Hi,
I don't see a big difference on FocusMagic, FocusFixer and CS3's SmartSharpen. Iridient RAW developer with Richardson-Lucy deconvolution is probably the combination that can extract most detail.
I'd suggest that the capture sharpening built into ACR/LR is pretty good, as it allows for sharpening edges and avoiding halos.
Unsharp masking does improve rendering of edges, but does not extract extra detail, which deconvolution type tools can. I used FocusMagic on PC but it doesn't work on Intel Imacs in CS 3, unless Rosetta emulation is used. I tried out Focus Fixer a couple of times, but I feel that I can achieve similar results with SmartSharpen in CS3. I'm still consider buying Focus Fixer, however.
Technically, deconvolution is only possible if the Point Spread Function is known. The PSF may be known for the anti aliasing filter (FocusFixer has a database) and estimated for defocusing.
Best regards
Erik
Things seem to be improving with Adobe sharpening but my take on it is that it has a way to go to match third party sharpening.
If this is true then I'd like some input on some of the third party programs for use with XP Pro.
Which one do you prefer and why?
Thanks.