Luminous Landscape Forum

Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Digital Image Processing => Topic started by: John Hollenberg on March 11, 2018, 11:51:05 am

Title: LR Sharpening Settings Closest to Focus Magic
Post by: John Hollenberg on March 11, 2018, 11:51:05 am
The best capture sharpening I have run across is using Focus Magic on TIFF files.  I am wondering if anyone can suggest sharpening settings in LR that will get as close as possible to the quality of Focus Magic while still working with the RAW file.  This is for landscape photos exclusively.
Title: Re: LR Sharpening Settings Closest to Focus Magic
Post by: Mark D Segal on March 11, 2018, 12:03:59 pm
Hi John,

Perhaps it would be useful to define what you mean by "the best capture sharpening" in specific, tangible terms and post an image of it? That may help answering this question. Generally I find LR's Scenic Preset to be fine for landscape photos, and by "fine", I mean it strengthens edge contrast to create the appearance of sharpness without visible halos at least up to 13*19 inch prints from a 24 MP raw file.
Title: Re: LR Sharpening Settings Closest to Focus Magic
Post by: John Hollenberg on March 11, 2018, 01:16:22 pm
I didn't even know there was a Scenic Preset!  Obviously I haven't been paying much attention after using LR for a number of years.  :-[ I will have a look and post a section of an image with Focus Magic sharpening compared to the Scenic Preset.  Thanks!
Title: Re: LR Sharpening Settings Closest to Focus Magic
Post by: Bart_van_der_Wolf on March 11, 2018, 01:38:41 pm
The best capture sharpening I have run across is using Focus Magic on TIFF files.  I am wondering if anyone can suggest sharpening settings in LR that will get as close as possible to the quality of Focus Magic while still working with the RAW file.  This is for landscape photos exclusively.

Hi John,

Use a radius setting in line with the actual aperture that you used. At the lens optimum (usually around f/4 - f5.6), a radius of 0.7 or 0.8 would come closest. At narrower apertures that gradually grows to something like a radius of 1.1 @ f/16, depending on the lens quality. Wider apertures also require larger radii than at the lens optimum, but depend on how good the lens is, which varies (even between copies of the same design).

Then try finding a setting for the other controls that doesn't create too much artifacting (e.g. Detail halfway).

The most important is an Aperture driven radius setting. Don't let the size of image detail misguide you into using other radii. Capture sharpening is Physics driven. Creative sharpening is something totally different, and should be handled as such.

Cheers,
Bart

P.S. I've attached an example of my EF 100mm f2.8 Macro lens to give an idea.
Title: Re: LR Sharpening Settings Closest to Focus Magic
Post by: jrsforums on March 11, 2018, 03:13:03 pm
Hi John,

Use a radius setting in line with the actual aperture that you used. At the lens optimum (usually around f/4 - f5.6), a radius of 0.7 or 0.8 would come closest. At narrower apertures that gradually grows to something like a radius of 1.1 @ f/16, depending on the lens quality. Wider apertures also require larger radii than at the lens optimum, but depend on how good the lens is, which varies (even between copies of the same design).

Then try finding a setting for the other controls that doesn't create too much artifacting (e.g. Detail halfway).

The most important is an Aperture driven radius setting. Don't let the size of image detail misguide you into using other radii. Capture sharpening is Physics driven. Creative sharpening is something totally different, and should be handled as such.

Cheers,
Bart

P.S. I've attached an example of my EF 100mm f2.8 Macro lens to give an idea.

Hi Bart...

How do you go about determining best radius setting?  I, for example, use a G9 m43 20mb sensor with variety of lenses.

On detail, do you determine artifacting using ‘alt’ key masking while adjusting detail?

John
Title: Re: LR Sharpening Settings Closest to Focus Magic
Post by: PeterAit on March 11, 2018, 03:50:05 pm
Hi Bart...

How do you go about determining best radius setting?  I, for example, use a G9 m43 20mb sensor with variety of lenses.

On detail, do you determine artifacting using ‘alt’ key masking while adjusting detail?

John

I have never been able to get sharpening from LR as good as that provided by Focus Magic. The coders at FM must be very sharp indeed (pardon the pun) to have written code that analyzes the image so accurately and gives such great results. Don't worry that it's a TIFF, just do your basic editing first so you know you have all the shadow and highlight detail you want.

I have called the FM people and suggested a LR plug-in, but so far no soap.
Title: Re: LR Sharpening Settings Closest to Focus Magic
Post by: John Hollenberg on March 11, 2018, 04:34:42 pm
I have never been able to get sharpening from LR as good as that provided by Focus Magic.

Comparing Focus Magic with the LR Scenic Sharpening at 100% (photo taken at f8) the LR sharpening is very close to Focus Magic.  I doubt one would be able to tell the difference even on a pretty big print.
Title: Re: LR Sharpening Settings Closest to Focus Magic
Post by: aderickson on March 11, 2018, 04:41:11 pm
I have never been able to get sharpening from LR as good as that provided by Focus Magic. The coders at FM must be very sharp indeed (pardon the pun) to have written code that analyzes the image so accurately and gives such great results. Don't worry that it's a TIFF, just do your basic editing first so you know you have all the shadow and highlight detail you want.

I have called the FM people and suggested a LR plug-in, but so far no soap.

It's the same with me. I readily concede that I am no LR expert but I have read everything Schewe has on the subject of LR sharpening and still fall back to FM and NeatImage after the file is rendered. I find that sharpening and noise reduction are interrelated.

Allan
Title: Re: LR Sharpening Settings Closest to Focus Magic
Post by: nma on March 11, 2018, 04:53:16 pm
to Peter Ait. Reply #5.

Based on your post, I looked at www.focusmagic.com. I could not see any mention of capture sharpening. The whole site seemed dedicated to reversing motion blur of one sort or another. Capture sharpening attempts to reverse blurring due to digital sampling. I am using M43 for landscape and nature photography. Usually my images are in good focus. Do you know of a tutorial or post that discusses how to use focus magic  for capture sharpening and or creative sharpening?

Thanks
Title: Re: LR Sharpening Settings Closest to Focus Magic
Post by: Bart_van_der_Wolf on March 11, 2018, 08:44:13 pm
Hi Bart...

How do you go about determining best radius setting?  I, for example, use a G9 m43 20mb sensor with variety of lenses.

Hi John,

Long story short, I take shots of a Slanted Edge (actually two edges, one near horizontal and one near vertical) and based on the edge profile(s) I fit a blur function that tells me how much blur radius is required for a perfect edge to achieve the same blur as observed in the edge profile. The Slanted Edge shots are from a series taken on a focus rail that allows me to find the perfect focus for the chosen aperture (the focus rail shot with the smallest blur in the series is used for analysis).

After analyzing a number of lenses, the same pattern emerged, the best lenses come close to 0.7 radius blur in the image center for the optimal aperture, and the blur radius (to compensate for in Capture Sharpening postprocessing) grows on either side of the Aperture range, but with a good lens diffraction takes a heavier toll with narrower apertures than residual aberrations do at wider apertures, similar to the example chart I've shown. There's more to the story, like close focus changing the magnification factor, and thus the blur radius to compensate for, but I don't want to complicate things too much.

I've since become better at visually judging edge sharpening effects (like halo artifacts) to allow visual correction that correlates with the numerical analysis. I also use Capture One Pro as my main Raw converter, and they've introduced an automatic (deconvolution based) Diffraction control that's very effective for improving narrower aperture shots. So the diffraction blur induced loss of sharpness is much less in my Raw conversions, and I can use Capture sharpening in postprocessing that's pretty much the same for any Aperture. FocusMagic usually only requires a blur radius setting of 1 pixel for ultimate sharpening.

Quote
On detail, do you determine artifacting using ‘alt’ key masking while adjusting detail?

No, in Lightroom I look for exaggerated / ugly artifacts in predominantly low detail areas, but I have to admit that I've grown an allergy for such artifacts (because I now know what good sharpening looks like), so it has become easier to spot them. Lightroom's implementation of deconvolution is pretty quick and dirty and when the detail control is set too high, the 'dirty' part kicks in. Only then, if there is noise amplification in e.g. mostly featureless sky regions, I reduce (not eliminate) the noise amplification by masking (which admittedly is a nice feature as it is implemented in LR, unlike the sharpening workflow as a whole).

Of course, Capture One also has a similar feature nowadays, although implemented differently and more geared at suppressing halos from post Raw conversion sharpening with a more USM-like type of sharpening (which I only use when in a rush, or replace by its output recipe sharpening after resampling, for which it offers a proofing preview). For better quality output I take the additional time and effort to post Capture sharpen with FocusMagic, followed by Creative Sharpening using TopazLabs Detail at the intended output resolution.

Cheers,
Bart
Title: Re: LR Sharpening Settings Closest to Focus Magic
Post by: Bart_van_der_Wolf on March 11, 2018, 08:58:55 pm
to Peter Ait. Reply #5.

Based on your post, I looked at www.focusmagic.com. I could not see any mention of capture sharpening. The whole site seemed dedicated to reversing motion blur of one sort or another. Capture sharpening attempts to reverse blurring due to digital sampling.

Hi,

That's correct, but Capture Sharpening is quite similar to isometric (i.e. similar in all directions) camera shake, even though diffraction blur is different from camera shake (or motion blur, or defocus blur). FocusMagic is pretty good at pulling in the detail that was spread over multiple neighboring pixels, back to the source pixels. The process is called Deconvolution, but FocusMagic achieves doing it without exaggerating noise. It effectively increases the signal to noise ratio as it sharpens blurred detail.

Quote
I am using M43 for landscape and nature photography. Usually my images are in good focus. Do you know of a tutorial or post that discusses how to use focus magic  for capture sharpening and or creative sharpening?

FocusMagic is not the proper tool for Creative 'Sharpening' (something like TopazLabs Detail (or nowadays TopazStudio Precision Detail) is what is better used for that).

Cheers,
Bart
Title: Re: LR Sharpening Settings Closest to Focus Magic
Post by: aderickson on March 11, 2018, 09:51:59 pm
Bart, this is new (and exciting) information to me. Up to now I had thought that sharpening radius was primarily defined by image detail and camera resolution (sensor pixels or film grain).

I would be interested to see this written up in further detail, especially how it relates to sensor pixel density, presence or lack of an AA filter, and lens quality.

Best,
Allan
Title: Re: LR Sharpening Settings Closest to Focus Magic
Post by: John Hollenberg on March 12, 2018, 12:30:12 pm
FocusMagic usually only requires a blur radius setting of 1 pixel for ultimate sharpening.

When I Auto Detect in Focus Magic I always get a setting of 2 pixels.  Tried 1 pixel, wasn't as sharp as LR or Focus Magic at 2 pixels (used in comparison I posted earlier in the thread).  I can't see any halos in the LR or Focus Magic at 2 pixels.  Thoughts?
Title: Re: LR Sharpening Settings Closest to Focus Magic
Post by: Bart_van_der_Wolf on March 12, 2018, 12:51:01 pm
Bart, this is new (and exciting) information to me. Up to now I had thought that sharpening radius was primarily defined by image detail and camera resolution (sensor pixels or film grain).

I would be interested to see this written up in further detail, especially how it relates to sensor pixel density, presence or lack of an AA filter, and lens quality.

Hi Allan,

There have been several threads where the principles have been described in more detail. I'll try and find some links, to avoid having to redo it all again.

EDIT This is where it started (but unfortunately some of the links are not valid anymore, due to migration to another service provider, and lack of time to update everything):
http://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=68089.0

What FocusMagic and other Deconvolution methods basically do, is restore the sharpness of the original input signal, before camera shake, optics, diffraction, AA-filter if any, sensel size and effective aperture, and demosaicing take their toll. Those various types of blur tend to produce a somewhat Gaussian blur which can be easily modeled in a formula. This is similar to many natural phenomenae which, when combined in a cascade, tend to produce something that looks Gaussian. These blurs together are all related to the Capture process, and thus a good candidate for Capture sharpening.

Products like Capture One now offer an automatic Diffraction Correction, so the need for a complete Capture deconvolution has been reduced (although there is still room for it due to lens aberration losses and perhaps camera shake, in addition to differences in fill factor or effective sensel aperture).

The effect of the sampling density or sensel size is a bit harder to fathom, because things somewhat cancel each other out. Smaller sensels suggest that a fixed size blur would be imaged larger (expressed in pixels), but at the same time smaller sensels pull more resolution out of a lens, and they can be downsampled more for the same size output. So while a larger blur radius would be expected, in practice it can be hardly the case.

But the principle that we need to correct the (remaining) capture blur itself during the Capture sharpening phase of postprocessing stands. Boosting different sizes of image detail is typically better addressed by Creative 'Sharpening'.

Cheers,
Bart
Title: Re: LR Sharpening Settings Closest to Focus Magic
Post by: Bart_van_der_Wolf on March 12, 2018, 01:01:32 pm
When I Auto Detect in Focus Magic I always get a setting of 2 pixels.  Tried 1 pixel, wasn't as sharp as LR or Focus Magic at 2 pixels (used in comparison I posted earlier in the thread).  I can't see any halos in the LR or Focus Magic at 2 pixels.  Thoughts?

When I get a suggested 2 pixel width of blur, it is usually caused by some lack of sharpness that could have been avoided by using a tripod and live view focusing with a loupe, but that's not always practical. On my sharpest shots with the best lenses at their optimum aperture, I more regularly get a suggestion of 1 pixel, especially after already first correcting for diffraction blur at Raw conversion time. A Raw converter like Capture One also extracts more resolution out of the same file compared to Lightroom. It's also very hard to avoid camera shake or mirror slap induced blur.

But then FocusMagic only uses integer increments of blur width, so maybe a lower width with a higher amount would work better. Anyway, if a blur width of 2 works better, then I'd say, by all means, use that.

Cheers,
Bart
Title: Re: LR Sharpening Settings Closest to Focus Magic
Post by: t6b9p on March 14, 2018, 02:12:52 am
Hi Bart
I was interested to learn that Capture One has a built in diffraction correction.....I don't suppose there is an option to tune it further for wavelength as I assume it is based around 530nm. I shoot IR 830nm where diffraction is almost twice as bad so I have found Focus Magic to be helpful for these shots..
Title: Re: LR Sharpening Settings Closest to Focus Magic
Post by: Bart_van_der_Wolf on March 14, 2018, 09:24:04 am
Hi Bart
I was interested to learn that Capture One has a built in diffraction correction.....I don't suppose there is an option to tune it further for wavelength as I assume it is based around 530nm. I shoot IR 830nm where diffraction is almost twice as bad so I have found Focus Magic to be helpful for these shots..

Hi,

The current implementation of C1 does not offer controls other than on/off. There is a trick that allows to increase or decrease the effect, by manually changing the Aperture value on the Lens Correction tool's 'Movement' tab. So, although we do not have control over individual channels, it might still be worth a try with manual override.

Of course, FocusMagic can be tuned more easily because it's a dedicated sharpening tool, but it needs another (PS plugin aware) Image editing application as a host.

Cheers,
Bart
Title: Re: LR Sharpening Settings Closest to Focus Magic
Post by: PeterAit on March 14, 2018, 09:53:59 am
to Peter Ait. Reply #5.

Based on your post, I looked at www.focusmagic.com. I could not see any mention of capture sharpening. The whole site seemed dedicated to reversing motion blur of one sort or another. Capture sharpening attempts to reverse blurring due to digital sampling. I am using M43 for landscape and nature photography. Usually my images are in good focus. Do you know of a tutorial or post that discusses how to use focus magic  for capture sharpening and or creative sharpening?

Thanks

As far as I am concerned, sharpening is sharpening. Capture sharpening isn't a different type of sharpening, AFAIK, it just refers to the basic sharpening that all digital images benefit from due to the sampling. So my practice has been to leave LR's sharpening settings at the default - what I consider capture sharpening - and then use FM for the final sharpening. BTW, FM has two functions, one relates to motion blur and the other to focus blur. Totally separate.
Title: Re: LR Sharpening Settings Closest to Focus Magic
Post by: PeterAit on March 14, 2018, 09:58:32 am
Comparing Focus Magic with the LR Scenic Sharpening at 100% (photo taken at f8) the LR sharpening is very close to Focus Magic.  I doubt one would be able to tell the difference even on a pretty big print.

Thanks for turning me on to that LR preset - I had not been aware of it. I will have to experiment with it - I would not mind skipping the round-trip to photoshop just to use FM.
Title: Re: LR Sharpening Settings Closest to Focus Magic
Post by: jrsforums on March 14, 2018, 07:18:18 pm
Thanks for turning me on to that LR preset - I had not been aware of it. I will have to experiment with it - I would not mind skipping the round-trip to photoshop just to use FM.

Peter, I had not looked at that preset before, but just did.

The radius is 0.8, which is close to the 0.7 which BART recommended.  The detail is below 50 and strength moderate.

I would expert going to 0.7 might improve it.  Take Bart’s suggestion about adjusting detail and strength.  Depending on image and flat areas, such as sky, increase masking to block out sharpening created noise.

Worth a try.  I am definitely not an expert, but have got good results, even if it is sometimes a lot of trial and error, as I don’t do it enough.  Snapshots can get presets or a quick lick on the sliders. 😀
Title: Re: LR Sharpening Settings Closest to Focus Magic
Post by: jed best on April 03, 2018, 06:57:44 am
Hi Bart,

Some help please. Do you both turn off sharpening in C1 except for diffraction correction and place focus magic and Topaz Detail on same layer? In additoin, do you any default settings for Topaz Detail.

Thank you.

Jed Best
Title: Re: LR Sharpening Settings Closest to Focus Magic
Post by: Bart_van_der_Wolf on April 03, 2018, 08:40:58 am
Hi Bart,

Some help please. Do you both turn off sharpening in C1 except for diffraction correction and place focus magic and Topaz Detail on same layer? In additoin, do you any default settings for Topaz Detail.

Hi Jed,

I usually keep C1's Diffraction Correction toggled on, because that unifies the look of images that were shot with different apertures. I then switch-off the separate Sharpening settings in the output recipe.

Then in Photoshop (or Affinity Photo) I use an action that creates a duplicate layer, switches it to Luminosity blend mode, and applies a Blend-if that avoids clipping due to sharpening, and starts FocusMagic. I then use the required settings (usually a blur width of 1, or sometimes 2) and an Amount of 100 to 175, depending on the image.

The Topaz Detail settings can be applied to the same Luminosity Blend layer if nothing color specific is required, or on a new Merge Visible layer for full control. The settings for Detail differ with image content and intended use (and viewing distance) of the image, but I often add a bit of small detail (and reduce small detail boost to suppress noise amplification), and some medium detail.

The benefit of applying Detail to the FocusMagic sharpened Layer is that it also already has Blend-if settings, so there is no risk for clipping even if small detail is enhanced, and it avoids file bloat from an additional image layer. The drawback is that it is no longer possible to separate the Capture sharpening from the 'Creative sharpening', so I may need to do it all over for a different use of the same image, instead of just (temporarily) switching off the Detail layer, and creating a new one.

Cheers,
Bart
Title: Re: LR Sharpening Settings Closest to Focus Magic
Post by: jed best on April 03, 2018, 03:17:56 pm
Thank you

JEd
Title: Re: LR Sharpening Settings Closest to Focus Magic
Post by: brianrybolt on April 12, 2018, 05:02:25 am
I find that 'Smart Sharpen' is more effective than the preset 'Sharpen - Scenic'.  I use the sliders -to taste-.  I find it quick and easy but wish I didn't have to round trip through PS.
Title: Re: LR Sharpening Settings Closest to Focus Magic
Post by: bjanes on April 12, 2018, 12:26:56 pm

Then in Photoshop (or Affinity Photo) I use an action that creates a duplicate layer, switches it to Luminosity blend mode, and applies a Blend-if that avoids clipping due to sharpening, and starts FocusMagic. I then use the required settings (usually a blur width of 1, or sometimes 2) and an Amount of 100 to 175, depending on the image.

The Topaz Detail settings can be applied to the same Luminosity Blend layer if nothing color specific is required, or on a new Merge Visible layer for full control. The settings for Detail differ with image content and intended use (and viewing distance) of the image, but I often add a bit of small detail (and reduce small detail boost to suppress noise amplification), and some medium detail.

The benefit of applying Detail to the FocusMagic sharpened Layer is that it also already has Blend-if settings, so there is no risk for clipping even if small detail is enhanced, and it avoids file bloat from an additional image layer. The drawback is that it is no longer possible to separate the Capture sharpening from the 'Creative sharpening', so I may need to do it all over for a different use of the same image, instead of just (temporarily) switching off the Detail layer, and creating a new one.

Bart,

I would be interested in what blend-if settings you use. In his Image Sharpening, 2nd Ed, page 201, Jeff Schewe recommends the settings shown in the attachment. These may vary according to the specific image being sharpened (shadow and highlight distribution), but these may serve as a starting point. He also adjusts the sliders for both This Layer and Underlying Layer. Some workers adjust the sliders only for This Layer. What do you recommend?

Regards,

Bill
Title: Re: LR Sharpening Settings Closest to Focus Magic
Post by: ErikKaffehr on April 12, 2018, 12:31:41 pm
Hi,

It has been around since public Beta three I think...

Best regards
Erik

I didn't even know there was a Scenic Preset!  Obviously I haven't been paying much attention after using LR for a number of years.  :-[ I will have a look and post a section of an image with Focus Magic sharpening compared to the Scenic Preset.  Thanks!
Title: Re: LR Sharpening Settings Closest to Focus Magic
Post by: Bart_van_der_Wolf on April 12, 2018, 12:44:48 pm
I would be interested in what blend-if settings you use.

Hi Bill,

I use a very simple Blend-if as a starting point (see attachment), and it can be adjusted depending on the actual image content. But it already makes a significant difference as is. These settings are applied to the top layer with the sharpening. Because it's so straight forward, it's easy to adjust.

The top layer, the one with the sharpening, is in effect used unchanged, except for the extremes (which risk clipping). The idea behind it is that when edge contrast is already very high, it doesn't need as much sharpening as the rest of the image.

Cheers,
Bart
Title: Re: LR Sharpening Settings Closest to Focus Magic
Post by: bjanes on April 12, 2018, 12:55:59 pm
I use a very simple Blend-if as a starting point (see attachment), and it can be adjusted depending on the actual image content. But it already makes a significant difference as is. These settings are applied to the top layer with the sharpening. Because it's so straight forward, it's easy to adjust.

The top layer, the one with the sharpening, is in effect used unchanged, except for the extremes (which risk clipping). The idea behind it is that when edge contrast is already very high, it doesn't need as much sharpening as the rest of the image.

Bart,

Your reply is very helpful. On the top layer with the sharpening do you use a layer mask, which could include an edge mask?

Thanks,

Bill
Title: Re: LR Sharpening Settings Closest to Focus Magic
Post by: Bart_van_der_Wolf on April 12, 2018, 01:17:11 pm
Your reply is very helpful. On the top layer with the sharpening do you use a layer mask, which could include an edge mask?

In general I don't use a mask on the top layer, but that is of course not prohibited. For example, in case of noisy sky regions, one can mask those out.

One of the benefits of such a Sharpening layer is that it can be disabled or deleted before downsampling. After downsampling a new sharpening layer can be created. This reduces the risk of creating aliasing artifacts. That's why I created an action to create such a layer.

Cheers,
Bart

P.S. And attached an example of how it can be implemented in Affinity Photo.
Title: Re: LR Sharpening Settings Closest to Focus Magic
Post by: Jacob Buchowski on May 19, 2018, 07:52:56 am
Bart et al.,

This is very helpful. From what I gather you use Focus Magic (and Detail) when you first bring the image into PS for editing before you do any creative work (i.e. do you use it primarily as capture sharpening). Please correct me if I'm wrong. The reason why I ask is that I frequently use luminosity masks when I edit my images. If I were to sharpen first, do my creative work to create a master file, and then had to resize the image to create images scaled to print, I would run the risk of creating artifacts due to re-sizing the image. If I created a new sharpening layer after re-sizing, I would then have to re-do the luminosity masks... I guess what I'm really asking is how likely is it in your experience that re-sizing a flattened master file would create aliasing artifacts.

Thank you,
Jacob
Title: Re: LR Sharpening Settings Closest to Focus Magic
Post by: t6b9p on May 29, 2018, 04:12:26 pm
Quote
The current implementation of C1 does not offer controls other than on/off. There is a trick that allows to increase or decrease the effect, by manually changing the Aperture value on the Lens Correction tool's 'Movement' tab. So, although we do not have control over individual channels, it might still be worth a try with manual override.

Of course, FocusMagic can be tuned more easily because it's a dedicated sharpening tool, but it needs another (PS plugin aware) Image editing application as a host.

Sorry for the late response.....life got in the way.  Thanks Bart for your suggestion regards sharpening IR830 in C1.
Title: Re: LR Sharpening Settings Closest to Focus Magic
Post by: peterwgallagher on May 30, 2018, 05:28:43 am
I use FM in Photoshop but I’m cautious about the results because the default 100% mode for ‘out of focus blur’ on a .tif can be sort of aggressive. If not using a ‘smart object’ image, I make a new layer, so I can back off the opacity of the FM-sharpened layer. Incidentally, FM can be used with Smart Objects if you use the “EnableAllPluginsForSmartFilters.jsx” (Google) plugin.

I find that LR (that acc. to Martin Evening sharpens using luminance information to avoid color shifts) can be just as good. I use an OLY EMD OM-1 MkII (µ4/3). By trial and error, using the ALT key method, I have found that an my images that are otherwise in good focus can benefit from sharpening set to a radius of about 1.1 with a modest amount (60-75) and detail set above the 25 threshold in LR (I use a starting preset of 35). Masking is completely image dependent.

But for less-than-sharp focus, or for high ISO images, I first try a HIRALOAM approach, setting radius to about 2.6-2.8 with an amount of 25-30 and detail less than the 25 de-convolution threshold.

Of course, these are settings for images to be displayed on screen. When printing I follow J Schewe’s advice and accept the LR default print-sharpening settings.