Nik Sharpener Pro V3 - a review

[keith_cooper]

I've just finished a review of the latest version of Nik Sharpener Pro (V3) that might be of interest.

The software also covers sharpening of screen images and RAW post-processing. Not cheap, but makes an important difference to all my prints, from contact sheets to my widest panoramics.

Hope it's of interest :-)

[digitaldog]

We can now thank Nik for making up a totally bogus, unnecessary term (Raw Preshaprening), a good 6 years after the late, great Bruce Fraser came up with the concept of capture sharpening (sharpening in stages):

http://www.creativepro.com/article/out-of-...pening-workflow

Sharpening options are also available for sharpening RAW camera files after processing by other software.

Can you clarify how its Raw sharpening when in fact, you're working on a rendered, gamma corrected RGB document? If the original were say a JPEG or scan, what's the difference?

[keith_cooper]

We can now thank Nik for making up a totally bogus, unnecessary term (Raw Preshaprening), a good 6 years after the late, great Bruce Fraser came up with the concept of capture sharpening (sharpening in stages):

Sorry if this is another vendor you've issues with :-) :-) ...I was only looking at what they offer in the software.

I find the post conversion sharpening generally not so useful since I tend to have already used the sharpening found in whatever RAW converter I choose to use.

Sometimes in the past I've turned off most sharpening when processing a RAW image, doing some selective sharpening, then resizing to a large print size, before sharpening more for print. I'm not doing this very often, and didn't have an example to include in the review.

For my own personal use, it's the selective print sharpening that is useful - I include a mention of other features for completeness. As they say YMMV ;-)

[digitaldog]

Sorry if this is another vendor you've issues with :-) :-) ...I was only looking at what they offer in the software.

You have nothing to be sorry for, I'm not directly this towards YOU.

Does the industry really need a new, and confusing, incorrect terminology (Raw Preshaprening), especially when the term is somewhat misleading and technically incorrect?