Glad to hear finally arrived at a satisfactory comparison Tim.
Sorry it took me so long to get there (being a bit lazy this week!) and thanks for your patience. Although I was confident of what I was seeing and producing I really should have just taken more care when presenting as a comparison and you were quite right to point out my shortfalls.
For me it was not a question of trying to prove that one method or application better than another but where one application scored higher could I get the same with my current toolset i.e. CS6 without plugins.
Still not entirely happy with the outcome from Smart Sharpen.
One round of sharpening pushing the JPEG to nearly breaking point is perhaps not the smart way to go about testing sharpening. The fact of applying to a JPEG in the first instance is likely to lead to tears
.
I still think that a more considered approach using a first round of capture sharpening leading through creative sharpening and final output sharpening would have been better way but to do that I would really want to be working from a 16 bit TIFF or raw file.
I don't think it fair to make any judgement based on one image test either for CS6 or Piccure+. I am sure there is more to be gained from both.
I don't know about anyone else but what I want from these products is to be totally blown away. For my eyes to bleed with the sharpness, for euphoria induced by no noise other than what I require.
One thing that does look promising is the motion blur correction. The image presented on the website Taj Mahal I do not think I could get anywhere near with CS6. Although there does appear to be ghosting left behind this could be cleaned up in CS6.
So I have decided I must see first hand and have downloaded the trial and also a screen grab of the before and after.
From what you say it looks like CS6 smart sharpen improved over CS5 and from what I have heard has been further improved in CC - I think increase sharpening potential with less noise increase.
I am desperately trying to resist the siren call of CC, not sure how long I can hold out