I have to do a round trip to PS to use PKS (or else just print from PS)--and ever since I started using it I haven't used any other form of sharpening (except to try the sharpening in LR)--why try to do something on your own that won't be nearly as good as the relatively simple PKS which also offers so many options if you choose (creative). I have great hopes that a form of PKS can be added somehow to LR in the future.
Diane
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=143794\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Yes indeed Diane - that and soft-proofing.
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Has anyone compared the action to the above quote? I'm wondering if theres any difference between the two? Wayne
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=143755\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
First differences is convert to 16-bit in the first step which seems anti-Dan.
There's a step in the action that makes sense to me that I don't see in Dan's original post (nor yours) where after applying the G-Blur, and duplicating the bkgnd layer, layer styles are called forth and the Blend If settings are applied:5/10 242/250. Without this step, the results should be even more harsh.
The action has a lower USM setting! Dan recommends 500%, 1.2, Radius 3. The action had 500/0.8/3! So the sharpening I was seeing was less than specified (unless Dan instructed this guy differently). I have to do my tests over again but I suspect the results will be even worse since I'll undo the Blend If and up the USM.
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Guess what, the troll Iiah just posted a NEW action to the DR review list to 'fix' an error message. The URL is below if you want to grab it. I posted this just now, as he's still not following Dan's recipe (it looks like he's trying to make it less ugly using his action, hence the Blend If and lower USM settings). In his new action, the Blend If is still there, the USM is back to Dan's spec (higher, I suspect not for the better).
liah Borg wrote:
> Here is a version that won't cause that message
>
> http://www.pochtar.com/DanMargulis_RGB_Sharpen_K_mask_v2.zip (http://www.pochtar.com/DanMargulis_RGB_Sharpen_K_mask_v2.zip)
UNLESS Dan's told you otherwise, you're NOT following this recipe as specified. Your first download changed the USM settings. You set them for 500/0.8/3. WHY? He species 500/1.2/3. The new action now follow Dan's now (higher values, yuck). But what's with the Blend If settings in the duplicate layer step? He doesn't specify this either. All the testing many of us have done (providing pretty awful results on low key images) are not valid using your action. At least until you tell us that Dan instructed you to alter his settings. He also doesn't specify conversion to 16-bit as your does. WHY?
Talk about bad science again.
So I'll start again, but based on the exact settings by Dan (no blend if, higher radius), I can't believe I'll see anything but more specks in my black sky.
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Hey, I'm pretty good at hand waving...move along, there's nothing of interest to you here.
:::waving hand in front of the stormtrooper's face:::
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=143746\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
OK, Schewe,
I can forgive your hand waving as long as you keep on backing up your assertions (and riding that kick-ass bike.)
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Thanks DD. Wayne
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Peter,
This is excellent, and very much looking forward to your findings. If you would like to have a copy of the spreadsheet where I charted all the possible combinations of PK Sharpener (for Capture and Output Sharpening) please send me a private email through this website. It all allows one to define and calculate the size of a sample set for testing.
While the most obvious tests of interest to you would be comparisons with your own sharpening approach (I too would be interested in seeing it), it would also be of considerable interest if you were able to include comparisons with PK Sharpener. If you do not own a licensse to it yet, you can download it on trial and give it a whirl with this testing.
Mark
Thanks Mark,
Having just arrived home after travelling, I'll follow up with a pm.
Regards,
Peter
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Dan's back and has posted a very long and somewhat cryptic post to his list on his sharpening techniques. I'm simply going to reply to a few points, mostly in light of the modifications of the action made by Iliah. I'm unsure now if I should follow his modifications or use the original instructions posted by Dan based on what he's written.
Dan's latest post concerning the modifications of his instructions:
Dan:
Iliah's Action, I note, also includes Blend If sliders to restrict the sharpening in the lightest and darkest areas of the image. There's certainly no law against doing that if it makes the image look better, but I question whether they're really necessary. Because the mask is based on inverted luminosity, sharpening of the lightest areas is already seriously restricted. As for the darkest areas, sometimes they can be sharpened effectively but sometimes we encounter excessive noise. If that's the case, applying a U-shaped curve to the layer mask is likely at least as effective as Blend If.
I agree with Iliah's modifications and not what Dan is saying above based on tests done. The modifications make Dan's initial settings less ugly and destructive to the image but it still stinks. But according to Dan, do whatever it takes to make the image look better. So, the methodology is still non existent, move the controls and order anyway that makes the image 'look good'. This is indeed nothing short of useless.
Lastly, Dan says this about the technique, a total cop out on his part about the effectiveness of what he's doing. It appears again, he's made up a technique to garner attention but without doing any of the hard work of testing it, that's up to you to do.
Dan:
As I indicated, it's speculative at this point--I'm pretty sure that the *concept* is correct but the execution that I suggested can probably be improved upon. Because testing it fully would take a great deal of time, and because the improvements would be visible but not spectacular, I don't foresee being able to take this much further myself, so I threw it out to the group for consideration
He's pretty sure the concept is correct. Great. Onto more wasted paper and ink. Not for this dog
Seems pretty clear to me from what he's saying, and I suggested this way back, its too much work for him to validate this technique. Your mileage may vary. You should tweak and or all steps to make it work better for you.
I'm sure Bruce is looking down on this sharpening attempt with a smile and a wink.
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I have a new algorithm that I think can possibly improve even on Dan's latest, if possible. Here is the outline:
1. Load image into Photoshop (or your favorite image editor).
2. Optionally invoke your preferred plugin for whatever you want to achieve.
3. Move the appropriate sliders until the very best result is obtained.
4. Save your work.
I leave it to my groupies, er, ah, students to verify the superiority of this procedure.
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I have a new algorithm that I think can possibly improve even on Dan's latest, if possible. Here is the outline:
1. Load image into Photoshop (or your favorite image editor).
2. Optionally invoke your preferred plugin for whatever you want to achieve.
3. Move the appropriate sliders until the very best result is obtained.
4. Save your work.
Genius, sheer genius!
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Genius, sheer genius!
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=144486\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Thank you, Andrew. Would you like to be a priest in my new religion?
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Good heavens! Have you all gone mad? SIX pages of endless exegesis!
I think I saw something about 16-bit transmogrification of the highlights.
I'm finding Smart Sharpen to be rather smart though sometimes a blanket USM (I'm faintly aware it does transmute the undertinges of the 17% highlights in some way) seems to make the viewers happy.
Oh well, have fun. (Hats-off to EricM.)
Dave
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Because the mask is based on inverted luminosity, sharpening of the lightest areas is already seriously restricted. As for the darkest areas, sometimes they can be sharpened effectively but sometimes we encounter excessive noise. If that's the case, applying a U-shaped curve to the layer mask is likely at least as effective as Blend If.
Great, Dan has rediscovered the benefits of midtone masking, so that highlights AND shadows are not oversharpened. His next epiphany no doubt will be that converting to LAB and applying a bell (or inverted U-shaped) curve to the L channel works much better than converting to CMYK and screwing around with the K channel...perhaps something like this...
http://www.outbackphoto.com/workflow/wf_20/essay.html (http://www.outbackphoto.com/workflow/wf_20/essay.html)
Note the date at the bottom of the link.
The new (as of 2005 or so) link for my sharpening action set is:
http://www.visual-vacations.com/Photograph...ningActions.htm (http://www.visual-vacations.com/Photography/SharpeningActions.htm)
And if anyone cares, I'd be happy to post a detailed theory of operation of the action, how it works, why it works, and how to use it for best results.
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And if anyone cares, I'd be happy to post a detailed theory of operation of the action, how it works, why it works, and how to use it for best results.
Sounds as if you've done a lot more work on this idea than Dan has--I would be really interested in the details. Is this a process you use on most images, then? (or was that just in 2003?)
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[
And if anyone cares, I'd be happy to post a detailed theory of operation of the action, how it works, why it works, and how to use it for best results.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=144534\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
[/quote]
I care. Looking forward to reading it.
Mark
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Jonathan, I assume the answer is "YES", but just to seek confirmation: Will your actions work on CS3? Have you compared your actions with the PK Sharpener Pro actions, and if so any observations?
Mark
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Sounds as if you've done a lot more work on this idea than Dan has--I would be really interested in the details. Is this a process you use on most images, then? (or was that just in 2003?)
I use it (in concert with Focus Magic) on all of my images.
The basic concept is straightforward. The image is converted to 16-bit, then to LAB. The L channel is duplicated as a mask, and a bell curve is run on the mask channel so that the shadows and highlights are not sharpened, but the midtones are. The action is paused at this point so that if you want to manually tweak the mask (For example, if you want to prevent the sky or a person's face from being sharpened, you can airbrush that part of the mask to black and it will not be touched). Then the mask channel is loaded as a selection, and successive rounds of USM are done on the L channel with progressively smaller radius and higher amount values. After that, the mask is deleted, the selection is removed, and the Shadow/Highlight tool is run on the L channel to bring out detail in the shadows and highlights that may have been de-emphasized by the previous rounds of masked USM. Then the image is converted back to RGB.
The theory of operation has some similarities and differences compared to PK Sharpener. Like PK, it focuses on the midtones, but unlike PK, it doesn't really separate between capture, creative and output sharpening. If you think of an image in audio terms, one could equate the subwoofer volume level with what is commonly called "local contrast enhancement" (usually USM radius 100 or larger), fine pixel-level sharpness (USM radius 1 or less) as your high treble adjustment, and intermediate radius settings as frequency bands falling in between the extremes. When sharpening, one needs to appropriately adjust the image throughout the range of frequencies, in the same way that adjusting only the low bass or high treble on a stereo equalizer is not usually going to result in very good sound. IMO, this is a major flaw in most sharpening schemes; they only adjust either the "high treble" (USM radius 1 or less) or "low bass" (USM radius 50 or greater), and usually ignore the "mid-range" of radius values.
PK sharpener takes a 3-pass "equalization" approach comparable to having an equalizer in your CD player (capture sharpening), a second in your amplifier (creative sharpening), and a third in your speakers (output sharpening). There's nothing inherently wrong with this approach; having the equivalent of "EQ presets" for various input and output devices has a lot of merit, especially when making multiple versions of an image file for different output devices. But while certainly useful in many situations, "EQing" your image in 3 passes isn't strictly necessary. If you're not constantly changing your CD player and speakers, a single equalizer in the path between player and speakers is sufficient to correctly adjust the levels of the various frequency ranges to result in a properly-balanced output from the speaker.
That's more or less what my action is doing, functioning as a "single EQ" to properly balance the various spatial frequency ranges in an image in one step. When running the action, each round of USM is comparable to adjusting one frequency slider on a graphic equalizer, starting with low bass and working up to the highest treble range. It's not necessarily as fancy as PK sharpener, or always as convenient to use, but can deliver comparable results when used properly. The most important thing to remember is that since there are several rounds of sharpening, it's OK (and in fact necessary) to save something for the next round(s) of sharpening to do. Adjust the Amount slider until you start seeing haloing or pushing the boundaries of good taste, and then back it off some. As the action runs, you should see the image detail and micro-contrast gradually increase with each round of sharpening until you have the final finished product. If you're sharpening for print, you'll need to know how "crunchy" to make the image look on-screen (this will vary depending on printer and paper type, and is where PK Sharpener can save you some time).
In my workflow, I use Focus Magic for capture sharpening, as it uses a deconvolution "unblurring" algorithm that that does a much better job of undoing the effects of the anti-aliasing filter than simple USM or similar sharpening methods. I usually use Radius 2, 25-50%, followed by Radius 1, 25-50%, exact settings depending on which lens I'm using and aperture and such. Then I run my action to do creative and output sharpening combined.
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Jonathan, I assume the answer is "YES", but just to seek confirmation: Will your actions work on CS3? Have you compared your actions with the PK Sharpener Pro actions, and if so any observations?
Due to time and budget constraints, I'm still running CS2 right now, but AFAIK it should run just fine on CS3. I haven't done a 100% scientific head-to-head comparison between my sharpening workflow and PK Sharpener but looking at images sharpened with PK vs my workflow, I haven't seen enough difference to make me want to buy PK. I'm kind of a cheap bastard, and I'd already refined my workflow and action before PK came out.
Since I'm familiar with my workflow, and have already learned how to make it do what I need, I didn't make the switch. But that doesn't mean I think PK Sharpener is bad or conceptually flawed or anything. I just don't think that in my case that it would buy me enough improvement in the final image going out the door to justify the cost. But for someone who doesn't want to go through the learning curve I did, PK Sharpener would probably be easier to get up and running with than my action.
In any event, you're free to download my action and try it for yourself and draw your own conclusions as to its usefulness and theoretical soundness, and compare it to whatever other sharpening methods you like.
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This thread has brought an amazing amount of information, and this post is a great contribution. I will be trying your action out, Jonathan, and looking at Focus Magic, and of course PK Sharpener. I will probably settle on something fairly automated for convenience, but learning what's behind the curtain has always been important to me. This is why all this peripheral dialog directed at Dan has been so frustrating to me --merely making fun of a technique or a man is not instructive. This post is the flip side of all that --instructive and insightful. Thanks.
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If you don't mind Jonathan, I might also take a look at your action and compare the results to my own workflow.
I started comparing the method in the opening of this thread today against PKS and also my own approach, but I might run your method against the images I have completed so far, just as an academic exercise to compare against my own workflow.
The use of the lightness channel in Lab was something I looked at briefly some time ago, but didn't find it as useful to my overall workflow and other approaches. However, I was looking at something fairly basic, so I might take another look and see what the method is doing and why.
Regards,
Peter
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Due to time and budget constraints, I'm still running CS2 right now, but AFAIK it should run just fine on CS3. I haven't done a 100% scientific head-to-head comparison between my sharpening workflow and PK Sharpener but looking at images sharpened with PK vs my workflow, I haven't seen enough difference to make me want to buy PK. I'm kind of a cheap bastard, and I'd already refined my workflow and action before PK came out.
Since I'm familiar with my workflow, and have already learned how to make it do what I need, I didn't make the switch. But that doesn't mean I think PK Sharpener is bad or conceptually flawed or anything. I just don't think that in my case that it would buy me enough improvement in the final image going out the door to justify the cost. But for someone who doesn't want to go through the learning curve I did, PK Sharpener would probably be easier to get up and running with than my action.
In any event, you're free to download my action and try it for yourself and draw your own conclusions as to its usefulness and theoretical soundness, and compare it to whatever other sharpening methods you like.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=144612\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Jonathan - thanks - that's actually a very useful appreciation of the circumstances for favouring one or the other. It sounds to me from what you are saying that it's probably largely a matter of convenience and prior usage which to select, as over a range of images either would do well. In my case, because I've been using PKS since it hit the market and it works very well for me, I can forsee staying with it; but I'm always on the look-out for promising alternative techniques so I may well try yours too. One concerning factor, however, is the use of Focus Magic combined with your actions. I've tried Focus Magic and whereas I can see it being highly effective for forensic and medical purposes, for fine art photography I find it somewhat harsh. Perhaps your action deals with that effect, or you have a way of using it in the first place that keeps it tame enough to prevent the images from looking "sharpened" if you know what I mean. I know that Ctein also recommends this software quite highly and he is a noted fine-art printer.
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In any event, you're free to download my action and try it for yourself and draw your own conclusions as to its usefulness and theoretical soundness, and compare it to whatever other sharpening methods you like.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=144612\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Interesting (FAR more interesting than Dan's BTW)...
Several comments; while converting to Lab for certain advantages derived from mask creation and isolation of luminance data, I would never want my original to go into Lab then back to RGB...I would prefer to spawn off a dupe image, do the work and bring it back into the original as a layer for blending in luminance...and in fact, the one aspect of your action that troubles me is the lack of adjustable layer results...trying to determine in/out based on looking at a mask is pretty iffy.
PKS also has a progressive sharpening routine called Super Sharpener that can produce similar results. It doesn't get a lot of attention by users but it can produce some interesting multi-band sharpening results that are often very useful when blended in with subtly.
The one area where I still think PKS is superior to pretty much anything out there is the Output Sharpener...while you _DO_ need to have the final pixel density determined prior to running, there's just no way anybody would EVER really take their images to the extreme you simply must take it for the purposes of sharpening for print.
The old "slightly crunchy" is simply way too little (and often wrongly applied) because a low resolution display can't give you the proper feedback for making visual determinations. That must be done on a trial and error basis to push the image detailing to the point just shy of breaking in the print and then back off. Which is what Bruce and I did for Output Sharpener...Bruce was shocked at just how BAD the image would look on screen and yet print with just the right amount of detail in the file. The ONLY thing a computer display is good at showing you is color and dynamic range and detail for the display–if the display is the final image output. If the final output is a print, a display is a poor predictor of what you must do to the image.
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I've tried Focus Magic and whereas I can see it being highly effective for forensic and medical purposes, for fine art photography I find it somewhat harsh.
It definitely can be, which is why I only use it kind of sparingly as a tool to undo the effect of the AA filter. Used in moderation (radius 3 or less, amount 50% or less) it does amazing stuff, used heavy-handedly, it is quite harsh. It's other handy use is to reduce motion blur, which it does quite well within reasonable limits. It's important to think of it as an edge sharpener, and not a contrast enhancer like USM. It's easy to confuse those functions, but they are not the same.
This is why all this peripheral dialog directed at Dan has been so frustrating to me --merely making fun of a technique or a man is not instructive.
My negative comments directed toward Dan and his action have several purposes:
1. To point out that even though in some areas of Photoshop usage the man has a well-deserved good reputation, that doesn't mean ke knows what he's talking about when it comes to sharpening, the advantages of 16-bit-per-channel editing, or color management.
2. To point out that Dan has a bad habit of throwing half-baked ideas out there, and uses his clout and reputation to squelch any discussion of the shortcomings or flaws in his ideas. This sharpening method is merely one example.
3. To demonstrate that this sharpening method is significantly flawed in both its concept and execution, specifically that it sharpens the noisiest parts of the image the most, and only addresses a small part of the sharpening issue (the "high treble" frequency band). My action has been out on the internet for 4 years or so, and I'm not the first person to recognize that masking off highlights and shadows is advantageous when sharpening. For Dan to disseminate a sharpening method that has flaws (oversharpened shadows) solved by techniques devised over 4 years ago (midtone masking) indicates he hasn't exactly done his homework about what is state of the art when it comes to sharpening. It's sort of like "rediscovering" the square wheel when round ones have been available for years.
4. Ultimately, to save others the time and hassle of wasting time fooling with sharpening methods that have problems that were solved years ago by much better techniques.
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Interesting (FAR more interesting than Dan's BTW)...
Several comments; while converting to Lab for certain advantages derived from mask creation and isolation of luminance data, I would never want my original to go into Lab then back to RGB...I would prefer to spawn off a dupe image, do the work and bring it back into the original as a layer for blending in luminance...and in fact, the one aspect of your action that troubles me is the lack of adjustable layer results...trying to determine in/out based on looking at a mask is pretty iffy.
In defense of the LAB conversion, I'm converting to 16-bit first, and getting my money's worth out of the conversion by doing several rounds of sharpening plus the shadow/highlight adjustment before converting back to RGB. There's some image degradation, but in 16-bit mode one trip back and forth isn't that big of a deal. Regarding the layer issue, I came up with this before PKS came out, and got used to working with the image directly, and getting things right the first time without overdoing it and having to fade it back. It's not a workflow everyone is going to be comfortable with, and is not as sophisticated as PKS, but it works for me. It's also faster and less memory-intensive than staying in RGB and doing a Fade/Luminosity after each sharpening step or having an extra image layer to work with. That can make a big difference when working with stitched images or other large files.
Please don't think I'm saying my action is in all ways superior to PKS; it has advantages and disadvantages, but in many ways is not as sophisticated as PKS, and has a much steeper learning curve.
PKS also has a progressive sharpening routine called Super Sharpener that can produce similar results. It doesn't get a lot of attention by users but it can produce some interesting multi-band sharpening results that are often very useful when blended in with subtly.
The one area where I still think PKS is superior to pretty much anything out there is the Output Sharpener...while you _DO_ need to have the final pixel density determined prior to running, there's just no way anybody would EVER really take their images to the extreme you simply must take it for the purposes of sharpening for print.
I agree, the output sharpener in PKS is much more user-friendly than my action. I learned how "crunchy" to make images for inkjet printing the hard way. But that isn't necessarily the optimal way for new people to learn the ropes.
PKS is a great product; the main reason I brought up my sharpening action is to demonstrate that it's far more well-thought-out and theoretically sound than Dan's action, even though it's been out for over four years and hasn't been changed that much other than adding the shadow/highlight step when CS came out and a few tweaks of the default settings. I really should update it to create and sharpen a separate layer, but I haven't gotten around to it; I've been busy with Army stuff lately.
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Interesting (FAR more interesting than Dan's BTW)...
The old "slightly crunchy" is simply way too little (and often wrongly applied) because a low resolution display can't give you the proper feedback for making visual determinations. .............. The ONLY thing a computer display is good at showing you is color and dynamic range and detail for the display–if the display is the final image output. If the final output is a print, a display is a poor predictor of what you must do to the image.
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Jeff,
I've heard this often enough to be mindful of it, and more than that, to work around it. Firstly, I notice you qualify the comment with the term "low resolution display". At what resolution does a display cease to be "low resolution". I ask this, because my 1600*1200 LaCie 321, while not the highest resolution out there these days is not the lowest either, and I can see sharpening impacts quite clearly as discussed just below.
Secondly, I agree with you that generally speaking the result of sharpening on a display will look nastier than it comes out on paper. But that also depends partly on the magnification. By making a few benchmark tests to get an impression of the outer limits of on-display sharpening appearance at 50% magnification relative to the resulting print, I "kind of know" how far I can take the output sharpening before I can expect an overly crunchy printed result. I'm not saying its fool-proof, but more often than not it's reliable.
Mark
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At what resolution does a display cease to be "low resolution". I ask this, because my 1600*1200 LaCie 321, while not the highest resolution out there these days is not the lowest either, and I can see sharpening impacts quite clearly as discussed just below.
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You might be able so see some of the results, yes...but not in the context of the final printed size. My 30" Cinemas display at about 104PPI. My iPhone has a 160PPI display (which is really nice and sharp but small). But even at 104PPI, that's only 1/3 (roughly) of an image at 300PPI. The ONLY way to to "see" the effective resolution of 300PPI on the 104PPI display is fiddle with the size of the image (screen zoom in Photoshop). But the fact is, there's simply no way to accurately gauge the real 300+PPI resolution of a print file when the display is, at best, 1/3 the image resolution.
I've heard of some possible 200PPI displays in the future, which would be better (more like 2/3 the resolution of the image) but that is a far cry if you work at 480PPI because it would still be less than 1/2. And, in the case of the Cinema at 104PPI, that's less that 1/4th the original at 480PPI.
This really brings up the very real difficulty inherent in sharpening by eye, because nothing that you see on the display is really a reliable gauge to the print when it comes to detail...
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And paper surface, printer resolution, dithering algorithms, local contrast, local colour combinations, lighting level , spectal distribution, tonal energy balance , composition directed perception and viewer hangover all affect perceived detail.
Sometimes there is a bit much emphasis on sharpening routines.
In any case, it's not so much about the hammer, but where to hit and how hard.
Cheers,
Brian
www.pharoseditions.com.au
PS There are some crappy hammers around.
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Jeff, you're right that it's far from exact, say compared with soft-proofing which IS quite accurate (save for the inevitable issue of direct versus reflected light); the point I'm making is that to some extent one can deal with this circumstance by making a few tests for the outer limits (display appearance versus prints), thereby providing useful - albeit subjective - guidance about "boundary conditions" - i.e. the range beyond which the print runs the risk of looking brittle.
In my several years of using PKS, for example, as long as I select the options consistently with the input, frequency and output conditions of the image, more often than not one simply doesn't need to exercise this judgment; however there are those images where one needs to watch this - and I can tell you exactly the most likely candidates: images that have been both captured sharpened and had a dose of "clarity" (in CR/LR), or "mid-tone contrast enhancement" or 20-50-0 USM in Photoshop. In these conditions, by the time one gets to output sharpening, it's possible for the image to become too brittle (again a matter of taste). To assess the likelihood of this result coming out of the printer, these benchmarks can be helpful. But it is subjective and it takes experience to know what one is looking at on the display as a predictor of the printed product.
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Having just acquired PK Sharpener, I'm undertaking the project of comparing it to my current workflow (Focus Magic + my midtone sharpening action). Since PKS has a plethora of options and I've only had it a short time, take the results with a small grain of salt, since I'm not nearly as intimately familiar with it as I am with my current workflow. If anyone more familiar with PKS notices any glaring errors in the settings, feel free to point them out.
The test image is crop from a 1Ds capture of downtown Trier, taken on an overcast day. DR is just barely within the limits of the sensor, and there is a lot of fine detail and a bit of noise to make getting the detail without too much noise a bit of a challenge. No noise reduction or sharpening was applied in ACR or afterward.
This post's comparison is limited to capture sharpening; PKS vs Focus Magic. PKS settings were as follows: Expert High Resolution Digital Capture, Medium Width. Focus Magic's settings were: 1 pass 2 pixel radius, 25%, then 1 pass 1 pixel radius, 25% source set to Digital Camera for both passes.
[attachment=3521:attachment]
Some points of interest:
In the bottom left area, the Merkur Spielothek sign is brought into clearer focus by FM than PKS, without the noise in the wall above the sign being accentuated as it is with PKS. In general, PKS accentuates noise much more than FM, but focuses sharp edges less well. When the PKS smoothing layer is turned on, the noise accentuation goes away, but edge sharpening becomes even less effective. PKS appears to be USM-based, whereas FM actually attempts to mathematically unravel the effects of blur. FM appears to me to do a significantly better job overall of undoing the effect of an AA filter than PKS and USM-based sharpening in general, which is why I don't even use my own action for capture sharpening.
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Some points of interest:
In the bottom left area, the Merkur Spielothek sign is brought into clearer focus by FM than PKS, without the noise in the wall above the sign being accentuated as it is with PKS. In general, PKS accentuates noise much more than FM, but focuses sharp edges less well. When the PKS smoothing layer is turned on, the noise accentuation goes away, but edge sharpening becomes even less effective. PKS appears to be USM-based, whereas FM actually attempts to mathematically unravel the effects of blur. FM appears to me to do a significantly better job overall of undoing the effect of an AA filter than PKS and USM-based sharpening in general, which is why I don't even use my own action for capture sharpening.
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Jonathan, I use a 1Ds also and take many pictures like this, so I can say something about it - hopefully not too dumb. Firstly, I know that FM is using a deconvolution approach which is fundamentally different from what PKS, NIK and others do. But focusing on the results (pun intended), I'm viewing your comparison on a LaCie 321 display at 200% magnification. I find the edge detail on the roof of the building to the right of Gergen better with PKS. The building facades look a bit crisper and cleaner in the FM version, where the word "Merkur" is slightly more readable.
Three issues that are more important: (1) Your capture sharpen settings: try it again with Super Fine Edge sharpen and see what happens. I find often this setting can produce a cleaner result even if the image is not of the highest frequency. (2) The sharpening process is not complete. Capture sharpening is just the cake half or one-third baked. You need to do the Output Sharpening, and perhaps some Creative Sharpening targeted at any specfific issues. (3) Judging this on a display, as Jeff has pointed out, is not very reliable, but perhaps comparative reliability is not so bad. To overcome this issue for sure, the prints need to be compared. Of course that doesn't help us, but you would see better the differences and can describe them to us.
Hope this helps.
Mark
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The sharpening process is not complete. Capture sharpening is just the cake half or one-third baked. You need to do the Output Sharpening, and perhaps some Creative Sharpening targeted at any specfific issues.
Well, my question is about capture sharpening. I thought the major reason capture sharpening is generally done with a pretty light hand is that further adjustments affecting contrast could have an impact on the halos produced by USM sharpening. I guess I first need to know if this is true, and second--does this still apply if Focus Magic is not based on USM? Does that mean it does not depend on the illusion/perception of sharpening that is based on contrast?
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Well, my question is about capture sharpening. I thought the major reason capture sharpening is generally done with a pretty light hand is that further adjustments affecting contrast could have an impact on the halos produced by USM sharpening. I guess I first need to know if this is true, and second--does this still apply if Focus Magic is not based on USM? Does that mean it does not depend on the illusion/perception of sharpening that is based on contrast?
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Hi Gloria,
I think Jeff would be best at answering the question about why capture sharpening is "light-handed". He'll correct me if I'm mistaken, but as I recall it, it's main objective is to correct primarily the mid-tones for the softening effect of the Camera's AA filter, and as a basis for building the remainder of the sharpening process. So it doesn't need to do any more than it does. Turning to FM, According to its literature, FM is not based on USM; nonetheless, if one adds USM sharpening to it, based on what I've seen from FM alone, I believe one would need to be quite light-handed with both FM and the add-ons to avoid creating a brittle image.
Mark
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Not withdrawing my previous comment, I think the issue of sharpening requires more research on at least 4 fronts
a/ chip designers need to reduce need for demosaicing e.g less space between pixel buckets and more precise blurring filters. This would improve absolute , if nor perceived resolution.
b/ RAW processors can concentrate less on detail removing smoothing which becomes less valuable as noise reduction improves.
c/ Printers need smaller drops (say 1.5 picolitres on large format printers) and place the drops more precisely. There seems to be moves in this direction.
d/ Sharpening software needs to take account of deconvolution algorithms, which have definite advantages over local contrast enhancement. PKS is generally acclaimed as a great product. It seems to have the contrast bit nailed. The next step would be to look at incorporation of wave front reconstruction.For those coming our of caves, sorry darkrooms, deconvolution brings into focus out of focus images. Yes,Virginia, that is possible I have had considerable success with Richardson-Lucy iterations and and am looking at Landweber, Myrheim & Rue, Gull and Daniel, and Weiner filtration. Successive iterations caan provide astonishing results . For instance a completely out of focus image can be restored. The best known example is the restoration of Hubble telescope images. With ever swifter computers this technology bears investigation. What do you reckon Jeff?
Cheers,
Brian,
www.pharoseditions.com.au
PS I have an idea how to do it (the ultimate sharpening workflow), but can't do code.
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Jonathan, I use a 1Ds also and take many pictures like this, so I can say something about it - hopefully not too dumb. Firstly, I know that FM is using a deconvolution approach which is fundamentally different from what PKS, NIK and others do. But focusing on the results (pun intended), I'm viewing your comparison on a LaCie 321 display at 200% magnification. I find the edge detail on the roof of the building to the right of Gergen better with PKS. The building facades look a bit crisper and cleaner in the FM version, where the word "Merkur" is slightly more readable.
The roof texture is the only area of the image that PKS seems to do a better job than FM; in every other area FM does a better job IMO clarifying edges without introducing halos or excessively enhancing noise. If you look at the foliage in the bottom right corner and the building facades, FM definitely does a better job. My take is that deconvolution is simply a better approach than USM for undoing the blurring effect of an AA filter, which is the primary purpose of capture sharpening. Of course, things are different when you start talking about creative sharpening, which is generally local contrast enhancement on various spatial frequency ranges. Masked USM works great for that, so I would expect PKS to do much better comparatively than it has in this test.
try it again with Super Fine Edge sharpen and see what happens
I have, and the edge enhancement was even less effective than the medium setting. I tried the wide edge sharpen setting as well, and got some really ugly salt & pepper artifacts in the sidewalk. Overall the medium setting was the best of the bunch. You are welcome to take my posted image and try your own combinations of settings to see if you can improve on my results. I'm open to the possibility that I may not be using PKS to its full potential.
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For instance a completely out of focus image can be restored. The best known example is the restoration of Hubble telescope images. With ever swifter computers this technology bears investigation.
Focus Magic is an example of the technology, but such things have definite limits. You can take any B&W image and blur it until it is a featureless mass of pixels at level 128 or so. The software cannot look at the image and distinguish which image got blurred to the final featureless mass. You can enhance the detail that is there, but ultimately you cannot calculate detail that is not there.
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The roof texture is the only area of the image that PKS seems to do a better job than FM; in every other area FM does a better job IMO clarifying edges without introducing halos or excessively enhancing noise. If you look at the foliage in the bottom right corner and the building facades, FM definitely does a better job. My take is that deconvolution is simply a better approach than USM for undoing the blurring effect of an AA filter, which is the primary purpose of capture sharpening. Of course, things are different when you start talking about creative sharpening, which is generally local contrast enhancement on various spatial frequency ranges. Masked USM works great for that, so I would expect PKS to do much better comparatively than it has in this test.
I have, and the edge enhancement was even less effective than the medium setting. I tried the wide edge sharpen setting as well, and got some really ugly salt & pepper artifacts in the sidewalk. Overall the medium setting was the best of the bunch. You are welcome to take my posted image and try your own combinations of settings to see if you can improve on my results. I'm open to the possibility that I may not be using PKS to its full potential.
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Jonathan, I agree (and agreed above) that the building facades came out cleaner in Focus Magic. I also agree that the shrubbery in the FM result is sharper. However, there appears to be more preserved detail and texture in the roadway with the PKS result. That raises what may be the key issue in this comparison: the distinction between real image texture and noise.
It seems to me as if there is some cleaning-up associated with the FM workflow that hasn't happened - yet - with the PKS workflow, so could it be that the PKS workflow is sharpening some noise while the FM workflow is suppressing the noise and sharpening the edges?
I ask because the building facades themselves don't contain that much frequency which needs sharpening, and the edges they do have are rather wide and smooth. This does not pertain to the roofing, where there is higher frequency and sharper edges. Hence a workflow that embeds some noise reduction would make the facades look cleaner but not do quite as well on the high frequency detail. Does your FM workflow in this image include your actions after FM, or only FM?
I wouldn't jump to a conclusion that you are not using PKS properly - you may well be up to the point that you have implemented it, but one does need to complete the whole process to really see what it does.
Actually, this is becoming interesting and I wouldn't mind poking around your image to see what I can do with it. I'll send you a PM re transmitting the raw file.
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The next step would be to look at incorporation of wave front reconstruction.For those coming our of caves, sorry darkrooms, deconvolution brings into focus out of focus images. Yes,Virginia, that is possible I have had considerable success with Richardson-Lucy iterations and and am looking at Landweber, Myrheim & Rue, Gull and Daniel, and Weiner filtration. Successive iterations caan provide astonishing results . For instance a completely out of focus image can be restored. The best known example is the restoration of Hubble telescope images. With ever swifter computers this technology bears investigation. What do you reckon Jeff?
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Brian,
Very interesting.
The Lucy-Richardson deconvolution of the Hubble telescope was relatively successful because the imaging defect was spherical aberration and it was possible to create a [a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconvolution#Optics_and_other_imaging]PSF[/url] describing the effects of the aberration so that they could be removed by the deconvolution process.
As described in the link, the PSF for many images is not that easily derived. In your work, what implementations of the Richardson-Lucy or Weiner algorithm do you use, and how do you determine the PSF?
Bill
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That raises what may be the key issue in this comparison: the distinction between real image texture and noise.
It seems to me as if there is some cleaning-up associated with the FM workflow that hasn't happened - yet - with the PKS workflow, so could it be that the PKS workflow is sharpening some noise while the FM workflow is suppressing the noise and sharpening the edges?
Based on my memory of the scene, I'd be inclined to say that in the areas where PKS appears to be finding more detail (roadway and rooftops), the detail isn't really there; it's definitely noise in the sidewalk/roadway and the front of the building, and the texture of the slate tile rooftop is definitely exaggerated compared to real life. The standard-issue German slate roof tiles are only about .5cm thick, and are the same color on the edges as the side, and under the flat lighting of the overcast day, the edges of the tiles shouldn't be nearly that blatant. It's an effect really more appropriate for creative or output sharpening, as it goes quite a bit past the mandate of simply undoing the softening effect of the AA filter during capture. Overall, Focus Magic's treatment is much more true to the subject.
Focus Magic has a noise reduction option in the dialog, which is set to Auto and disabled so that you can't change it. It doesn't do anything aggressive, but if you look at the FM vs original sidewalk area under the yellow striped awning, you'll see that there are a few noise specks in the sidewalk that are subtly de-emphasized after FM. It's very subtle and unobtrusive effect, but is there.
Does your FM workflow in this image include your actions after FM, or only FM?
The capture sharpening comparison I did involved FM vs PKS with the specified settings, no other tweaking. Since we've kind of gotten off the original topic here, I'm starting a PKS comparison thread (http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=20190) so that discussion of Dan's action can continue without further interruption. I'll post a 16-bit TIFF of the Trier image I'm using for comparison in the new thread.
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As for your attempts at behavior modification bud, that's a lost cause...I'm way to old to care what others may think of me. It's just not relevant to who I am and what I do.
Your tone is quite an unpleasant surprise though Jeff
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Your tone is quite an unpleasant surprise though Jeff
Decided to celebrate this thread's anniversary?
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My negative comments directed toward Dan and his action have several purposes:
4. Ultimately, to save others the time and hassle of wasting time fooling with sharpening methods that have problems that were solved years ago by much better techniques.
and for that I thank you
- also to everyone else for the wealth sharpening info here:)
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Decided to celebrate this thread's anniversary?
Could do - by all means:)
Just came across it by chance - fascinating read for sharpening info, difficult not to be shocked by the personal stuff though, however justified the posters might have felt.
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Decided to celebrate this thread's anniversary?
Has anything changed in the past year? For users of Adobe Camera Raw, capture sharpening has been added or improved (I can't remember for sure when it was released) and ACR users might want to use its sharpening for comparison rather than that of PKSharpener. Jeff Schewe, one of the developers of PK, says that ACR's capture sharpening is superior to that of PK. Has anything changed in PSCS4's smart sharpen--the interface looks similar, but there could be internal improvements.
Deconvolution image restoration (such as used in Smart Sharpen and FocusMagic) theoretically should be superior to unsharp masking, since it can actually correct defocus, diffraction, and possibly the image degradation from the camera blur filter. However, it is difficult to derive the necessary point spread function necessary for the deconvolution, and it seems as if relatively few photographers use deconvolution outside of astro-photography. Anything new here?
Bill
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Has anything changed in the past year? For users of Adobe Camera Raw, capture sharpening has been added or improved (I can't remember for sure when it was released) and ACR users might want to use its sharpening for comparison rather than that of PKSharpener. Jeff Schewe, one of the developers of PK, says that ACR's capture sharpening is superior to that of PK.
Did he? Where? If so I'm impressed by his honesty, not that he's been known for not being very honest and forthright in his opinions!
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I'm pretty sure it can be found in the forums here. God speed on that search.
One of the things I really like about LR 2 is that it appears to give you quality versions of 2 of the 3 BF sharpening steps. Creative sharpening is there but kinda iffy.
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Deconvolution image restoration (such as used in Smart Sharpen and FocusMagic) theoretically should be superior to unsharp masking, since it can actually correct defocus, diffraction, and possibly the image degradation from the camera blur filter. However, it is difficult to derive the necessary point spread function necessary for the deconvolution, and it seems as if relatively few photographers use deconvolution outside of astro-photography. Anything new here?
Bill
waay over my head - unless something is incorporated into Ps Im unlikely to use it jut because I am not sufficiently au fait with these things - Ps [and LR]is more than enough for me to learn;)
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What makes it novel?
Just what I was wondering, too! To me it looks like a variant of a principle Dan wrote about no less than ten years ago. See his article Hittin' 'em where they ain't (http://www.ledet.com/margulis/Sharpen.pdf) (PDF format). Sharpening the black channel in CMYK and sharpening the RGB image through a mask derived from CMYK's black channel just are two implementations of the same basic idea.
-- Olaf
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Did he? Where? If so I'm impressed by his honesty, not that he's been known for not being very honest and forthright in his opinions!
There are probably multiple posts where Jeff has discussed these issues. The posts that I had in mind, were (I think) on the Adobe forums, but here is another Jeff Schewe (http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=28794) link where he suggests doing capture sharpening in ACR 4.1 or greater. He further stated that he does his output sharpening in Lightroom (rather than PK Sharpener).
I would think that such statements by Jeff would tend to diminish sales of PK Sharpener, which he developed along with Bruce Fraser and some other colleagues. While the enhancements in ACR and Lightroom sharpening may diminish PK revenue, I would imagine that his consulting fees from Adobe would compensate for the loss. As I understand things, Bruce and Jeff were hired by Adobe to incorporate the essentials of PK into Adobe products. Capture sharpening is available in both ACR and Lightroom, and output sharpening is now available in Lightroom. Besides offering an integrated workflow, the Adobe extensions are parametric editors, which eliminates the necessity of storing multiple layered intermediate files.
Bill
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Re output sharpening in Lightroom -- is that a method of sharpening not available in CS4?
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Re output sharpening in Lightroom -- is that a method of sharpening not available in CS4?
Correct...maybe we'll get it in some future version of Photoshop but for now, you have to manually figure out how to sharpen yourself...the auto output sharpen solution in Lightroom is a specific solution done via a collaboration between Adobe and PixelGenius (as is the capture sharpening in Camera Raw & Lightroom).