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Author Topic: Sharpened=pale??  (Read 3583 times)

Hening Bettermann

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Sharpened=pale??
« on: June 26, 2018, 01:07:12 pm »

Sharpened=pale??

Hi all!

I am trying to sharpen my enlarged images (90x130 cm). This one (nr 2 I tried) shocked me.
It is upscaled in Photozoom Pro using the S-spline Max algorithm, then sharpened in Iridient using Richardson-Lucy, radius 3, 10 iterations. When I viewed the image in Iridient and downscaled it from 100% to screen view, it looked like peppered with white. In larger views, the image looked considerably paler overall compared to the original. Like the screen shots. I figured out that the reason was the many small branches=edges, and that the amount increased with the radius of the deconvolution. But as you can see on the screen shots, the effect is not confined to areas with fine branches, and not to diminished scales. The shots are displayed in PhotoLine at 100%.

I have tried other methods of sharpening.
Iridient Reveal, same effect, dependent on radius and the amount of Microtexture.
Raw Therapee, Wavelets and Richardson-Lucy: RT crashed when fed with the 1,2 GB file.
Photozoom Pro USM: the result is ridiculous in sharpness compared to Iridient.

What are you guys doing?

Mark D Segal

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Re: Sharpened=pale??
« Reply #1 on: June 26, 2018, 02:28:31 pm »

.................

What are you guys doing?

Lightroom sharpening if I'm working in Lightroom, or Photokit Sharpener 2 if I'm working in Photoshop. Easy-peezy, no convoluted workflow and it works beautifully - natural-looking sharp results without visible halos.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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Hening Bettermann

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Re: Sharpened=pale??
« Reply #2 on: June 26, 2018, 02:45:00 pm »

Thank you, Mark.

rdonson

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Re: Sharpened=pale??
« Reply #3 on: June 26, 2018, 03:59:10 pm »

Since I have Fuji X cameras I use Iridient X-Transformer on the RAW files and minor tweaks afterwards for final sharpening with Lightroom.  It got me much better results than using Lightroom only.   For Fuji RAW files I just think Iridient does a better job of demosaicing and sharpening.  Lightroom for the rest of the post processing.
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Ron

digitaldog

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Re: Sharpened=pale??
« Reply #4 on: June 26, 2018, 05:15:14 pm »

Lightroom sharpening if I'm working in Lightroom, or Photokit Sharpener 2 if I'm working in Photoshop. Easy-peezy, no convoluted workflow and it works beautifully - natural-looking sharp results without visible halos.
Ditto.
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fdisilvestro

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Re: Sharpened=pale??
« Reply #5 on: June 26, 2018, 05:46:47 pm »

If you have Photoshop CC (latest), you may try to resize with the new method "Preserve details 2.0"

Hening Bettermann

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Re: Sharpened=pale??
« Reply #6 on: June 27, 2018, 03:35:35 pm »

Thanks to you who replied!
Francisco, I don't have Photoshop and will not enter the subscription model. I use PhotoLine, which supports Adobe's Common Plug-in Architecture, so in principle, the PKS should work with PL. In the week-end, I'll download and try it out.

digitaldog

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Re: Sharpened=pale??
« Reply #7 on: June 27, 2018, 05:41:21 pm »

Thanks to you who replied!
Francisco, I don't have Photoshop and will not enter the subscription model. I use PhotoLine, which supports Adobe's Common Plug-in Architecture, so in principle, the PKS should work with PL. In the week-end, I'll download and try it out.
PKS (free now) only works within Photoshop.
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Hening Bettermann

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Re: Sharpened=pale??
« Reply #8 on: June 27, 2018, 06:04:30 pm »

Free? On their web site, I read PhotoKit Sharpener 1.2.9, demo: 7 days. - Anyway, I had thought of PKS 2, as mentioned by Mark. If it does not run under PhotoLine, I will try to re-install my copy of CS5.

digitaldog

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Re: Sharpened=pale??
« Reply #9 on: June 27, 2018, 06:29:43 pm »

Free? On their web site, I read PhotoKit Sharpener 1.2.9, demo: 7 days. - Anyway, I had thought of PKS 2, as mentioned by Mark. If it does not run under PhotoLine, I will try to re-install my copy of CS5.
Current version is 2.X and yes, it's free:

If you need to get an installer, go to this URL:

http://www.pixelgenius.com

Click on the  button to download the correct version and operating system. The product  will become fully functional.

PixelGenius, LLC. (PG), creators of the PhotoKit line of Photoshop plug-ins, is closing down our commercial operations and is ceasing any further development of our current products. The nature of the industry and marketplace has evolved as digital photography with raw processing applications has diminished the need for pixel based editors such as Photoshop.

Since PG will no longer be selling our products, PG wanted to make sure those people who have purchased our products will be able to continue using their plug-ins for the foreseeable future when our product activation is turned off. Therefore, we have decided to release all three of our products; PhotoKitâ„¢, PhotoKit Sharpenerâ„¢ and PhotoKit Colorâ„¢ as freeware products without serial numbers nor activation. The downloads we are making available here will not require serial numbers, activation nor registration. Non-customers are free to download and use the products as well. The downloads for Mac and Windows include all three products bundled together. You will need to unzip the files after downloading. Once unzipped, open the folder and please read the READ ME file included in the folder for instructions on how to install the software.
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Hening Bettermann

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Re: Sharpened=pale??
« Reply #10 on: June 27, 2018, 08:24:41 pm »

Uff! Thank you for the info. I'm pleased to read that I'll save 100 $, and surprised to read that there is no longer a need for pixel-based editors like Photoshop.

fdisilvestro

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Re: Sharpened=pale??
« Reply #11 on: June 27, 2018, 08:32:26 pm »

surprised to read that there is no longer a need for pixel-based editors like Photoshop.

Well, that's not what the note said. "Diminished" for "Digital photography" , which is a minority of the users of Photoshop anyway, does not mean that there is no longer a need for pixel-based editors

digitaldog

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Re: Sharpened=pale??
« Reply #12 on: June 27, 2018, 08:34:55 pm »

Further, the capture and output sharpening in Lightroom, where some would argue is a better place to do this, is based on PKS 2. What it lacks is creative sharpening and some output sharpening for devices like Halftone, Contone etc.
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Hening Bettermann

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Re: Sharpened=pale??
« Reply #13 on: July 05, 2018, 01:22:34 pm »

So now I have re-downloaded and re-installed my CS5 and tested PKS2.

1-image upscaled in PhotoZoom Pro, then sharpened in Iridient with Richardson-Lucy deconvolution.
The attempt to follow the same procedure with PKS2 failed. After opening the image in PS, the border of the 100% zoom in PKS does not become visible. The saved flat TIF does not show any changes.
Obviously, PKS can not chew the 1.1 GB file.

So this becomes an apples-to-peaches comparison:
RL-sharpening after upscale to print size.
PKS sharpened, then upscaled to print size.
PKS sharpening parameters chosen after visual judgement, resulting in Digital Low (! for a 20 mpx file), Super Fine Edge.

Both opened in PhotoLine at 100% and in print size (27%).
Screen shots below. Iridient R-L at left.

My bottom line:
The R-L sharpening (after upscaling) is clearly better.
Viewed at print size, the problem of paling seems to have vanished. Obviously, it only occurs when downscaling to screen size, most visible in areas with many fine edges.

Thank you for your help!

Mark D Segal

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Re: Sharpened=pale??
« Reply #14 on: July 05, 2018, 01:27:27 pm »

How do you know you've done nearly enough testing of the PKS variables/options before coming to conclusions?
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Hening Bettermann

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Re: Sharpened=pale??
« Reply #15 on: July 05, 2018, 05:18:35 pm »

Hi Mark!

1-This is *my* conclusion for *my* workflow, not a general review of PKS.
2-PKS has 3 basic choices: Module, Set, Effect. The Modules are 3: Capture-Creative-Output sharpening. Of these, I'm referring to capture sharpening exclusively (which should be apparent from the context). Of the 2 other modules, I tried - in the preview - of course more alternatives than what I saved, logged and report here.
3-When is a testing 'enough'? My testing showed me, that I have a better alternative, and that the problem I had with that solution seems to have been irreal.

OK?

Mark D Segal

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Re: Sharpened=pale??
« Reply #16 on: July 05, 2018, 05:47:06 pm »

Not OK.

Things that aren't explained are not always obvious. All I can go on is what I read and when that is inadequate I could come to wrong conclusions. Based on everything I've read in the past couple of posts I maintain you haven't mastered this application and perhaps need to remind yourself of its underlying philosophy to understand its structure and the usefulness of going beyond capture sharpening. Capture Sharpening is part of the three stage process. If the image needs more than stage one, you can't conclude it's inferior before you've exhausted its other options. I wouldn't doubt what you say about your satisfaction with your preferred option, but I'm still not convinced you're in a position to conclude much about PKS2. But maybe you've done even more than I know about, you've made up your mind, and that's fine too. Everyone should work with what works best for themselves.
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Terry_Kennedy

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Re: Sharpened=pale??
« Reply #17 on: July 06, 2018, 04:38:00 pm »

So now I have re-downloaded and re-installed my CS5 and tested PKS2.

1-image upscaled in PhotoZoom Pro, then sharpened in Iridient with Richardson-Lucy deconvolution.
The attempt to follow the same procedure with PKS2 failed. After opening the image in PS, the border of the 100% zoom in PKS does not become visible. The saved flat TIF does not show any changes.
Obviously, PKS can not chew the 1.1 GB file.

What platform are you on? If you are using Windows and you have capable hardware, you really want to use the 64-bit versions of Windows (a re-install from scratch if you're running 32-bit now, unfortunately), Photoshop, and any plugins. A quick look at the Pixel Genius site shows a 64-bit version of the plugin for Windows. I regularly work with huge Photoshop files (150000 x 40000 pixels RGB as an example) and going 64-bit has been a real help, both for speed and stability.  This is on a system with 16GB of RAM, a box wth 4GB won't see much improvement (and may even be slower in 64-bit mode).
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Hening Bettermann

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Re: Sharpened=pale??
« Reply #18 on: July 06, 2018, 05:02:01 pm »

Hi Terry,
thanks for your tip, but I'm on Mac.

Rhossydd

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Re: Sharpened=pale??
« Reply #19 on: July 06, 2018, 05:20:22 pm »

Obviously, PKS can not chew the 1.1 GB file
FWIW I've just run a 1.42gb pano  80013 px x 3188px through PS CS4 on Win 7 64 bit and using PKS2 took two minutes to capture sharpen and generated a 6.6gb layered file.
So no problem with big files and PKS2 here.

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