Sharpening discovery...the "duh" moment

[louoates]

Pre-disclaimer: Nobody paid me for this post.

I'm new here and couldn't find this topic in old posts so I thought I'd ask if any of you have experienced the same sharpening experience with the new Nik SharpenPro3. What I discovered that the sharpening workflow I was doing before in Photoshop was pretty poor. I had the Nik suite for a few months but could not understand the two different sharpening tools in it; the rawpresharpener one and the output sharpener. The raw presharpener looked pretty good on the monitor. But after applying the output sharpener the results on screen looked really bad, even when I selected the proper printing settings I was going to use. So I never got past that monitor-inspection stage and never made the print.

Then I read somewhere that the output sharpener image was supposed to look bad on the monitor!!???  When I went to the Nik on-line seminar on sharpening it was finally made clear that the output sharpener program was doing the calculations based on what I set for the printer, media, and viewing distance. So when I went ahead and made the prints (on paper and canvas) they were unbelievably better than I had ever printed before. Made me want to burn my old prints.

Just wondering if anyone else stopped before making their prints.

[sniper]

I haven't tried the Nik sharpener but use PK sharpener (IMHO the best).  To be honest I haven't had much luck with Niks last few offerings, neither HDR or silver effx pro 2 wanted to work, I managed to get SE working eventually after trying 3 different computers, but never did get the HDR to work properly, and both were painfully slow, and that on high spec computers.
Wayne

[feppe]

I haven't tried the Nik sharpener but use PK sharpener (IMHO the best).  To be honest I haven't had much luck with Niks last few offerings, neither HDR or silver effx pro 2 wanted to work, I managed to get SE working eventually after trying 3 different computers, but never did get the HDR to work properly, and both were painfully slow, and that on high spec computers.
Wayne

Now look what you did: you recommended a competitor's product in response to astroturfing.

[louoates]

I haven't tried the Nik sharpener but use PK sharpener (IMHO the best).  To be honest I haven't had much luck with Niks last few offerings, neither HDR or silver effx pro 2 wanted to work, I managed to get SE working eventually after trying 3 different computers, but never did get the HDR to work properly, and both were painfully slow, and that on high spec computers.
Wayne

I too had lousy luck with earlier versions. I didn't know about PK.

[NikoJorj]

Another strength of LR : the output sharpening isn't shown on screen at all...
Go figure for whom is the astroturfing after all?

[bill t.]

I've been feeling kind of gushy over Topaz InFocus lately.  Way better than Smart Sharpen.  The sliders will go about a bazillion times stronger than you need, so keep 'em WAY over to the left.  And only use the Blur Radius slider if you absolutely must, it's very effective for certain things but not a good general purpose sharpening control.

Of course you will always get the best results from the tool you best understand.

[JeanMichel]

Hi,

Never had to worry about calculating sharpening haloes in the darkroom! Anyway, now that I print digitally (ACR then PS) I found that reading and learning from Bruce Fraser and Jeff Schewe's  Real World Image Sharpening was most worthwhile. The knowledge gleaned from that book and perhaps other similar ones is essential for anyone crafting prints.

Jean-Michel

[NikoJorj]

Never had to worry about calculating sharpening haloes in the darkroom!

And though, UnSharp Masking comes from that era (sandwich a blurred low-contrast negative to your original, that does it)!

Anyway, now that I print digitally (ACR then PS) I found that reading and learning from Bruce Fraser and Jeff Schewe's  Real World Image Sharpening was most worthwhile.

Ditto!

[stamper]

Quote

Then I read somewhere that the output sharpener image was supposed to look bad on the monitor!!???

Unquote

Your monitor is at best 96 ppi and output sharpening is about 300 ppi in most instances. To "try" and match the two the sharpening should look over sharpened on screen. You then print and hope that it looks sharp in print. If it isn't sharpened enough increase the sharpening on screen till they "match" This is trial and error because of the differences in ppi when viewing and printing.

[Garnick]

And though, UnSharp Masking comes from that era (sandwich a blurred low-contrast negative to your original, that does it)!
Ditto!

I've been using PKS for a couple of years, mostly for output, and it's doing a great job. Now on version 2 of course.

YES! The quote above is exactly right. Create a duplicate of the background layer and rename as "Mask". Desaturate the Mask layer, invert it to negative and then change the blend mode to "overlay". Enlarge the image to 100% and look at the horizon line or other high contrast area. This is important for the next step. Use Gaussian Blur to reduce resolution degradation of the image by the Mask layer, yet at the same time avoid halos on sharp contrast boundaries such as skylines. Low amounts are usually best. You will then start to notice the increase in sharpness. Adjust the opacity of the Mask layer as required and you now have an "Unsharp Mask".

This is the digital version of a procedure I have used quite extensively when printing 4x5 B&W negs in the darkroom, except for the opacity control of course. The darkroom version of opacity control in this procedure is actually "contrast control". You would be printing the image at a much higher contrast than normal and the unsharp mask increases edge definition. It's really quite amazing how much the perceived sharpness is increased. And of course small details are enhanced as well with this procedure.

OMG! I think my age is showing again. Just a little exercise to show how unsharp mask actually works. Break it down into its separate part and there it is.

Have fun.
Gary